Karl Scotland has an interesting post over on the Agile Practitioners Forum. He describes how and why his team moved to a Kanban system.
Agile Estimates, Release Planning, Sprints, and Kanban
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Author Archives: Chris Sims
Engineering Managers Support Group – New and Improved!
The The Bay Area Engineering Managers Support Group is celebrating our six month anniversary. Things have been good, and they are about to get even better…
Joel on Software… Demos
Joel has a good post on doing software demos. High points include:
- Tell stories!
- ‘Accidentally’ bump into all the nice little “fit and finish” features of your product
If you really want to get serious about doing a great sales demo, check out Peter Cohan.
My First Week at Geekaplex: Integrating a New Hire
My friend Peter started working at EvilEmpireSoft on the same Monday that I started at Geekaplex. That Friday, over beers, he told me that he had spent most of his first week waiting for his laptop to show up. When it finally showed up, it had an outdated version of the development environment installed which couldn’t compile the code he was supposed to be working on. On top of that, Outlook was misconfigured and wouldn’t even think about connecting to the mail server. He spent an afternoon figuring out the configuration only to discover that his email account hadn’t been activated yet! “It’s as if they were surprised when I showed up for work on Monday. Maybe they forgot that they hired me? I spent the first morning waiting in HR until someone was available to give me paperwork to fill out. After that,” he went on, “I spent the afternoon wandering around looking for an empty cube to claim.”
What Makes Agile Projects Succeed (or fail)? – Code Camp
Approximately 30 people came together Sunday morning to examine the question: “What makes agile projects succeed (or fail)?” This was one of my sessions at Silicon Valley Code Camp 2007, an open space conference that had over 900 registrants.
We generated and clarified almost 50 success or failure factors. Next the whole group participated in ranking the factors into tiers, from most important to least important. Dot voting was used to allow each participant’s experience to count equally, resulting in a result that reflects the collective wisdom of the group present. We managed to do all of this in less than an hour and a half! To learn more about the process and how to use it, click here.
Silicon Valley Code Camp
Code Camp is a free conference by and for the developer community. Speakers volunteer their time and everyone attends for free. It’s a place to learn, to network and to dig into some code. It’s happening this weekend.
I’ll be doing two sessions Sunday morning:
“Agile Intro” and “What Makes Agile Projects Succeed (or fail)?“
Engineering Managers Support Group – Tonight
The October 2007 Engineering Managers Support Group meeting is just a few hours away!
Where:
Round Table Pizza (event room)
61 43rd Ave
San Mateo, CA
Schedule:
7:00 PM Socializing and free pizza
7:30 PM Getting a New Hire Up and Running
You have found an ideal candidate; made them an offer, and they start in two weeks. Now what? I will share an approach that has worked for me, and some lessons learned as well. Please bring your experiences to share, and together we will unearth best practices for integrating new hires into the team.
After that, we will have a facilitated discussion where participants can share challenges that they are facing and get feedback, ideas, and support from the group. The event is free and so it the pizza! Come out, join the discussion, and become a better manager.
Agile Open CA – Retrospective
Agile Open California 2007 has come to an end. I am sitting on a pier here at the Fort Mason Center, enjoying a muffin from Greens, watching sailboats, and collecting my thoughts.
I met some truly interesting people, heard some amazing stories, and learned much. I am exhausted and energized at the same time. I am so inspired, that I have volunteered to be a part of the conference team for next year! This was the most amazing conference experience that I’ve ever had.
Agile Open CA – Day One
Wow! The people and the energy are fantastic!
I was a busy guy today. I facilitated three sessions:
- Why Do Agile Projects Succeed (or fail)?
- The Business Case for Agile
- Managing Agile
Agile Open California 2007
Open Space is a conference format of the people, for the people, and by the people. Participants cooperatively create the agenda and host sessions on topics that they feel passionately about.