Thinking for a Change

Sep

First version of XP Days Benelux 2009 program online

XP Days Benelux 2009 program

The first version of the XP Days Benelux 2009 program has just been published. It looks great, with a good mix of subjects, formats and aimed at participants with different levels of experience.

Over the next few days we’ll make this program even stronger by adding a few more sessions. The only problem is that we still have more strong session proposals than available slots. More difficult choices ahead…

Sep

XP Days Benelux registration open

XP Days Benelux, 23-24 November in Mechelen, Belgium

It’s time to start planning for the fall and winter conference season. As an organiser, the 7th XP Days Benelux is top of my list.

We’re finalising what looks like a great program with several sessions I want to go to in each time slot. With five tracks covering all things agile, there should be ample choice for you and our conference personas too.

We can’t show you the program yet, but you can register for the conference. Who would register for a conference without knowing what’s on the program? Lots of people it seems, as registrations are coming in steadily.

Now, that’s T-R-U-S-T, one of the essential Agile Values.

Bram goes to every XP Days Benelux

Innovation and constraints

How did we come up with the idea of registering before announcing the program? By accident.

Participant: “Can I get a conference ticket now? I’ll be abroad the next few weeks and I want to be sure to get in.”
Organisers: “But, don’t you want to see the program first, before deciding?”
Participant: “No, I’ve been to last year’s conference. I trust you’ll have a great program this year too.”

There was nothing holding us back from selling tickets before announcing the program. We only had this self-imposed constraint: “participants want to see the program before deciding to participate”. It turns out that this isn’t a real constraint after all. Part of innovation is letting go of those self-imposed constraints. Another part is dealing with real constraints.

How many of those self-imposed constraints do you have in your work or your life? How many times have you said “I didn’t know we could do that!” ? How often do you ask yourself “What would happen if we tried this?”

That’s why I like organising XP Days Benelux: there are always people coming up with crazy ideas, trying something new and improving it. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. We always try to learn. We always try to question. We don’t always succeed, but at least we try.

Try this at home

Note how often you hear this:

That’ll never work!
They won’t let us do that!
That will never happen here!
Yes, but…
There’s no budget for that!
That’s just silly!
or any other Idea Killer

Now, take one of these instances and instead of shooting the idea down, start looking at the hidden self-imposed constraints:

It’ll never work? In what circumstances would it work?
They won’t let us do that? Why? Have we asked?
That will never happen here! Where would it work? What would it take to transform here into a place where it works?
Yes, but…? Yes, and…!
There’s no budget for that! What small part of this could we do for free? How much value could we create? Could we use that value to fund the next small step?
That’s just silly! Less silly than what we do today 🙂

It just takes a bit of courage. Try something, one small step. Collaborate with people who can help you. Get regular feedback to improve. Instead of “doing agile” (or worse, trying to get others to “do agile”), be agile.

You are an innovator. You are creative. It’s as simple as that.

Come to XP Days Benelux to see what crazy stuff we’ve cooked up this year. If some people get their way, it might involve dancing, martial arts, art and philantropy. Now, that’s just plain silly! Don’t say I didn’t warn you!

Persona created with Janina Köppel’s South Park Studio.

Sep

Scrum simulation based on the XP Game

Scrum Simulation

I met Michael Sahota at Agile 2009. Gino Marckx, fellow Toronto agilist, recommended I talked with him.

Michael has created a Scrum simulation based on the XP Game. I regularly get asked if there’s a Scrum equivalent of the XP Game. I’m sure there must be, but this is the first one that I know of that’s published. If you know of any other published, free games let me know.

What I like is:

One hand drawn overview of the whole process and game. Portia does something similar when she plays the XP Game: one poster with a post-it figure moving from step to step as the team progresses through the game. The poster remains in the team workspace as a handy reminder of the process.
Making the backlog visible with a story board.
Changes are republished with a Creative Commons license.

Agile Tour Toronto

I had more discussions with Toronto agilists Peter Yu and Syrous Delavari from Intelliware. Gino, Michael and the guys from Intelliware organise Agile Tour Toronto on October 20th. I won’t be able to attend. If you’re in the neighbourhood of Toronto around then, don’t miss this event. It’s sure to be fun and interesting.

Sep

Agile 2009: a retrospective

Agile 2009 roundup

I already wrote up the different sessions I attended:

Time to do a conference retrospective.

What Went Well

Chicago (at least the part I saw) is a pleasant mix of big city with plenty of green and lake
The Art Institute, Field Museum and Museum of Contemporary Art provided several hours of stunning and interesting exhibits. After some searching, I got to see Nighthawks up close
Mapping the Agile Enablement Battlefield by George Schlitz and Giora Morein gave me a new tool to think about agile enablement in large organisations
Several analysis sessions in the program shows that we’re interested in finding out out what value our projects can deliver
Useful leadership and facilitation tools from Steve “Doc” Smith and Chris Avery
Flirting tips from Ole Jepsen and Jenni Dow to connect better at work
Lots of games for innovation, push/pull, kanban
Meeting other participants in the sessions, over breakfast, lunch and dinner and going out for drinks
Story telling as a coaching, consulting and retrospective tool
Playing two parallel bottleneck games and seeing happy participants who’ve learned useful techniques while having fun
The facilities staff were very helpful and thorough helping us to rearrange the room for the bottleneck game. A nicely self-organising team in action.
The event organisers provided us with rapid feedback: the feedback forms were scanned and emailed to us only a few hours after each session.

What Went Wrong

We accepted too many players for the Business Value Game, which made it very difficult to come to consensus in each group and made for a noisy and messy session
The hurried banquet and too long closing keynote
Too many sessions, especially those about analysis, that consisted of only the presenter talking without any participant interaction or activity. I thought analysis was about listening, involving people and discovering what they value?
Not being able to meet everyone I’d like to talk with
Missed the PMI Agile meeting at the Thoughtworks office

Puzzles

When are we going to stop those blanket dismissals like “project managers are useless, they should all become scrum masters”, “PMI is non-agile”, “we don’t need analysts, they’ll only lead to lots of useless documentation and paralysis”, “lean is bad because it’s production”, “powerpoint presentations are bad”, “Scrum is evil”, “Kanban is stupid”. Let’s grow up a bit and realise that we’re all fighting against bad project management, bad analysis, bad presentations and unprofessional software development.
Are Portia and I typecast as “games makers and players”? We also submitted presentations, but the reviewers seemed to prefer “fun games” above “boring presentations”. Presentations don’t have to be boring. I had hoped Jared Spool would prove that, but he spoiled it by taking too much time. Come and see us present the “Toyota Way” presentation at Scandinavian Agile and XP Days Benelux
What is Agile and where is it going? At the conference we see lots of aspects of Agile in a very fragmented view. What is it that we all have in common? What makes us different from professional engineers?

Learnt

Less is more. The Bottleneck Game went very well because we limited the scope. There’s so much we could tell about the Theory of Constraints and its consequences. The Business Value Game flopped because we didn’t limit the number of participants and because there are too many elements in the game
The importance of (business) analysis becomes clearer, as the old techniques help us to discover and define value. Without it, there can be no value-driven work. I’ve been applying agile analysis for years, but it’s only recently that I’ve become consciously competent again and can teach it to others.
Shorter sessions are useful to get presenters to focus on one idea and present that clearly. And it allows me to apply “the law of two feet” more easily. I’m going to try to make some more focused games and simulations, so that I can explain one concept fully and let participants experience it, in a short session.

Aug

Scandinavian Agile 2009

Portia and I will present the “Toyota Way Management for sustained Agile and Lean” at the Scandinavian Agile conference in Helsinki, October 15-16