‘The best teachers make the best students.’

In my experience, personal agility is rarely tested in a corporate environment. That’s why we need conferences to help us grow. Conferences are an ideal way to learn because they combine theory with practice in an unfamiliar environment. More importantly, they force us to exercise our Agile values: Communication, Simplicity, Feedback, Courage and Respect.

Type 1: International Conferences – Agile 2008

Agile 2008 is a set-based conference with a breadth of topics and renowned speakers such as James Surowiecki, author of The Wisdom of Crowds. Whether you’re a novice or seasoned Agilista there’ll be a great choice of sessions to suit your interests and learning style.

Type 2: European Conferences – XP Days Benelux and XPDay London

The Beneluxian crowd are well-known for their friendliness, inclusivity and innovative approach to session topics, formats and social events. First time speakers are strongly encouraged to submit. The XP Days Benelux Committee prioritises sessions from first time presenters to help grow the Agile Community. What a great idea!

XPDay London will consist of predominantly Open Space sessions this year. It’s a way of injecting innovation into one of the longest running Agile conferences. Watch this space.

Type 3: Technical Conferences – QCon and JAOO

Both QCon and JAOO attract an impressive array of reputable speakers. The majority of sessions are usually in the form of presentations rather than more interactive alternatives such as workshops. Tutorials are available at an extra cost.

Type 4: Conferences in a Foreign Language – Université du SI

Mainstream Agile conferences are becoming multilingual. It’s great news because it increases our sources of learning and appreciation for different cultures. Agile 2008 has an entire track in French this year.

Université du SI is a conference with the most impressive lineup I’ve seen this year to date. Speakers include Neil Armstrong, Bjarne Stroustrup and Eliyahu Goldratt. It’s the conference I’m looking forward to most!

Type 5 – A Random Course or Conference of Your Choice

It’s good to mix things up a bit. Pick a course or conference you wouldn’t normally attend and go. Treat yourself to some real options. Give yourself a chance to learn the unexpected. Most important of all, have fun!

The 9th conference on Agile Processes and XP will be taking place from 10 – 14 June in Limerick, Ireland this year. The programme has an interesting mix of Agile management techniques and technical practices.

Recommended Highlights

• Mapping the Value Stream by Mary and Tom Poppendieck – because they’re always a treat to listen to
• Overcoming Resistance to Change by Dave Nicolette and Lasse Kosela – because I’ve heard much about both of them and have yet to attend a session of theirs
• Test-Driven Enterprise Code by J B Rainsberger – because Joe’s well-known on the Agile track and I would like to see Joe present
• Coaching Self-Organising Teams by Steve Freeman and Joseph Pelerine – because Joseph’s a great speaker and it’ll be great to see Steve and Joseph pairing on a session
• Open Spaces – because you never know who’ll show up and how the sessions will turn out

Beautiful Ireland

I’ve already committed to presenting at a number of other Agile conferences this year, so unfortunately won’t be able to attend this one. June’s a lovely time to visit Ireland, so I hope you get to make the most of your stay!

Il fait très beau et chaud à Londres aujourd’hui. Le beau temps m’a fait penser à XPDay France.

What went well

• Rencontré des agilistes français sympas et accueillants
• Joué le jeu d’espace de Real Options avec une soixantaine participants
• À la recherche du temps perdu et l’avoir trouvé: FIAP me rapelle mi école mi auberge de jeunesse
• Le dîner avec les programmeurs Erlang
• Être invité à presenter l’année prochaine – l’ultime test de recette!

Énigmes

• FIAP est entouré par un beau quartier même s’il n’est pas évident tout de suite
• Les glaces me manquent pour tous les participants pour mieux fêter l’arrivée de l’été

Mon XPDay France idéal

• Plus d’actions, moins de discours pendant les séminaires
• Plus d’exercices pour encourager la création des réseaux parmi les participants
• Avoir les salles plus grandes et mieux amenagées
• Voir des OOMPs (Official One Minute Presentations) inventifs

Mille mercis aux organisateurs d’eXtreme Programming France pour une conférence chouette!

I don’t get to go to Paris as often as I’d like, so it’s a real treat to be off to Paris this weekend to present Real Options: l’ultime frontièreat XPDay France on 5 – 6 May. J’espère que vous allez nous rejoindre. À très bientôt.

