Let the Conference Season Begin!

2010 looks set to be another year of learning and fun! I’ll be in beautiful Turku, Finland on 17 – 18 March to present at the academic conference of Turku Agile Day.

A Series of Firsts

Pascal Van Cauwenberghe and I will be presenting our first ever Agile Fairytale keynote. It’s significant because 1) it’ll be my first ever keynote; 2) it’ll be our first ever keynote together; and 3) it’ll be the first ever Agile Fairytale to be presented as a keynote; 4) we’ll be presenting a brand new Agile Fairytale – “Pinocchio: On Becoming a Leader“. Exciting times indeed.

And There’s More!

Another first is that Staffan Nöteberg and I will be pair presenting for the first time on a brand session based on a topic close to my heart: “Timeboxed Thinking – How to Make More of Your Time“.

We’ve taken special care to make both the keynote and session highly interactive and full of fun. We hope you can join us. See you then!

Going Agile

The second ever Agile Fest, short for ‘Agile Festival’, took place last Tuesday in the UK. Agile Fest is an annual internal event run by one of emergn‘s clients to promote awareness of how and where Agile is being used within their organisation as well as to create an opportunity for 1-2-1 networking and community building.

Fun and Games

The event atttracted an exceptional turnout, with more than 250 visitors dropping in and taking part in the 3 hours it took place. The festival consisted of 12 stalls, with topics ranging from Planning Poker and Agile First Aid to Evolutionary Design and Distributed Teams. Each stall was run by internal Agile enthusiasts, with support from emergn’s coaches, giving practical advice on and demonstrations of Agile Principles, Practices and Techniques.

It was super fun because it gave me the opportunity to work alongside the client and a bunch of emergn Coaches, first in preparing for the event, then in mingling with the participants. Can I sum up the kinds of people who attended the event in 4 words? I think I can. It’s ‘Curiosity’ and ‘Willingness to Learn’. These are essential traits for an organisation serious about delivering more value to their customers.

Organising the Organising and Giving Back

The organisation of Agile Fest in itself was an example of agility in action. The event was made possible only by the incredible creativity, contribution and collaboration from both the organisers and the participants. Great thoughtfulness had gone into the event, such as handmade badges and a homemade cake sale which raised £300 in sales for the Haiti Relief Fund (which the organisation is doubling!). My tastebuds tell me Collin’s special carrot cake with coconut shavings had something to do with how much we raised!

Most Memorable Moment

The fantastic turnout and number of compelling questions asked is evidence of what transforms an organisation from Good to Great. How are you going to add value at work and beyond this week?

We love Tuesday mornings!

This Tueday morning marked the kickoff of the XP Days Benelux organisers 2010 team. Together, we’ll be bringing you Mini XP Days Benelux on 26 April, 2010, followed by XP Day Benelux (a 2-day conference) in November 2010.

We’ve got a great team and if the fun we had on Tueday is anything to go by, I wouldn’t want to miss Mini XP Days Benelux for the world! To top it all off, we’ve got an awe-inspiring venue this year. Here’s a sneak preview of the venue: Kapellerput in Eindhoven, The Netherlands. It’s got an outdoor barbeque, a human bird-house, garden chess and even a dinosaur made out of rubbish to remind us of the importance of eliminating waste!

Make Work Fun and Fun Work

We’re currently finalising the programme for Mini XP Days Benelux, a 1-day session containing great sessions selected from the XP Days Benelux 2009 program based on participant feedback. There’ll be something for everyone interested in learning from and with Agile practitioners.

For First Timers: A chance to sample what an XP Days Benelux conference feels like at maximum value and minimum cost. It’s a one day conference at an affordable price with great sessions selected from last year’s programme based on participant feedback.

For Old Timers: A chance to catch up on the sessions you wished you’d gone to at XP Days Benelux 2009 because you couldn’t be in more than one place at any one time. And, of course, a chance to meet up with old friends and make new ones!

We’re looking forward to implementing Keith Braithewaite‘s concept of a ‘WTF factor’, also known as a ‘Wow! factor’ or ‘Tada! factor’ where learning happens through shock and surprise.

Meanwhile, find out more about XP Days Benelux here. Tot ziens! Watch this space.

