Agile 2008 Experience Report

Every now and then, it is a good idea to pull your head out of the sand from the daily grind to get a fresh perspective. I have been officially coaching teams using Agility for several years and have attended a few small conferences, but never before had I attended what is considered the premier Agile conference – this year titled “Agile 2008.” This was my year to attend.

As I understand it, the conference began its current incarnation in 2005. Agile 2008 brought together, for the first time, the worlds of Scrum and Extreme Programming (XP) – where previously they held separate conferences. Considering the obvious points of intersection and potential cross-learning opportunities between the two methodologies, combining them was a wise and forward-thinking decision.

The Agile 2008 conference, held in Toronto, was an opportunity for “Agilists” from around the world over to convene, collaborate, hone their agile skills and have a little fun. Just peeking through the conference guide, I was inspired to see the vast number of lectures available to participants throughout the week. The conference was held at the Toronto Sheraton, a comparatively large venue for this type of event, and the extra space was needed to accommodate the more than 1,200 attendees.

The conference was organized into sections called stages, which gave attendees the ability to focus on specific aspects of the Agile world. There was a technical track, a management track, various experience reports, and my favorite, “Questioning Agility.” In addition to the sessions, there were keynote speakers and social events promoting collaboration and networking among participants. The conference seemingly offered something for everyone, whether you were a newcomer to Agile or if you had been practicing it for quite some time.

Initially, my strategy was to focus on topics with which I was unfamiliar and curious to know more about. That meant I would spend a good deal of time learning more about “Lean” and testing strategies and Agile in the enterprise.

The first event of the conference represented a special moment for those of us who attended from Blue Collar Objects. It was the first keynote address of the conference and it featured James Surowiecki, author of The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations.

That was special to us because, as you know, “wisdom of crowds” is the principle guiding virtually every important decision we make within the company. The wisdom of crowds theory asserts that the best ideas comes from a diversity of thought – an independent-thinking group of individuals among whom an aggregation of collective wisdom occurs.

When those elements coalesce, a wise crowd can outperform the wisdom of a select few of experts on a topic. Mr. Surowiecki's presentation of his book was phenomenal in my estimation. It was a powerful reminder of the principles of the theory and how well it fits with the ideals and practices of agility Blue Collar Objects seeks to employ.

We see the Wisdom of Crowds approach at work throughout the Agile world, whether it is using planning poker when doing team estimations, or stressing interaction between individuals. Surowiecki illustrated the clear synergy between those two worlds, and for he rest of the conference, instructors and attendees alike were quoting the book to draw parallels. Having been sufficiently motivated by the Wisdom of the Crowds, we began the first session.

There were too many sessions for me to recount significant highlights of each. However, I will share some insights from the sessions that had the greatest impact on me. It turns out there were a few patterns to the sessions I attended, which included networking with other practitioners, renewing the fundamentals of agility, learning new techniques and looking outside your domain.

The next few sections explore those patterns.

Networking with other Practitioners

This is one of the most valuable aspects of attending conferences. One of the many interesting exchanges I had occurred after a session called “For Agile Leaders - Exploring the Hard Bits” by Bob Galen. The session was set up in such a way that the attendees were grouped in teams to discuss the challenges we face transitioning to Agile and sharing potential remedies to those solutions.

I found this session to be quite enlightening in that it allowed people to talk and work through issues they were facing by sharing their problems and potential solutions to them. My group had such a good conversation around our issues that we ended up going past the end of the session. An hour later there were just three of us who remained. One man was from a Swedish company, the other was a guy from a California-based IT shop who shared amazing stories of his company’s transitions to Agility in their seemingly large enterprises.

We all had opportunities to share how our operations worked, and how techniques we have used on our projects could help each other. There were many instances of this mind-sharing during lunch, at some of the many icebreaker events, or even while checking email at the hotel’s cyber cafe. That type of networking and sharing is invaluable.

Renewing the Fundamentals of Agility

What better way to understand the fundamental beliefs of a process than to ask “Why?” I was extremely impressed that there was an entire stage in the conference dedicated to questioning Agility, named as such.

Through a few sessions, I was able to remind myself that Agility really goes back to the Manifesto, where those four short lines shaped what true Agility is all about.

