|
I spent last week at the Agile 2010 conference in
Orlando. Even after 7 years of attending (and
assisting on the program committee), this series of
conferences still exhilarates and excites me.
In my eyes, this conference epitomizes the Agile
community and the state of the software industry. I'd
like to share with you five of my observations, in no
particular order.
1. The Whole Value Chain: Agile is not just about
building software, it requires an enterprise view
into the organization's value chain.
It took the software industry about a decade to
realize that doing Agile alone meant sub-optimizing
the value chain. If delivery teams pour out software
at 20 times the pace Ops can take it, you can expect
trouble. Same impedance mismatch with sales and
marketing, etc.
The problem of scaling Agile has mostly been
solved, but in some cases it just doesn't work so
well. And so, people have been experimenting with
Lean methods as another mechanism and philosophy for
flow control and continuous improvement. There seems
to be agreement that Lean is a whole-organization
super-set of Agile.
However, some have promoted Kanban (which is merely
a Lean tool) to a methodology unto itself. And since
Kanban is much easier than Agile, and doesn't force
you to change much if you truly don't want to, it's
become rather popular. But at least, people are
actively trying to even out, and increase, the flow
of value. That's very promising.
2. Greatness: in human interactions and technical
craftsmanship.
In the rush to adopt Agile, the industry has put
great emphasis on project management, working with
the customer, and having proper teams. But Agile's
reputation for “faster and cheaper”, due among other
things to its “good enough for the customer and the
business” principle, made us lose something.
Many people — not just the software craftsmanship
advocates — have been asking, “What happened to
greatness? to producing astounding results? to
aspiring to truly amazing software?”
This is not just about XP, whose methods remain the
least used and understood among the whole set of
Agile practices. The conference has had fewer
technical sessions, to the extent that a few people
are starting an additional programmer-focused conference for
next year: XP Universe 2011.
3. Everybody's Doin' It (and Doin' It Badly): Agile
requires true change, and that's far more than good
intents and a few classes.
One large company sent 15 people to the conference.
Another, 19. Another, 26. This is serious investment.
And without exception, the self-adopters I talked
with were saying that the beginning is rocky and only
now they are realizing how big the change is. But at
least they flock to the conference to learn what they
are up against. In other conversations, thought
leaders in the community seem to be in violent
agreement that as an industry, we do Agile poorly
(the actual verb they use is not fit to print :-))
4. Opportunities In Crisis: Agile is all about
resilience and finding new ways to quickly adapt.
Several sessions I attended (and one workshop I
co-led) really opened my eyes to the resilience of
people, teams and organizations in adverse conditions.
Apparently there are quite a few stories of teams,
either dysfunctional or merely in a challenging
situation, who rose to the occasion and delivered the
goods. What helped them? Facilitation, leadership,
creativity, the will to succeed; not conventional
management.
And what better example than this conference
itself, which relocated to Orlando within a couple of
weeks after its Nashville venue was flooded? Not a
simple matter to find a new home for 1400+ people and
220+ sessions for August.
5. We're A Friendly Bunch: The Agile community has
and continues to draw incredible people together from
around the world.
First-time attendees are always amazed, “Are people
always so friendly and open at this conference?”
They absolutely are. I consider myself a long-time
member of the Agile community (since ~2001) and it's
somewhat of a virtual home to me.
Hundreds of people attend just to connect and
reconnect. Every year, at least one person who didn't
get free registration as a speaker still opts to fly
in just to mingle with people at the bar. And while
this goes on in the flesh, hundreds of attendees
converse virtually on Twitter.
And so, I'm excited to see what the next decade will
bring us! What about you?
Perhaps you'll join us next year for the 2011 Agile
Conference in Salt Lake City, Utah. We'll be
celebrating the tenth anniversary of the Agile
Manifesto and the birthplace of the Agile movement.
Copyright © 2010, 3P Vantage, Inc. All rights reserved.
|