Kirk Thoughts

Plone plays frisbee too

Part of what makes conferences like Plone Conf 2008 so great is the chance to meet and hang out with many of the people we only “see” online from a distance. This is especially true for me. I’ve been involved with Plone since 2002 but have yet to attend any conference / sprint. Thankfully, that will soon change!

My organizational personality twitch wants me to make it easier for people to meet and do stuff, so I created a page for people to suggest and sign up for activities to do, things like ultimate frisbee (maybe we can design a Plone disc - yeah!).

Maybe you want to visit the Smithsonian, tour the national monuments, or go for a walk up Mt. Vernon after sitting on your butt all day in sessions.

To add something to the page, request access to the project.

Okay, round 3 of the Agile 2008 session picks. Agile 2008 is the premier conference of the Agile world. There are about 400 different sessions to attend, which is why I’ve taken about 2 days to wade through all the options. Earlier I posted my faves for Tuesday and Wednesday.

Thursday

Early Morning

• New arrows for the Agile quiver: Now that the team’s head is in the game, how do you get their heart in? by Jim McCarthy. My focus thus far with Agile has been more on the mechanics, than on the motivation.
• Paving the Way for Agile Testing by Eric Jimmink. How quality starts by getting a better definition of Done, and improving teamwork in testing.
• User Story Mapping: Making Sense Out Of Your User Story Backlog by Jeff Patton. 3 hours of participants functioning in small teams to build a “story map” then learning to leverage that story map to tell bigger stories about their product, plan incremental releases, and thin releases down to more economical feasible sizes while retaining usefulness to users, and value to stakeholders. Yeah, getting lost in a mountain of stories is all too familiar.

Tough choices. Leaning towards Eric and the panel in the next session, otherwise user story mapping.

Before Lunch

• From High-performing to Hyper-performing Agile teams, panel discussion. Presentation of 3 unique case studies, by 3 top notch agile guys, each showcasing how to crank up the agile performance.I want to hear “techniques for working with many and varied clients simultaneously: how to maintain consistent and predictable velocity, how to scale teams without losing efficiency,and how to move developers fluidly between multiple teams and multiple products.”

After Lunch

• From Concept to Product Backlog - What Happens Before Iteration 0? by Gerard Meszaros, Janice Aston. “This tutorial provides an overview of what needs to go on “behind the scenes” between when a project is conceived and when development can start in earnest. It identifies the artifacts that may need to be produced, whether and when they should be produced, which activities can be used to produce them and who should be involved in those activities.” ‘Nuff said.

Late Afternoon

• Estimating Considered Wasteful: Introducing Micro-Releases by Joshua Kerievsky. No story estimates, no velocity calcs, no estimate reconciliation, multiple releases per week - what is going on here?
• Exploring User Stories Through Mind Mapping by Kenji Hiranabe, Takeshi Kakeda. I’m a huge fan of mind mapping. Looks like a technique I could use remotely, given I don’t meet face to face with clients much.

Friday

• Collaboration Explained - Tools for Facilitating Real Agile Teams by Jean Tabaka. She’s one of the best on this topic.
• Effective Pairing: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly by Dave Nicolette. I don’t code, but pairing is something teams I work with often have little experience with. Will likely go to this topic due to popularity by rest of my co-workers.
• Dude, Where’s Our Release Plan? by David Hussman. Release planning is underutilized / undervalued in our projects.

My last post covered sessions I’d like to attend at the Agile 2008 conference on Tuesday, the opening day. Here is the short list for Wednesday:

Early Morning

• Natural Laws of Software Development - Deriving Agile Best Practices by Ron Jeffries, Chet Hendrickson. Ron is another of those presenters I’m told one shouldn’t miss.
• Embrace Uncertainty: Why In Agile Development Knowing What You Want May Be An Impediment to Getting It by Jeff Patton. This one is super relevant, both for developers who crave details to get super precise estimates and tasks, and the client who wants certainty and clarity.
• Stop Thinking So Small with Agile by Ryan Martens, Jean Tabaka. Another JT talk that looks to nature as a guide to evolving Agile forward.
• Panel Discussion on Troubleshooting Distributed Agile Team Projects. Wow, it’s going to be a tough call, but will likely take this one for the morning session. DA is *the* main topic for me right now.
• Overcoming Resistance to Change by Dave Nicolette, Lasse Koskela. I’m an ideas guy passionate about process improvement, but not great at motivating others for change. Only drawback is this is a full morning session.