One of my favorite sessions fell into this category of questioning Agility. Besides, how could I resist something with a title of, “Why So Little Questioning? Skeptical Humanist Seeks Same for Discrete Afternoon Encounters.” Catchy title aside, this was a very substantive session that started with exploring what a skeptic is and how we should all be skeptics when approaching things in our daily lives – not to be constant contrarians – but to remind ourselves what it is that we are trying to achieve with a certain technique, methodology, doctrine or process.

During this session we explored Agility by listing some of the techniques, slogans, words and procedures that are typically associated with Agility by using an exercise called the Tetrad, pioneered by the author Marshall McLuhan? .

Using the Tetrad we looked at how the techniques we listed have Reversed, Obsolesced, Retrieved or Enhanced Agility. The results from the group were an interesting exploration on the effects of these Agility techniques as expressed by the group in the session. It was also, again, a reminder of what we really are trying to achieve by doing things like Test Driven Development, Daily Stand-ups and the like in an effort to prevent these techniques from becoming dogma.

Learning a New Technique

Recently, I have been doing a lot of work coaching large enterprises to use Agile techniques in addition to individual projects. The conventional wisdom is that Agile at the enterprise level uses Lean software development techniques. Lean Software Development, pioneered by people like Mary Poppendieck, was translated from the Lean Manufacturing processes used by Toyota. There are seven principles of Lean which are Eliminate Waste, Amplify learning, Decide as Late as Possible, Deliver as Fast as possible, Empower the Team, Build Integrity In and Optimize the Whole.

In addition to the principles, Lean introduces a technique called Value Stream Mapping that seeks to map out processes or value streams for an enterprise in an effort to identify the waste in those value streams and consequently to remove or reduce that waste. I attended Alan Shalloway's session on Value Stream mapping. Alan did a great job of making the value stream exercise simple by allowing participants to identify a value stream from their project or company and work in teams to map the value stream. Eliminating Waste to focus on highest business value is something critical to Agility since its premise is that a team will regularly deliver the most important features according to a prioritized list. The theory is that waste, defined at least in one way, is that which is not used often or always used.

Looking Outside Your Domain

Throughout the week, there was constant mention of books and techniques that seemingly had nothing to do with Agility or software for that matter. The keynote address on The Wisdom of Crowds was just one example. After going to these conferences, I always find that my list of books to read increases. This year, my book list increased to include “Beginner's Mind” and “PeopleMaking” by Virginia Satir. “Beginner's Mind” is a Buddhist technique to approach all situations with a blank slate to help appreciate new ideas. Satir developed a model to address how change impacts organizations.

One of the things I like to do after attending a long conference such as this is to pose three questions that help crystallize important takeaways from the experience. Here are my answers to those questions below.

What did we learn that we would use?

• Value Stream Mapping
• Adding Context and Personas to User Stories
• Spending time grooming the backlog

What did we learn that we would stop using?

• Excuses for not building in more quality. One of the more moving moments of the conference was listening to "Uncle" Bob Martin talk about a topic very dear to him – test driven development. If you have never seen Bob talk, it’s an entertaining experience whether you’re a software geek or not. Bob offered that if he was to add a fifth thing to the Agile Manifesto, it would be "Craftsmanship over Crap." He also had a moving story that went along with it that I will not try to reproduce for fear of losing its original impact. The moral of the story, however, was that as practitioners, we must do better and not offer excuses to shirk our responsibility for providing quality work, all the time.

What do we now call into question?

• Anything that causes Agile not to be a lightweight process

We often forget about the first line in the Agile Manifesto, we are always seeking better ways to deliver software. Going to conferences, lectures, reading books is one way to do personal improvement. This being my first trip to the conference was a wonderful experience to learn more about how Agility is being practiced around the world. It is also a good reminder of some of the practices we often forget.

Agile 2008 proved to be an amazing gathering of smart, diverse people from around the world to figure out how we build software better and in doing so potentially make the world better. To those who think that last line is a flourish in words, ask yourselves what the world would look like without Microsoft.

Rejuvenation is a word that comes to mind when I reflect on those four days… I felt rejuvenated to be reminded that Agility is still a great way to build software.

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