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Bottle necks in the morning
I arrived the evening before the conference, to be sure that I was in time for my session, which was scheduled as the first session of the morning. I did the “I’m not a bottleneck! I’m a free man!” for the first time in French. We first played a game to learn how to find the “goulots d’étranglement” the 5 focusing steps to “exploiter le goulot, subordonner au goulot et elever le goulot”. At the “OOMPs” where all session presenters briefly explain what their session is about, I said that the session would include chocolate. That seemed to do the trick, because the session was packed with people.
The participants enjoyed themselves playing the Theory Of Constraints simulation. The goal of the simulation is to build as many as possible pairs of paper hats and boats (Throughput), with the minimum number of pieces of paper (Investment). Our Operating Expenses were quite low: one chocolate per worker. We did two rounds of the simulation. After the first round, the team produced one pair, using 11 pieces of paper. In the second round, after optimizing, they produced a pair again (actually, one and a half pairs, but nearly done doesn’t count) using only 7 pieces of paper. The team worked a lot slower in the second round, because they concentrated on quality.
In the second part of the session, (only) three brave souls came forward to play “customer”. Each got 7 or 8 newly minted “TOC consultants” to help them optimize their process and organisation. The groups struggled a bit to describe and understand the processes, but nobody asked me any questions or asked for help. I think I should have subdivided the session into smaller steps, to force the participants to focus on a small bit of the theory, and provide more examples and structure. Still, I think most participants ended up with a good understanding of ToC and ideas to apply back at work. Pictures of the participants in a future entry.
Stories in the afternoon
 In the afternoon, I went to two sessions on user stories and customer collaboration. The first session “Dites-moi, Mr le Client…” was about user stories and the “3 Cs” (Card, Conversation and Confirmation) of customer collaboration.
While we waited for the beamer to work, Francois Beauregard told us the story of the “Squirrel Burger“. The moral of the story being that burger flippers being paid minimum wage are often more professional in dealing with customers that most of us developers.
I think it has a lot do with PROCESS. I define process as “the way we do things around here when we’re under pressure“.
Francois then proceeded to tell us more about user stories. We ended with a (short) exercise where we wrote some stories for an online job site for agile developers and companies.
The session was a bit short to include an activity, but the exercise made me want to write stories again. During next day’s breakfast I wrote a set of stories for the ‘Hourensou’ application. That’s the application that we use for the administration of XP Days Benelux. You’ll see more about that later, because there were some stories like “As a potential XP Day participant I want to register myself and my colleagues online, so that I’m assured of a place before it sells out again.”
The second session treated the subject “How to collaborate with multiple clients?“. Dominic, Nicolas and Virgile set up a situation where there were 11 people around the table to do a planning game: 8 customers, 2 developers and a coach/facilitator. Their goal was to write the stories for a remote pair programming tool. There were two rounds of 30 minutes each. The participants had a lot of trouble to come to a consensus about how to pairprogram and how this translates to a situation where the pair is separated.
Remote pair programming interests me too. I’d like to try it a bit more on a few “after hours projects”. The team that developed the “Sun spots” used remote pair programming (almost) exclusively. Maybe Duncan Pierce can tell more about his experiences? Prod, prod… Wouldn’t that make an interesting XP Day session? Hint, hint…
And relax…
After the sessions we emerged back in the light of a beautiful summer spring day. The sessions rooms were underground, so no natural light during the sessions. To make up for it, we spent enough time outside in the garden/terrace. Conversations and discussions continued over beer, aperitif and dinner, while the presidential debate (“Sarko vs Sego”) raged. I met (again) lots of passionate agilists from France, Luxemburg, Switzerland, Canada and Belgium (!).
Bottles in the night
We ended up in a (typical ?) French bar: the waiter couldn’t remember our order (tip: paper and pencil), he dropped a bottle of water on the table when serving us (it could have been worse: he didn’t drop the beer) and the television alternated between clips from the presidential debate and 80’s MTV videos.
All in all, an interesting and exhausting day. And there was more to come the next day…
The second Paris XP Day will be held on 2-3 May. Last year’s conference was a great success: sold out, lots of interesting sessions (making it difficult to choose the session to go to), meeting French speaking agilists and discussing agile stuff into the night. Not to forget the dinner on a boat cruising down the Seine!
I will host the “I’m not a bottleneck! I’m a free man!” session. In this session, we introduce the 5 focusing steps for process optimization and then apply them to the “real world” work situation of the participants. Now, what’s the french translation of constraint, bottleneck…?
See you there!
Tuesday keynote
Unfortunately, we arrived in time to attend the keynote. Before the keynote, some music boomed out of the loudspeakers. What with previous night’s drinks and the loud noise, most people quickly darted out of the hall. When the keynote started, the presenters started to rap, shout and generate feedback with their mikes, accompanied by more music and slides about modernists who thought they knew all the answers. We now know they didn’t and created some monstrosities (just check out some of the “machines for living” on the outskirts of French or Belgian towns). The presenters held forth about post-modernism. I must have missed the joke or the irony, but I found the presentation irritating and left. Nice try to be original. If there was a message there, it got drowned in the sound and fury of the presentation.
