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A healthy mind demands a healthy body
All thinking and no play makes Pascal a dull boy. As Portia says “A healthy mind demands a healthy body“.
At the end of the month, I take part in the yearly Brussels 20km race, one Sunday when runners take over the city from motorists. This year’s the 30th edition. I’ve taken part in more than 20 of them. I don’t know the exact number, I’ve lost count over the years 🙂
 
In September I’ll join Portia in a sponsored 10K race at Hampton Court Palace. My goal is to help Portia reach two goals:
More fun in Paris
Before that, I’ll play the Business Value Game and Mirror, Mirror on the Wall with Portia and a nice group of French, Belgian and Swiss Agilists. We’ve been working hard with some friends (merci Sara, Laurent et Raphael) to improve and translate both games. In a few days, you’ll see a release of Business Value Game v2.0 in English and French!
See you in Paris! A bientôt!
The Bois de Vincennes looks like a great place to get some running training done. Healthy body, healthy mind…
What Went Well
- Beating the traffic jams to arrive first at the conference center.
- The helpful staff at Elewijt Center going beyond the call of duty. E.g. the night watchman doubled as barman to offer us coffee and hot chocolate before the bar staff arrived.
- The organisers quickly self-organised and divided the work before and at the conference.
- Preparing the Business Value Game just-in-time.
- Organising the new version of the Business Value Game with Portia and Vera. We’ll publish this new version soon and explain the ideas in the closing retrospective more.
- Talking with participants between sessions and after the conference.
- Plenty of useful feedback about the conference and the sessions.
- The retrospective dinner in Mechelen with the organisers.
- The conference goodies organised by Vera and the traditional Belgian presenter gifts of Carolus beer and chocolate.
What Went Wrong
- We started the conference late because many participants were stuck in traffic. Throughout the day, sessions started late and/or overran so that there was less time for breaks, lunch and some sessions.
- Not enough time to talk to everybody during and (especially) after the conference.
Puzzles
- Why so few participants from The Netherlands?
- Many sessions got “Needs more time” as feedback. As these sessions were re-run, we’d expect that presenters would know how much material would fit. Or is this a case of “second-system syndrome“?
Lessons Re-Learnt
- Agile, communication, collaboration, feedback and trust work when you need to organise something like a conference.
- Interest in Agile methods remains high.
- Participants report that Agile methods have improved how they work. At the least, they make issues a lot more visible. The difficult bit is tackling those issues, especially when they touch upon “sacred cows” like how the company is organised, how people are rewarded, how to collaborate over departments, local goals…
Do you want to play?
Portia, Vera and I have published a new version of the Agile Coach website. There you’ll find coaching tools we use like games, tutorials and presentations. Topics range from introductions to Agile (the XP Game, the Business Value Game, XP Loops, First Five Steps to Become Really Agile), Theory of Constraints, Real Options, Toyota Way, Interviewing techniques to Agile Fairytales.
 More materials and translations will be added. All of these games are licensed “Creative Commons“, so that you can use and reuse them. If you want to help translate or improve the games, let us know.
We run retrospectives after each session so that we can improve. You can read the results of the retrospectives on the Past Events page. This transparency allows you to verify if we really take the feedback into account.
Come and play at XP Days
If you want to play the “Business Value Game” or “Mirror, Mirror on the Wall… Why Me?” come and see us at the Mini XP Day Benelux in Mechelen, Belgium (May 11th) or XP Days France in Paris, France (May 25-26th). Or invite us to come and play in your company or usergroup. Or better yet, download the games and play them yourself.
Back from SPA 2009.
What I liked
- Running the conference as a non-residential conference in the heart of London. Staying in a hotel literally around the corner. Morning running along the Thames.
- Interactive sessions like “Pitching Agile” and “Pairing: Beyond Programming” which challenge us to put our ideas to the test. Both sessions gave good opportunities to work in teams and reflect on what we value. And, of course, lots of Post-its were used to brainstorm, plan and explain 🙂
- Meeting old and new acquaintances inside and outside of the conference.
- Running the Business Value Game including a workshop with Vera and Portia. The game was designed to help our customers think about how they prioritise the project. The game doesn’t give answers, it raises questions. More about the workshop and its results later.
- Preparing and running a tryout of “The First Five Steps to Become Really agile“. A big thank you for the 7 intrepid players who gave us plenty of feedback to improve the session.
- The conference closing with concrete actions to follow up on the conference. I’ll have to write about cost and value estimation and about incremental funding and real options.
To make it perfect, I would
- Like to have a bit more room in the sessions and during lunches and breaks. The size of the venue was ok for the number of participants, but only just.
- Put some shorter sessions into the program. Two sessions a day (+ a keynote or BoF) doesn’t give much variety.
- Let presenters and organisers work together to improve their proposals collaboratively, like we do it for XP Days Benelux. The quality of the sessions and proposals improve a lot, even those from experienced presenters.
- Give session (and BoF?) presenters some time to pitch their session to help us to select the session with the most (business) value.
- Improve the Business Value Game presentation, so that the game is clearer from the start.
- Ask more concrete questions, set more detailed goals for the follow up workshop.
Vera, Portia, Laurent and I will improve the Business Value Game with the feedback from the participants. Next games: Mini XP Day Benelux (in English) XP Days France (in French).
  
 What went well?
- Present a session in French with Portia.
- Running and walking in the Jardin Botanique, along the lake and in the old town.
- Drawing, cutting, making placards with bits of string and paper to prepare the “presentation” and games the night before the conference.
- Great organisation by the Swiss team.
- Dominic Williams offers us the red or the blue pill, weaving philosphy and methodology together. Vive le développement hédoniste!
- Doing an instant retro at the end of the session to take participants’ feedback into account. Not just talking about Agile Values, but applying them.
- A great night out at “Les oubliettes” in restaurant “Les armuriers” with raclette, cheese fondue, cool white wine and great conversations ranging from “the relationship between Plato and class-based object oriented languages” to “the (lack of) style of conference goodies bags”.
- Meeting old and new acquaintances from Belgium, France and Switzerland.
What went wrong?
- We didn’t do a full tryout of the session before the conference, so we weren’t sure about the timing. We removed some explanations because we were afraid of going over our 60 min timebox. In the end the session went faster than expected. We could have taken the time to explain each item more.
- The session was a bit crowded because more participants than expected came to our session. Most of the games scaled well, though.
- We rushed the start of the session and didn’t do a proper introduction, which left many people wondering “who are they? Where do they come from?” Answer: Portia and Pascal from London and Brussels.
Puzzles
- What is the state of agility in Switzerland? We know some companies (like Hortis) have been applying it for some time. Most participants seemed to be new to agile.
Learned
- Tryout! Tryout! Tryout a new session!
- Philosophy can be fun and useful.
- The Erlang session brought back lots of student memories: CSP, Lisp, Prolog, FP,….
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