At Agile 2011, I spent a lot of my time in the OpenJam running sessions on StrategicPlay® with Lego® so that people would have a chance to experience what I see as a strikingly powerful technology.

What follows are some of the models and deep insights that were developed about Agile and how it is experienced at companies. Even though I know a fair bit about adopting Agile, I still find I learn a lot hearing these stories.

Scrum Alliance Leadership

See related post Scrum Alliance Leadership – Models for Success

There will be a workshop at Agile 2011 on building ideas for improving thought leadership in the Scrum Alliance.

Workshop Logistics

Thursday 1:30 to 4:00pm in the Open Jam at Agile 2011.

We are very excited to have the managing director for the Scrum Alliance, Carol McEwan, participating in this activity.

Workshop Purpose

The purpose is to clarify acceptance tests and generate  ideas for how the Scrum Alliance can work effectively to provide thought leadership around Scrum.

We will use StrategicPlay® with Lego® to share points of view and build a shared vision of ways the Scrum Alliance can demonstrate leadership.

This vision will be shared with the wider community for feedback and action.

Ask not what your SA can do for you, but what you can do for your SA.

Workshop Results

It was decided that it would take to long to publish this via the Scrum Alliance website, so the results are posted here (on Agilitrix website) as an interim step.

1. Acceptance Tests
2. Models for Success
3. Concrete Actions (& Participants)

Here is a screencast of my presentation on Agile – the Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

This is your chance to hear about the Ugly harsh realities, the Bad news and the Good opportunities for Agile. Along with a menagerie of problems, the vast majority of so-called “Agile Coaches” are unconsciously incompetent with respect to adopting and transitioning to Agile and a wider toolkit is called for in many situations. But there’s hope for us all: we can stop the madness by changing our outlook and learn the tools at hand to turn this industry around.

If you have not already done so, I suggest you first watch How to Make Your Culture Work with Agile – Screencast since it is the prequel.

This screencast is recorded in HD so you may want to use full screen and 720p resolution to see all the slides.

I just realized now – a month after the conference – what it was that made Play4Agile a special, magical conference for me. Of course it’s the people, but there is more to it than that.

I am writing this post in hopes of inspiring others to organize similar amazing events.

Venue

Located in Germany, seminar center Rückersbach provided a small-scale rural setting with no distractions. Even though it was cloudy the whole weekend it was good to get natural light through the many windows. Looking out onto nature helps too.

Small is Beautiful

With 50 to 60 people, it is really easy to meet everyone at least once, and spend time with people you feel affinity with. Make new friends.

Here is the closing circle where we passed the ball of string along with appreciations. This is possible with such a small group. (Facilitation note: bring a second ball of string).

Longer is better

I have been to one day events, and they do not compare in terms of the depth of connection with others. And building our social networks is what helps us learn. Play4Agile was almost 3 full days. And this made a big difference.

Eat Together

One very nice aspect of this conference was that we all ate together at every meal. Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner. This gave a chance for informal conversation and to bond with one another.

Drink Together

Evenings at the bar provide a great way to connect in a more relaxed setting. I also got to play werewolf for the first time. 20 people played Marshmallow Challenge for the first time.

Open Space Format

The best peer-conference meeting format going. Period.

There is always room for improvement

So, what would I change to make the event even better?

1. Coffee breaks. Create session slots in the schedule (on the wall) that respect coffee breaks (like space for lunch). Why? Open Space was invented on the concept that coffee breaks are the best part of the conference.
2. Session duration. Create slots of varying size. I know that in theory we can make longer sessions, but in practice not a single person did. And several sessions I attended would have benefited from more time. This would be an experiment, so who knows if it will work.
3. People missing beginning/end. One challenge was that some people missed the Friday opening and others missed all or part of Monday. One idea would be to give people a little travel time on the first and last day – so that they are both (almost) full days.

Caveat: If you appear in a photo and would like to be removed, just let me know.

Arlo Belshee and Jim Shore had an interesting pair presentation on titled “Single Piece Flow in Kanban” at LSSC10. A more accurate (although inflammatory) name for the talk is “Enough Kanban! Use XP for Single-piece flow”. It is worth mentioning that the context of the discussion is new product development.  Not sure about team size – seemed manageable. So this may be suitable for this context.

The basic arguement is that we should consider the flow of customer value. This is real flow. Moving Kanban cards representing tasks may be motion and not actual flow of value. The solution is not something new but something we already know: eXtremeProgramming (XP).

One challenge that Taiichi Ohno encountered decades ago when introducing Single Piece Flow at Toyota is that there is often resistance from specialists. They are more comfortable just knowing one piece of equipment.

The same challenge exists today when we ask developers, testers and domain experts to work together to deliver value. If your environment can work this way (and some can’t very easily) there can be a big cycle time and business value win.

What’s wrong with some Kanban implementations? Some have too many hand-offs and WIP due to queues. So, if you are using Kanban, this is something to watch out for.

Arlo and Jim describe the software work-cell as a collocated, cross-functional team that swarm work to minimize WIP and handoffs.

Gone is the release plan and the product backlog (see diagram). Instead a vision (which was a mindmap) drives the just-in-time generation of MMF (minimum marketable features) that are queued in the “on-deck” area. MMF is generalized to mean anything of business value. It could be a product feature. It could be a demo for a tradeshow.

For in-progress work, the notion of a Detective’s Blackboard was introduced as a dynamic unstructured area where tasks and task generators could be added and removed organically depending on the nature of the MMF. The idea is that tasks will grow as work gets started and then start to collapse as progress is made and new tasks stop appearing. (Maybe around when the MMF is ~2/3 complete.) In the example provided, the team was large enough to support 2 MMFs. The video and slides are available on InfoQ.

What looks like an earlier version of this is on Jim’s blog. See also Arlo’s video on Naked Planning. A video with session slides + Audio are on Jim’s blog.

Very cool stuff.

On Saturday, the Toronto Agile Software Development Community had it’s inaugural Open Space event called Agile Open Toronto. It went really well. Lot’s of positive feedback and of course tips for improving next time. Sessions will be posted by conveners here (posts are starting to appear).

The purpose of this post is to share how the event was run for attendees and other Open Space enthusiasts.

Setting up the Space

As a not-for-profit, the City of Toronto provided us with a great space for free.  You can see us setting up below.

Empty Board

Rather than follow the suggested approach of an unstructured bulletin board, we elected to create a grid. Why? We find techies get really frustrated and will sort sessions by time anyway. Note that some of the session slots are marked reserved and only get opened up once there are enough sessions to run all day.

Lawrence Welcomes Everyone

Long-time host of XPToronto/Agile meetings opened the space.

Michael and Gino Pair Facilitate

We pair program, we pair test, we pair coach. We really like working together since it provides variety for listeners and it’s easier to remember everything between the two of us. As you can see, we are walking in a circle to set the tone and explain how open space works.

The Initial Rush

Once the call to action is given, there is a rush of motion and energy as people write session proposals.

The Board at the end of the day

Here’s what the board looked like at the end of the day. You can click on it to see a hi-res version and read the session titles.

Many thanks to all the volunteers: Edwin, Farooq, Tom, Bob, Micrea and others who arrived early and helped out. (If I forgot you, remind me and I’ll add your name)

I have been working with some other Agilists to organize a 1 day conference on Agile.

Phew! It’s a lot of work.

Anyway, we are making progress and have a web site up: http://www.torontoagilecommunity.org/

We are looking for volunteers, presenters and sponsors.  See the website for details.

Hurray!  Finally got my website up and running.  Still need to do some work with some sections and add images.