Grigori Melnik: Thoughts on Agile Software Engineering and Beyond : Agile2008

Where to find useful stuff from the Agile conference?

gmelnik — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 07:31:55 GMT

Agile conference traditionally publishes proceedings (that’s where you find all research papers and experience reports).

Attendees also receive a CD or a memory stick with tutorial materials (decks, handouts, demos etc.).

Several main stage talks are available as webcasts.

What about workshops? A workshop is really an opportunity for attendees to learn more from each other as opposed to from a lecturer/facilitator/presenter. Thus, typically, there is not much material produced ahead of time, when the proceedings and conference cds are being assembled. However, a good wealth of knowledge has been captured in workshop summaries that we encouraged workshop facilitators to publish on the conference public wiki after the conference: http://agile2008toronto.pbwiki.com/Agile2008+Sessions

Take a look!

Agile2008 selected sessions online

gmelnik — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 05:26:00 GMT

You wish you could have made it to Agile2008 in Toronto 2 weeks ago? A small number of sessions is now available online.

18 sessions have been recorded, 3 of which are already made available:

− Natural Laws of Software Development - Deriving Agile Practices by Ron Jeffries, Chet Hendrickson

− "We suck less!" Isn't mediocrity great? by David Douglas, Robin Dymond

− New Car Development in Toyota by Kenji Hiranbe

Another 15 will be gradually published at http://www.infoq.com/agile2008/:

− Future Directions for Agile by David Anderson

− 10 ways to screw up with Scrum and XP by Henrik Kniberg

− Agile and Beyond - The power of aspirational teams! by Tim Mackinnon

− Agile in Practice: What is ACTUALLY Going On Out There by Scott Ambler

− Prioritizing Your Product Backlog by Mike Cohn

− Manager's Introduction to Test-Driven Development by Dave Nicolette, Karl Scotland

− When Working Software Is Not Enough: A Story of Project Failure by Mitch Lacey

− Extremely Short Iterations as a Catalyst for Effective Prioritization of Work by Mishkin Berteig

− Fostering Software Craftsmanship in a Corporate Setting by Scott Dillman

− Measuring Agile in the Enterprise: 5 Success Factors for Large-Scale Agile Adoption by Michael Mah

− Colossal, Scattered, and Chaotic (Planning with a Large Distributed Team by Wes Williams, Mike Stout

− Now that the team's head is in the game, how do you get their heart in? by Jim McCarthy

− Technical lessons learned turning the agile dials to eleven! by Craig Smith, Paul King

− Introduction to Lean Software Development by Alan Shalloway

− Fully Distributed Scrum: The Secret Sauce for Hyperproductive Outsourced Development Teams by Jeff Sutherland

In addition, Alan Cooper’s "The Wisdom of Experience" keynote is available as a slide deck with speaker’s notes at http://www.cooper.com/journal/agile2008/

Note, InfoQ also hosts videos of several excellent sessions from the previous Agile2007 conference, including:

− The Role of Leadership in Software Development by Mary Poppendieck

− Succeeding With Agile: A Guide To Transitioning by Mike Cohn

− Agile in the Waterfall Enterprise by Michele Sliger

− The Agile Enterprise: Real World Experience in Creating Agile Companies by Jeff Sutherland

All experience reports and research papers will be available online via IEEEExplore. Search for 'Agile' under 'Conference Proceedings'.

Upcoming conferences - where I'll be (May - Oct 2008)

gmelnik — Sat, 31 May 2008 17:45:00 GMT

Tech-Ed 2008 Developers, June 2-6, Orlando, FL. I’ll be giving a talk on the Enterprise Library (DVP02-TLC). I’ll be also hanging out in the exhibition areas (mainly, Process & Project Management (DVP- VSTS 2008)).
CAST 2008 , July 14-17, Toronto, ON. I look forward to good interaction with testing experts and thought leaders from around the world.
Microsoft Product Fair, July 22-23, Redmond, WA.
TechReady7, July 28-Aug 1, Seattle, WA. I’ll do a couple of talks on the Enterprise Library and agility.
Agile 2008, Aug 4-8, Toronto, ON – the major world conference on agile software engineering. Mary Poppendieck and I are program-charing the conference.
STARWest 2008, Sep 29- Oct 3, Anaheim, CA. Jon Bach and I will give a talk on Acceptable Acceptance Testing, telling the tale of our team producing the guide on acceptance testing and dogfooding our own recommendations.
PNSQC2008, Oct 13-15, Portland, OR. We have a paper "Acceptance Testing: a love story in two acts". No Shakesperian-level drama, but some exciting stuff for sure.
PDC 2008, Oct 26-30, Los Angeles, CA. Together with Mary Poppendieck and other colleagues from p&p, we’ll be presenting the Agile Perspectives pre-conference event.