Agile Fairytales in London

Inspired by the enthusiasm of many Agilists for games, learning and fairytales, we’ll be playing an almost-new and much-improved version of ‘The Yellow Brick Road – Agile Adoption Through Peer Coaching’ at the XP Day conference in London this Tuesday afternoon – the place where the session was first delivered back in 2007!

According to Douglas Squirrel, a regular at XP Day London and also a player of the first version, he continues to peer coach with Simon Woolf to this day because of the game.

Follow the Yellow Brick Road

The Yellow Brick Road is the difficult path Dorothy takes towards the Emerald City to find the mysterious Wizard of Oz to help her get home. Swap your bit part for a major role in the Agile re-telling of ‘The Wizard of Oz’ for your organisation. Let your companions and other characters help you tap into the resources you’ve always had but never realised to complete your quest for a more Agile organisation.

The Yellow Brick Road is Coming Home

I first co-presented The Yellow Brick Road with Duncan Pierce back at XPDay 2007. Since then, the concept of Agile Fairytales have travelled around the world, appearing at SPA 2008, Agile 2008, AYE 2008, XP Days Benelux 2008 and XP Day France 2009. Read more about the session here.

We only have room for 12, so come early for your place on our trip to see the Wizard!

Appreciations

Many thanks once again to Dyan, Maria, Alissa, Ben, Paul, Steven and Pascal for all their feedback at the dry run of The Yellow Brick Road Game back in November. Your input has been invaluable to the latest version of the game. T-H-A-N-K Y-O-U!

And a BIG Thanks! to the 30 participants at XP Days Benelux on 27 November for playing The Yellow Brick Road Game!

Forthcoming Release of The Yellow Brick Road Game

The long awaited almost-new and much-improved game will be released later on this week under the Creative Commons Share-Alike-By-Attribution licence at www.agilefairytales.com. Watch this blog for more news on the release!

Pascal and I will be presenting The Toyota Way Management Principles for Sustained Lean and Agile at XP Days Benelux this Monday. We’ve presented this session twice this year, once at Integrating Agile and once at Scan Agile. The presentation has received great feedback – including feedback from Tom Poppendieck at Scan Agile.

We’ll be sharing insights and lots of stories based on our experiences with real teams. We’ll show you how we apply our interpretation of the Toyota Way to achieve Respect for People and Continuous Improvement. Come to this session if you’re interested in learning how to create happy teams who do inspired work!

‘Follow the Yellow Brick Road. Follow the Yellow Brick Road. Follow-follow-follow-follow, follow the Yellow Brick Road!’

We’re off to see the Wizard

A bunch of us are off to Brussels next Sunday for XP Days Benelux 2009 (23 – 24 November). The program is jampacked with even greater sessions than last year. Now that’s what I call Continuous Improvement in action.

Somewhere over the Rainbow

I’ll be presenting another game from the Agile Fairytales series: The Yellow Brick Road – Agile Adoption through Peer Coaching. I first co-presented The Yellow Brick Road with Duncan Pierce back at XPDay 2007. Since then, the concept of Agile Fairytales have travelled around the world, appearing at SPA 2008, Agile 2008, AYE 2008, XP Days Benelux 2008 and XP Day France 2009.

Inspired by the enthusiasm of many Agilists for games, learning and fairytales, there’s now an almost-new and much-improved version of The Yellow Brick Road!

The Name of the Game

The Yellow Brick Road is the difficult path Dorothy takes towards the Emerald City to find the mysterious Wizard of Oz to help her get home. Swap your bit part for a major role in the Agile re-telling of ‘The Wizard of Oz’ for your organisation. Let your companions and other characters help you tap into the resources you’ve always had but never realised to complete your quest for a more Agile organisation.

Follow the Yellow Brick Road

The goal of the Yellow Brick Road Game is to gain fresh insights on a problem you face by looking at it from different perspectives. The overall goal of the session is give you the opportunity to put peer coaching into practice.

By alternating between the roles of Dorothy (the person being coached), the Coach and the Observer, you will practice 4 key coaching skills: Questioning, Observing, Listening and Feedback.

Read more about the session here. Find your Somewhere-over-the-Rainbow at next week’s XP Days Benelux. Hope to see you there!