* In Search of Lost Time or Remembrance of Things Past

Many thanks to the 28 individuals who chose to play the new Real Options Space Game at the Agile North Mini Conference last Saturday. Based on the retrospective feedback, we left folks with much food for thought. As usual, Pascal and I found that each time we play the game it makes us think more deeply about what Real Options really means.

What are Real Options?

Real Options is a decision-making process for managing uncertainty and risk. It’s a simple and powerful approach that helps us make better informed decisions,as individuals and in groups, by understanding and responding to the psychological effects uncertainty has on our behaviour.

Real Options means:

1. You don’t have to decide now (aka ‘Decide at the last responsible moment’)
2. But you know when to decide
3. Keep as many options open for as long as possible
4. Actively gather information until you have to make the decision
5. Only commit when you must or when you have a good reason to.

A Real Option:

• Has a value
• Has an expiry date or condition
• Costs: cost of buying the option + cost of exercising the option.

You exercise an option only when its value is worth more than its cost. That’s where the similarities of the metaphor between Real Options and financial options end.

Isn’t that just common sense?

Yes it is! The problem is that common sense doesn’t make it common behaviour. Take a look around you. How does your team or manager make decisions under pressure? How do you make decision at times of intense stress?

Uncertainty makes people impatient and afraid. Under pressure, people tend to 1) make the right decision, then 2) prefer to make the wrong decision rather than 3) postpone the decision until the last responsible moment which leads to ill-informed decisions that create problems later on.

Real Options reminds us that waiting is an option, too. The trick is to spend the waiting time on gathering as much information as you possibly can to better understand your options and, where possible, create new ones.

Real Options is difficult because it’s an information hungry process. It requires effort and that’s one reason why many people don’t do it even though they know it’s the best way to make optimal decisions.

How much is an option worth?

The value of an option varies and depends on time as well as context. Its value is what it’s worth to you at different points in time. The key is knowing the relative value of an option in comparison to the other options you currently hold.

Give me an example

The Agile North mini conference is a good example of a Real Option.

• Option value = conference for learning new stuff
• Expiry date = deadline by which you have to sign up for the conference
• Cost of buying the option = effort required to register (conference entry was free)
• Cost of exercising the option = effort for travelling to the conference and giving up a Saturday afternoon to go on a space adventure

Real Options is not nonsense

Real Options is an optimal decision making process. Even though it’s common sense, it’s surprisingly hard to do. It sounds simple, but isn’t easy in practice.

One participant said, ‘The game reminded me about the importance of a lesson I learnt 10 years ago on an orienteering course but never really sunk in.’ To find out what that lesson is, come play the Real Options Space game (version français) at XPDay France next week.

Real Options is very simple in theory, but difficult to put into practice – especially at work or when people are placed under pressure. How can you use Real Options to make better decisions?

Question: What could be more enticing than learning and gaming with a bunch of friendly Agile folks on a Saturday?
Answer: The fact that entry’s free! Sign up for your place here.

Agile North Mini Conference

The Agile North mini conference is this Saturday. Why am I looking forward to it?

1. I get to play the new interstellar space game ‘Real Options: The New Frontier‘ with co-host Pascal Van Cauwenberghe and Agilistas up north.
2. I will hear the latest stories on Kanban implementation from David Anderson.
3. I will learn about Kanban, Cadence and Flow from Karl Scotland.

Why Agile?

Being an Agile consultant-coach means I’m constantly challenged by what I do, how I do it and, most importantly, why I do it. It never ceases to amaze me how much I learn about myself and others by striving to be agile. Fortunately, that’s one of the things that gives most meaning to the work I do.

Agile Everything

I recently presented at SPA and shocked the audience when I alluded to my experience of having been on an Agile death march project.

‘Surely that’s not possible?’ replied the first gasp from the audience.

‘Isn’t that blasphemy?’ resonated a second gasp around the room.

‘I’m intrigued by your negative Agile experience,’ said an Agile coach with a gleeful smile, pen poised, ready to mark me down on my Agile competency.