I had a chat with Gill, Mike and Sue about their case study of Lean Software Development. I was going to present the theory of Lean in my “Toyota Way” session, after which they could talk about applying these ideas in the real world. They seemed a bit nervous about doing their presentation and they thought I wasn’t nervous because I had done this presentation before. If only they knew. The only difference between an experienced presenter and a new presenter is that the experienced presenter doesn’t show his nervousness. An experienced presenter knows he’s not going to die on stage, but he still feels like he’s going to 🙂
Real options
The first session was led by Chris Matts. He introduced us to “Real Options” as a way to manage uncertainty and risk. We hate uncertainty, therefore we want to take decisions as quickly as possible. A bad decision is better than no decision. Real Options are all about taking decisions at the latest responsible moment, when we have the most information. Most of the time, we’ll have to pay something upfront to be able to postpone that decision, just like with stock options. Most importantly, we aren’t always able to decide as late as we’d like. It’s up to us to create the situation where we can decide later. The best example is Lean or the Toyota Way. By making changeovers (for example from one paint color to another) really fast, Toyota can delay the decision about which color to spray the car very late, when they have the order from a customer. Thus, they don’t have to speculate what color the customers will want and risk being left behind with a lot of unsold cars in a color few people want.
Toyota
All this led nicely to my own session on the Toyota Way, where “deciding at the latest responsible moment” is just one of the myriad techniques. Like at XP Day Benelux, the audience seemed very interested but also a little stunned. There were only a few questions and a little discussion. This is in sharp contrast with the sessions I ran in Paris and Geneva. In those two cases it was hard to bring the discussion to a close after the session, because people kept on asking questions and discussing the Toyota Way.
Case studies and courage
In the afternoon, I went to the case studies track. The Lean Software Development case study went over well. The other case studies were interesting too. We like to hear how real people have overcome real problems on real projects and see that the theory works in practice. Most of the presenters were first-time presenters in front of a large audience and they did very well. I’d like to invite them to a “Presentation Zen” session for a few tricks and pointers. Especially Jamie Dobson. Jamie, stop putting bullets three levels deep, in unreadable 12 point font on your slides! Just tell us your story! That’s what Dave Nicolette did: no slides, no music, just him telling us a story about two different ways to adopt agile methods in two different organisations.
The last session was another goldfish bowl, this time about courage. Courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is what you do, despite being afraid.
And then, back to Belgium. Alas, no time to spend an “Extreme Tuesday” at the pub.
Monday keynote
Unfortunately we arrived too late to attend the keynote. The train was delayed. The tube on the Northern line was full. The tube on the Central was halted because someone was ill. When we arrived in the Ironmonger’s Hall, the keynote was already in full swing and the hall was packed. Instead of Joshua Kerievsky’s keynote, some coffee to wake up and time to meet the “conference-acquaintances” and hear what they’ve been up to since we last met.
Cooking with conflict
I went to the “Turning up the heat without getting burnt” session by Joseph Pelrine and Ben Fuchs. I couldn’t attend this session at XP Days Benelux because my session was scheduled at the same time. In the first half of the session, Joseph and Ben talked about conflicts, explored our attitude towards conflict with a small excercise and offered us a cooking metaphor for team pressure. Too little heat and the team stagnates; too much heat and they burn. As a cook/coach/leader you need to keep the team at the right “cooking” temperature. Some conflict is good for you.
In the second half, I was asked to take part in a “Scrum from hell” game. In this excercise, a Scrum Master is faced at the daily standup with a team whose members may or may not have a secret goal (like talking as much as possible, helping the Scrum master, not doing anything and hiding this fact…).
I’ve played this game before. I was a bit nervous when Joseph asked me to participate. I thought this was because I had to act in front of an audience and not use my native language, so I overcame my hesitation. It was only after the session, after I had some time to think about it, that I understood why I was hesitant: the excercise throws the scrum master into an impossible situation. They have to suffer the diabolical antics of the hidden agenda players. And then the exercise is over. We don’t get any advice on how to handle such a situation. We are not shown any techniques we could use. We don’t re-run the simulation to see if the techniques work. In the end, what do we have? We’ve had a jolly good laugh at the expense of the sweating scrum master. And then we move on. It wasn’t clear to me how this excercise related to the rest of the session.
What would I have done as a scrum master in this situation? I would stop the standup. The only way to win this game is not to participate in it. I would repeat the rules of the standup and ask for a “check in” (one of the protocols of “Software for your Head“). I would check in first: “I’m willing to work with this team, following these rules. I’m mad. I’m in.”. Those who are willing to work in the team, follow the rules and be held accountable for the results, can check in too. Those who don’t, can leave now. That would create a conflict, but one which would clarify what everyone stood for. Hey, a conflict! Wasn’t this what this session was about?
Lessons learned:
- Some conflict is good
- Listen to my body. It’s a lot smarter and faster than my brain. It took my brain half a day to understand what my body had understood immediately after Joseph asked me to participate: I find the Scrum from Hell a useless and hurtful game.
Are we nearly there yet?
I had been asking myself the very same question as we traveled from Belgium to the Ironmongers Hall. Clearly, we had not planned our journey well enough to arrive in time. I went to the session because of the promise of interaction and discussion and because tracking is useless unless we can tell when something is done. Ivan Moore was a bit flustered because of the large turnout. Because of the large group, there wasn’t a lot of interactivity, but there were many questions and remarks. The session confirmed me in my preference to estimate using “story points”, not “ideal days” or real time.
The day ended with a goldfish bowl discussion on simplicity. As a severe treppenwitz sufferer, such a fast-moving discussion is not the ideal format for me 🙂
It was enjoyable to watch the dicussion go in several directions, but there wasn’t anything memorable that I remembered from the session. Maybe that has to do with the last activity of the evening: trying to make a dent in Google’s finances at their sponsored drink in a pub in “Little Britain”: free drink, food, t-shirts and gadgets. We had a long discussion with Joseph Pelrine and Ben Fuchs. Robert Chatley and Giovanni Asproni (XP Day organizers) looked more relaxed than this morning.
I didn’t stay too long. Next day was another full conference day and I had a session to present.
 I’ll be presenting the “Toyota Way” session at XP Day London
See http://www.xpday.org for the full list of interesting sessions. See you there!
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