Appreciations

Many thanks to Dyan, Maria, Alissa, Ben, Paul, Steven and Pascal for all their feedback at the dry run of The Yellow Brick Road Game earlier this month. Your input has been invaluable to the latest version of the game. T-H-A-N-K Y-O-U!

BarCamp London 2009 is undoubtedly one of the best conferences I’ve been to this year: it’s fun, it’s inclusive and, most important of all, it’s all about people. All this came as quite a surprise since I really didn’t know what to expect.

The Story of BarCamp

Once upon a time, there was FooCamp where Friends-of-O’Reilly got together at an annual invite-only participant-driven conference hosted by Tim O’Reilly. Since not everyone could be friends of Tim O’Reilly, some folks got together and created BarCamp, a place where others could participate by presenting their ideas, too.

BarCamp is described as an ‘unconference’, a conference where the programme is based entirely on material generated by the participants themselves. You really don’t get more inclusive or spontaneous than that!

Open Space Technology in Action

FooCamps and BarCamps are based on a simple variation of Open Space Technology format, where participants post up topics they want to talk about in 20-minute timeboxes. Like successful Open Spaces, the success of BarCamp depends entirely on strangers self-organising around passion and mutual interests.

There are two key rules to BarCamp:

• ‘When you come, be prepared to share with barcampers.’
• ‘When you leave, be prepared to share it with the world.’

Real Options at BarCamp London

And since I was lucky enough to get a ticket in, I wanted to give something back that would be useful to most. The result: a 20-min session on Real Options, Bottled Common Sense to Better Decision Making. Around 30 people attended out of a crowd of 200. I described BarCamp London 2009 as a Real Option, just as Agile 2009 was a Real Option for me. We even touched briefly on the importance of applying personal values when deciding the value and application of Real Options Thinking. Judging by the quiet yet definite sound of lighbulbs going off in the room, I think Real Options Thinking resonated with many conference participants.

What I liked about BarCamp London 2009

• Sessions were run in separate rooms where participants could concentrate comfortably on the session topic.
• Each room had a mixture of facilities such as projector, flipchart and tables.
• One Saturday alone there could have been as many as 12  x 9 sessions – now that’s a lot of Real Options!
• It was great to learn from and meet people beyond the Agile Community
• A two-day event during the weekend is a great opportunity to meet new people and make new friends

What would make BarCamp London 2009 perfect

• A stationery stash provided by organisers so we be even more creative!
• An ice breaker that would engage and involve everyone and not just those with a passion for Lego
• More BarCamps throughout the year – I wish we could have more BarCamps, perhaps mini BarCamps, may be one a quarter to increase learning from one another!

Expect the Unexpected

BarCamp London 2009 was exactly what I’ve been looking for. BarCamp has helped me better understand people’s fascination with Open Spaces, something Marc Evers tried to explain to me at ScanAgile 2009. I think I understand now and I want to go to more Open Space conferences!

BarCamp is living proof that the most invaluable learning is about connecting, sharing, courage, learning and having fun. BarCamp is about leveraging the Wisdom of Crowds. BarCamp is a great inspiration where you can expect the Unexpected. And expect to participate. Get to a BarCamp near you. Go, go, go!

And if you like BarCamp, you’ll love XP Days Benelux, a mixture of pre-scheduled sessions and the option of running Open Space sessions!

It’s my second visit to Helsinki and it’s been quite an adventure! It’s been almost a year since my first visit.

What Went Well

• The location: Getting the chance to see beautiful Helsinki in the fall
• Over 280 participants attended – and it’s only the second time ScanAgile has been run!
• The conference was well-organised, everything went really smoothly!
• Learnt a bit about Beyond Budgeting from Bjarte Bogsnes in his experience report on implementing the techniques at Statoilhydro
• Being challenged by questions that made me think hard about how I coach and why
• Meeting Agilists from all over the world, including Brits who now live in Finland!
• Getting a chance to sample Open Space sessions on Day 2 of the programme
• The Toyota Way Management Principles session with Pascal: Illustrated how to implement a kanban system using baskets with the help of Snow White’s Seven Dwarves and the Evil Queen
• Receiving feedback and recommended reading list from Tom Poppendieck (thanks Tom!) on our Toyota Way session
• The Conflict Resolution Open Space session by Pascal where we learnt that we don’t have to compromise: it’s not either or. It’s  AND!
• Post-conference get-together with the very warm and friendly folks from Reaktor (voted second in 2009 Best Workplaces in Europe competition)  at their very stylish office (with its very own onsite sauna!)