If you are planning on attending any of these conferences, please come by and say hello. I would love to hear your stories of using or reasons for not using the Enterprise Library, Unity, other p&p assets. I would also be glad to chat with you about our upcoming guidance on Acceptance Test Engineering and hear your experiences, lessons learnt, and suggestions.

Also, I talk to user groups regularly. If you are from the city I am visiting (or nearby) and would like me to give a talk to your user group (agile, .NET, software testing), feel free to ping me.

Agile 2008 Conference - new model, many changes - part 1

gmelnik — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 11:21:00 GMT

Catching up on blogging about Agile 2008 Conference, for which I am a Program Chair. Luckily, I am part of an amazing squad of 40+ enthusiasts and their teams, led by the fearless trio: Rachel Davies (who is the General Chair), Mary Poppendieck (who shares Program Chair’s responsibilities) and yours truly.

This year we are experimenting with a new model based on a music festival metaphor. I’ll tell you how we are adopting it in a minute. But firstly let me explain why we needed a change. After all, the conference has been very successful in the past (selling off several months in advance for the past three years). So, why would we change a model that works? Well, over the years due to increasing popularity of agile methods, we rapidly grew from several hundred attendees to over a thousand and realized that the current model cannot scale any further. Last year in Washington, DC, with several dozens of simultaneous sessions in various places, it was hard not only to find the room but to simply navigate the program and decide where to go. We believe the new model will address these issues, allow the conference to grow (we expect 1,600 delegates) and even make it more community-driven.

So, I’ve mentioned the music festival metaphor earlier. What festivals do I have in mind? Blue Skies Festival in Clarendon, Ontario, Canada is one. It grew up from a small beginning and now attracts thousands of people. Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts in the UK is another example with tens of thousands of performers and organizers entertaining hundreds of thousands of attendees (I believe it is the biggest greenfield music festival in the world!) Both started back in 1970s and still running and selling off annually. Only about one third of those who would like to come actually get tickets. How did these festivals manage to grow so big and yet remain so successful for such a long time?

It occurred to us it’s the multiple stage metaphor with individual producers and production crews focusing on their own stage (e.g. Acoustic Tent, Dance Village, JazzWorld etc.) that helps these events grow. Importantly, these producers have a high degree of autonomy (in recruiting and selecting performers, scheduling appearances etc.)

Just like those festivals, the stages within our conference program are designed and organized by experts (acting as stage producers) who are truly passionate about their particular areas. Each stage will have a feel of a smaller, focused mini-conference whilst providing the conference attendee with a wide choice of stages to choose from:

§ Agile and Organizational Culture

§ Breaking Acts

§ Chansons Françaises

§ Committing to Quality

§ Customers and Business Value

§ Designing, Testing, and Thinking with Examples

§ Developer Jam

§ Distributed Agile

§ Leadership and Teams

§ Learning and Education

§ Live Aid

§ Main Stage

§ Open Jam

§ Questioning Agile

§ Research

§ Tools for Agility

§ User Experience

You can find more info on stages here.

This makes a lot of sense. In the past, the conference was organized around the session types (tutorials, workshops, experience reports etc.). Individual committees were formed to review and select sessions for the program. Instead of organizing the conference around the session types we are organizing it around the topics (the content types), which is more aligned with the agile principles. Focus on the value delivered to the customer. Focus on substance in the first place, not form. After all, our customers (attendees) care less about the session type and more about the content presented and discussed. We want to have a good and broad coverage of topics and also avoid redundancy. The producers are in a better position to balance the program of their stage.

(To be continued...)