Apparently you and your entire extended family have already signed up to attend P Camp, as registration is now closed at 550 sign-ups. There is, however, a hint that it may be opened up again should host Enthiosys figure out a way to lay folks head to foot instead of end to end and squeeze more of them into the Yahoo Campus venue. We hope so, and will keep you posted!
We got an email from Tami Carter, Conference Director for SD West, with a sweet offer to pass on to our readers and clients:
If you want to hear Chris explain agile in layman's terms, have a listen to this episode of the Cranky Middle Manger Show, where Chris is the featured guest. The show is hosted by our friend, Wayne Turmel, who is jovially cranky in a way that only a stand-up comic-turned-management trainer can be.
Read the full article…
This week Chris wrote his Monday morning InfoQ Article on Scrum Club, which organizes software developers to train in scrum practices (which can be applied to their Certified Scrum Practitioner requirements) by working on projects for charity. Their promo video looks eerily like something written by Chuck Palahniuk and directed by David Fincher. To call it irreverent is a drastic understatement:
I read Jurgen Appelo on The Decline and Fall of Agilists this morning, in which he calls out those who insist on defining agile as a set of static procedures: "According to these agilists, being agile is not about being adaptable and doing whatever it takes to make your project a long-lasting success. These days, agilists simply claim that agile is about following practices X, Y and Z." On the contrary, he says, “Agility is about moving software projects to the area of complexity, right between order and chaos.”
Read the full article…
For the last session of Agile Open Northwest, Chris pulled out a Greatest Hit, his Group Wisdom Without Groupthink workshop on the topic, "What Makes Agile Projects Succeed?" This workshop teaches a structured brainstorming technique while exploring the topic–a two fer one proposition. First, participants brainstorm silently on the topic, then there are several rounds in which people list their ideas while a scribe posts them on the wall. We had around thirty ideas from this group of around fifteen people. Next, everyone got eight stickers and voted for their top choices. At the end, we rearranged the items according to their popularity and discussed the results.
The winning notiions, as someone pointed out, emphasized teamwork over the technical aspects of agile. "How can Continuous Integration rank so low!?!?" one developer cried. Well, it's possible that in a room full of technical experts, these things are taken for granted and thus don't rank as "important" even though they are essential! Every group we lead through this exercise has a different outcome, as you can see here and here.
Below are the rankings for this group:
There was a moment, sitting in a session billed as "An Oral History of Agile," when Ward Cunningham mentioned that he had the idea to call the Agile Manifesto a manifesto because he'd read Cluetrain, and I realized suddenly both where I was and when I was: My God, I thought, I have shoes in my closet that are older than the Agile Manifesto! I'm here at the very beginning of something big.
Read the full article…
Chris just published an article on InfoQ called Refactoring is Not A Substitute for Design about the debate over what role design plays in agile development. The worry is that agile processes shortchange the very principles of good design, because so much of agile happens at the granular level while design is seen as a macro-level activity. But is that the case? Here is the bit that I consider Chris' main point: Big Design Up Front is not design; it is just one way to accomplish design.
Chris and I are in Portland for Agile Open Northwest, which starts tomorrow. We would love to see any agile folks who might care to join us tonight at Ristretto Roasters from 5-7 pm for the world's best cup of coffee, hand roasted by my brother, Din, and the world's best chocolate chip cookie, hand baked by his wife, Nancy.
Is Agile a culture or a process?
That's the question Jeff Patton is asking on AgileProductDesign.com. It's a question I've also been thinking about, ever since Chris and I shared a deep dish pizza at Patxi’s in Palo Alto last week with Pat Reed, supreme mistress of the IT universe at the Gap.