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Sessions are gushing in for XP Day Benelux 2005. There’s still a little time left to send in your session proposal.
We’re now organizing them on the session review site. Session reviews start in a few days.
Session reviews for XP Days Benelux are unlike most other conferences’ reviews, they’re more akin to an “Open space” process. The review process as we use it now, was first applied by Vera Peeters as Workshop Chair for XP 2005. It goes something like this:
- Session proposals are collected on a wiki. Session organizers get access to this site.
- Each session organizer is expected to review 3 sessions, distributing reviews in such a way that each session is reviewed by 3 reviewers. You are not allowed to review your own session.
- A first round of reviews is held
- Session organizers can update their proposals, based on the feedback they receive from their reviewers.
- A second round of reviews is held, after which the final session evaluation is given.
We apply ideas from Oscar Nierstrasz’ Identify the Champion pattern language (specifically the Make Champions Explicit pattern): a reviewer scores the proposal using the following categories:
- A: Good proposal. I will champion it.
- B: OK proposal, but I will not champion it.
- C: Weak proposal, though I will not fight strongly against it.
- D: Serious problems. I will argue to reject this proposal.
A set of acceptance criteria has been established beforehand. Session reviewers evaluate how well the session meets the criteria.
This process uses several agile components:
- All work is done in an “Open Workspace”, a wiki where reviewers and session organizers can exchange ideas and “overhear” each other’s conversations.
- The process is completely open: everyone sees what you write, you see what everyone writes. Organizers and reviewers can communicate (through the wiki or offline) about the sessions, to ask questions, clarify unclear elements…
- The review process is not confrontational, but cooperative: reviewer and organizer work together to come to the best possible session.
- The process is iterative: session organizers can improve their proposals based on the feedback of their reviewers and their new insights. There are two rounds of reviews, and there are plenty of opportunities for small, incremental improvements to the proposals as questions and reviews come in. Your session proposal doens’t have to be perfect first time, there’s room for improvement.
- There is a constant reflection (Hansei) and improvement (Kaizen) of the review process, by suggestions from participants and in a retrospective at the end of the process.
- Acceptance criteria are defined beforehand, a “customer” (here: the reviewer) determines if the criteria have been met sufficiently.
- Maybe not “agile” per se, but important for me: the process only uses “low-tech” technology: a wiki, email and a simple web form to submit proposals. Nothing too complex or restrictive, just enough structure to enable participants to collaborate effectively; not so much to stifle their creativity and communication.
Tomorrow is the deadline to send in a proposal for the XP Days Benelux 2005 conference on 17-18 November 2005 in Rotterdam.
As usual, lots of the session proposals came in today. And I expect even more tomorrow. Typical “Student Syndrome”. Most students start to study when exams are frighteningly close
I’m not immune: I haven’t sent in my proposals yet, I’ll do it tomorrow. There’s always tomorrow…
Luckily, we took this into account in our planning: session proposal deadline is July 11th. Session reviews start on July 15th. This gives us a bit of time to deal with the glut of proposals coming in.
How do you deal with Student Syndrome in your project?
Don’t forget to send in your session proposal for the XP Days Benelux 2005 conference on 17-18 November 2005 in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
The Call for Sessions closes on July 11th.
I’m just about ready to send in my session proposal. Are you?
You’ve been applying the Theory of Constraint’s 5 Focusing Steps and you’ve been able to increase throughput of your system/organisation. But you’re running out of ideas to get more throughput. What now?
Try the 6th Focusing Step: Change The System
Changing a system is hard. You’re up against years worth of accumulated rules, regulation, processes, tacit knowledge about “the way we do things ’round here”. Like Laurent says many of these rules have accumulated over the years. Maybe they were effective at the time, but they failed to adapt to a changing world and are now holding back the organisation.
And people don’t like change.
As that eminent business consultant Machiavelli noted: “He who wants to change the organisation will only get lukewarm support from those who stand to gain from the change. He will get fierce opposition from those who gain from the current situation“.
How can you make changes easier? Here are some tips that sometimes work for me:
- Involve those who will be affected by the change in shaping the change. Nothing worse than having a change foisted upon you.
- One thing at a time. If you change several things at once, the change becomes very complicated and it’s hard to tell what worked and what didn’t. If you perform regular, incremental changes, people get used to the rythm of change.
- Let people “taste before they swallow”. This is an expression by Virginia Satir (via Jerry Weinberg and Nynke Fokma). If you encounter a new idea, have a taste of it. If you don’t like it you can always spit it out. Only swallow it when you like the taste. Propose that people try the change for a set period, after which there will be an evaluation. The change is instituted if the evaluation is positive. Make sure that the evaluation is genuine and not a rubber-stamp process.
- Trust me, I know what I’m doing. This is a tricky one… When people are afraid of a change, a little show of confidence can pull them over the line. And now you’ve put yourself on the line…
I’m still (slowly) adding stuff to the Theory of Constraints series on my site.
There are 5 focusing steps:
Okay, that’s really 6 steps.
Is that the end of it? At the XP2005 session on the Theory of Constraints we discussed a further step when the “5 Focusing Steps” run out of steam.
More about Step 6 tomorrow.
And then I’ll write up the results of the Toyota Way session at XP2005
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