Last year just before Agile2008 I wrote a series of posts about my the sessions I planned to attend. Last year was used to help coordinate a diverse group of IBMers. This year the audience is smaller: me.
Monday Morning
9:00–11:00: will likely be open jam time for me. Come find me there and let’s talk.
11:00–12:30
Kanban adoption at Software Engineering Professionals (SEP) Chris Shinkle (45 minutes) – “In 2004, SEP tried adopting Agile practices. However, Agile failed to have the desired lasting impact across the entire organization. Things changed in 2007, when SEP implemented Kanban for the first time.”
The Agile Playground Tobias Mayer (90 minutes) – “Agility in Action… This session will introduce five interactive games that a facilitator can add to their toolkit for team and management training. The games all illustrate the principles and dynamics that support Agility. The rationale for this session is that people learn best by embodying the learning, rather than just receiving knowledge at a head level. All participants will be immersed in the games; there are no observers. At the end of the session the participants will have a set of games they can introduce into their own organization to enhance their own Agile adoption process.” From my own recent experience: Learning: the Best Approaches for Your Brain, I can say that games are a very useful way to integrate knowledge.
Using the Agile Testing Quadrants to Plan Your Testing Efforts Janet Gregory (90 minutes) – “Different testing approaches are needed because quality has many aspects besides functional requirements, such as making sure the code is reliable and secure. How do you know you’ve done the kinds of testing and quality processes are necessary for your product, especially on an agile project?”
My choice: Tobias “Agile Playground” Caveat: Tobias said he wants at least 16–24 for this workshop, so please don’t overwhelm him based on my recommendation.
Monday Afternoon
14:00–15:30
Help! Already too many amazing options. First a bunch of experience reports:
Enterprise Agile Transformation: The Two Year Wall Chuck Maples; Weaponized Scrum Michael Marchi; Accidental Adoption – The Story of Scrum at Amazon.com Alan Atlas; The Amazing Team Race – A Team-Based Agile Adoption Gabino Roche, Jr., Belkis Vasquez; The Covert Agilist Ken Howard; Descending from the Architect’s Ivory Tower Andrew Rendell. I’m interested in all of these, but they have some stiff competition:
In the end, it’s coming down to three options:
When it just *has* to work: Agile Development in Safety-Critical Environments Brian Shoemaker, Nancy Van Schooenderwoert
What Does an Agile Coach Do? Liz Sedley, Rachel Davies – They’ve just written the book on the subject.
Creating Agile Simulations and Games for Coaches and Consultants Elisabeth Hendrickson, Chris Sims (3 hours). This one is on the Manifesting Stage, for which I was a reviewer, and I championed the presentation. I love the idea of learning how to create games. I’m really hoping that Elisabeth and Chris distill their knowledge into an InfoQ article.
My choice: I’m torn between Rachel and Liz—What Does an Agile Coach Do? I’ve got to work on this a bit myself and Creating Agile Simulations and Games.
16:00–17:30 I may be meeting with Linda in this time slot, so I will play this one by ear.
Team Start-up: one of the first Agile Adoption activities Lyssa Adkins (90 minutes): “Starting up an Agile team is one of the first things you might be asked to do when a company wants to “go Agile.” What do you need to know before starting up a team? In the start-up, how much do teams need to know about Agile before they “go”? What do they need to know about each other…what the project is all about…who they will become as a team? These and other questions are answered as we walk through good ways to start-up Agile teams.”
Giving and receiving effective feedback Elizabeth Keogh (45 minutes) – “Find out why we give personal feedback, how to provide effective feedback, what makes feedback ineffective and how to deal with poorly phrased feedback. Learning what makes feedback effective helps you to seek your own feedback and improve, whilst being able to support the people around you.”—echoes of “Giving an Taking Design Criticism with Rebecca Wirfs-Brock”
10 Temptations of an Agile Coach (new or experienced) Stevie Borne (45 minutes): “Regardless of your coaching experience, there are a wide variety of temptations you can fall into that affect the quality of your coaching”
Effective code reviews in agile teams Wojciech Seliga, Slawomir Ginter – I was tempted by this one, but as I read the description it feels a bit like a vendor talk. “The session includes a demo on how Atlassian Crucible integrated with leading IDEs via Atlassian IDE Connector facilitates the whole process” Not interested. To be clear I like Atlassian and their tools, but it feels like the talk has less value without their tools $$$. See the exchange in the comments below.
My Choice: Team Start-up: one of the first Agile Adoption activities—Lyssa Adkins
New to Agile Coaching? Trying to get your head wrapped around how to help people without any official authority? Have a tough coaching problem you’re not sure how to handle? Not a coach – but you need some Agile Advice – come ask a question.
There have been many questions on twitter about how the review process worked and why we didn’t accept your brilliant proposal (Roger Brown and I are one for two in our own quest this year). This little item is being written largely from memory and undoubtedly I will mis-remember a few things.
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