Before Lunch

• Coaching Agile Teams by Rachel Davies, Liz Sedley. I need to learn more about facilitating and mentoring. Will be helpful to understand a variety of coaching styles and techniques.
• 10 Ways To Screw Up With Scrum and XP by Henrik Kniberg.
• Crafting User Stories - Four Experts and the Audience Weigh In by Joshua Kerievsky.

After Lunch

• Typical Pitfalls in Agile Software Development by Jutta Eckstein
• Coaches are Producers by David Hussman
• Narrative Testing: Tools for Story Test Driven Development by Michael Phoenix, Rand Huso
• Becoming a Fearless Leader of Change (To Agile or Any New Idea) In Your Organization by Linda Rising, MaryLynn Manns. Linda is another of those don’t-miss presenters. I’ll most likely go to this one, God knows I can use it. Full afternoon session.
• Updating “Patterns for Distributed” by Keith Braithwaite. Full afternoon session

Late Afternoon

• Release Planning: (The Small Card Game) Discover What Works by Ron Jeffries, Chet Hendrickson. Release planning is one of those things I’ve done a little of, would like to ramp up the learning curve.

Following Mark’s lead, I am posting sessions I would like to attend at the Agile 2008 conference. There are so many good ones to choose from, it’s hard to decide! If you are planning to go to any of these sessions, post a comment and let’s get in touch. Also check out the Agile 2008 Friendfeed room for others attending.

Tuesday

Morning

• Expanding Agile Horizons: The Five Dimensions of Systems by Mary Poppendick. I’ve read from a few people she is an amazing speaker worth listening to, regardless of topic. I’m interested in learning where Agile may be heading next.
• Agile Distributed Teams by Douglas Shimp. At ifPeople, all developers work for partner companies in South America, mostly Argentina. I’m based in Canada and the rest are in Atlanta. So yeah, distributed is a big topic for us.
• Leadership Success Recipes for Agile in the 21st Century by Jean Tabaka, Chris Louvion. Jean is another amazing speaker. I’m particularly interested in leadership as a project manager trying to become a scrum master. Only down side is talk seems focused on large organizational issues, though not 100% sure about that.

After Lunch

• Introduction to Lean Software Development by Allan Shalloway. I know little about Lean, so interested in knowing more about this agile approach and how our company might benefit from Lean principles.
• Adventures in Agile Contracting: Evolving From Time and Materials to Fixed Price, Fixed Scope, Fixed Schedule contracts by Teresa Franklin. We have some clients who really struggle with the Agile approach to contracts, and we don’t always succeed at helping them understand. Teresa is presenting how her company evolved their approach.
• What Makes Distributed Agile Projects Succeed (or Fail) by Chris Sims. More distributed best practices, learned in the trenches from a guy who has worked with a lot of distributed teams.
• Agile and Paper Prototyping by Todd Zaki Warfel. Won’t likely get to this because it covers both afternoon sessions. Always interested in better ways to communicate requirements efficiently.

Late Afternoon

• Agile Contracting by Rachel Weston, Chris Spagnuolo. I’ve read some of Chris’ experiences with Agile contracting in the Rally Agile Commons.
• Business Value - Soup to Nuts by Andy Pols, Chris Matts. Outline looks great - how to ensure projects focus on value that matters to client, and helping them to realize the value they are receiving.
• Money for Nothing and Your Change For Free: Agile Contracts by Jeff Sutherland. Another top notch speaker on a topic I need more insight on.