What Went Wrong

• Too many theoretical presentations
• Too few sessions based on real-life experiences of using Agile
• No list of attendees, where they work and the country of where they come from

Puzzles

• How do you get the most out of Open Spaces?
• What’s the best way to hear everyone speak and engage those interested at an Open Space?
• Snow White and the Seven Dwarves proved popular with the crowd: Would ScanAgile be interested in featuring an Agile Fairytale session next year?

Lessons (Re-)Learnt

• I learn more from interactive sessions
• I learn more when I disagree with the material being presented or the speaker because it forces me to question what I think and why I think it
• We often ask questions not to find answers, but to merely seek for affirmation of our pre-prepared answers. By asking questions with a closed mind, we limit our capacity to learn compared with when we inquire with an open mind
• ‘You don’t lose weight just by standing on the scales’ – thanks Bjarte Bogsnes for a great reminder!
• Fixing budgets once a year is like having banks that only lend to customers once a year. That simply wouldn’t be acceptable nor practical
• It’s customary in Finland to relax with your colleagues in saunas in just your birthday suit!
• Design and creativity are a matter of national pride judging by the myriad of colourful shops of handmade goods and crafts!
• Using Thinking Tools such as the Conflict Resolution Diagram allows us to have our cake and eat it! No more compromises through clear thinking. Hoorah!
• Instead of eating your own dog food, drink your own champagne instead. Cheers to ScanAgile’s organisers and the humorous participants!

I’ll be co-presenting The Toyota Way Management Principles with Pascal this Thursday in Helsinki, Finland at ScanAgile (Scandinavian Agile Conference 2009).

We’ll be sharing lots of stories based on our experiences of how we’ve applied The Toyota Way Management Principles in our work as consultants. We’ll go through each of the 14 Toyota Way Principles for implementing Lean and illustrate how we’ve applied them when working with aspiring Agile teams.

Thanks to all your feedback when we presented this at Integrating Agile back in June, we’ll be presenting a newer and much improved version. I hope you’ll join us! Learn more about the session from http://www.agilecoach.net/coach-tools/the-toyota-way/.

Thank You! to Team Jenga (featuring Peter Yu, Syrous Delavari, Alex Dergousova, Boris and Kevin Mezick) for building the tallest Jenga tower at Agile 2009 by starting small!

Thank You! to Peter Yu, Syrous Delavari, Alex Dergousova and Pascal for a fun-filled day-out in Chicago – involving sensory modern art and a philosophical discussion on what it means to be an optimist and how to become one.

Thank You! to Matthew Edwards for finding the best sushi restaurant I’ve ever been to and then an act of unexpected generosity – he treated a random bunch of strangers-now-new-found-friends to dinner!

Thank You! to Matthew Edwards, Luke Amdor and Ola Ellnestam for a thought-provoking and hopeful conversation on what being agile means over dinner.

Thank You! to Jenni Dow and Ole Jepsen for their enthusiasm and open-mindedness on all things kaizen!

Thank You! to George Schlitz, Giora Morein and Brian Bozzuto for participating in The Bottleneck Game and The Business Value Game!

Thank You! to Chris Sims for his big cheer of appreciation and support when he discovered that Pascal and I share all our games under the Creative Commons licence so that we can all have more fun and be more effective at work.

Thank You! to Mark Striebeck for saying ‘Hello’ and doing the keynote at XPDay London 2009 – I’m looking forward to it.

Thank You! to Dan Mezick for introducing me to the PMI community and suggesting Pascal and I share our games with them.

Thank You! to Carsten Jakobsen for an enlightening conversation about CMMI and Agile and how they complement rather than compete with each other.

Thank You! to Tsutomu Yasui and Ebacky for sharing The Kanban Game at Agile 2009!

Thank You! to Christopher Avery for helping me better understand how to facilitate discussions about The Responsibility Model.

Last, but not least, Thank You! to the organisers, presenters and participants of Agile 2009 for making it such a great conference for learning and sharing!