Why wouldn’t Agile death marches exist? After all, Agile is just another methodology. It’s simply another way of getting people to work together. You can’t immunise your project from failure just because you say you’re doing Agile. Now that would really be make believe. I call it play pretend.

Growing Old Gracefully

Q: What could possibly be tougher than growing old?
A: Trying to be agile when everyone else believes they are but aren’t.

Earlier this month, I spent a lovely Spring evening with a bunch of young Agile enthusiasts at QCon London and was asked, ‘What would be your top 3 life tips?’ I surprised myself with the following response.

1. Be true to your passion. Do what you love. I didn’t believe this was possible or sustainable when I was younger. I now know it is. Depending on your point-of-view, to do otherwise would either be a pity or a waste.
2. Being better than the rest is easy when everyone else is striving for mediocrity. If you want to stand out from your peers, you only need to be mediocre++. Is that all you really want to achieve?
3. Use your gut instinct to help make informed decisions. Having only ever had a career in IT, over the years I had learnt to value my logical brain over my creativity side. Experience has taught me that tapping into my creativity creates opportunities I never thought possible.

One life. Live it well.

The only real currency we have is time. Invest wisely.

I’m fairly certain there’s no better way of spending four Spring days in Bedfordshire, England than at the Software Practice Advancement (SPA) conference. I left feeling re-energised with plenty of food for thought on what continuous improvement (Kaizen) really means.

What worked well: The Highlights

• Playing the Snow White and Seven Dwarves Game with 16 grownups, described by participants as ‘curious, fun with excellent materials’ and got lots of feedback on how to improve the game.
• Co-presenting a Real Options session with Chris Matts and Pascal Van Cauwenberghe and explored alternative ways of how to think about Real Options. I think we were over-ambitious in our refactoring of the session – fortunately, the SPA audience remained enthusiastic and receptive to innovation!
• Co-creating a Teamwork Techniques BoF (Birds of a Feather) with Pascal and Charles Weir. It was a great example of collaborative working and learning through doing. The session was successful because it leveraged the experience and knowledge of all the participants which enhanced the quality of learning, usefulness of materials and the amount of fun had by all. The techniques covered included Creative Thinking process, Edward de Bono’s 6 Thinking Hats, Chris Avery’s Responsibility Model and Burndown charts.
• Attended an excellent session on Awesome Acceptance Testing by Joe Walnes and Dan North. The thoughtful delivery made a usually dry (but very important) topic interesting, entertaining, educational and enabling.
• Attended John Nolan’s session on Getting to ‘No’ on how to say ‘No’ in a constructive way.

Ideas for making SPA even better

• More sessions like Joe and Dan’s with a well-defined purpose, tangible and pragmatic advice and entertaining presenters
• More genuinely-interactive learning like the Teamwork Techniques BoF
• Form quartets based on at least common interest to make them more meaningful rather than dividing people into random groups of 4
• More opportunities for active conference attendee participation
• More emphasis on accelerated learning and personal development in terms of session structure and content because the best software is developed by teams of effective individuals

Thank You!

• To Pascal and Vera for their enthusiasm, feedback, support and being great idea factories.
• To David Peterson, Maria Bortes and Dyan Corutiu for participating in the rehearsal session and providing constructive feedback that helped us use the cards more.
• To Chris Cooper-Bland for co-presenting and assembling the final presentation and believing in dwarfish appeal.

And a big T-H-A-N-K Y-O-U as usual to Jim for bringing Snow White and the Seven Dwarves to life as cards and making the game real.

With Spring almost in the air, Agilistas around Europe are getting ready to attend the annual SPA 2008* residential conference from March 16 – 19 in Bedfordshire, UK.

In the Land of Agile Fairytales

Are you baffled yet fascinated by the behaviour of those around you? Have you ever wondered why they do what they do? If you answered ‘Yes’ to at least one of the questions above, then come join Chris Cooper-Bland and me at SPA on a mini-adventure of self-discovery with help from Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.

This is your chance to learn more about yourself to give you a better chance of understanding others. Think Kaizen Meets Agile Fairytales.

This is the second themed session in the Agile Fairytale series, beginning with a game of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves Game to help you identify the characters who interest, trouble, confound and/or confuse you most at work.

Once you’ve developed new or more in-depth insights into your own character, you will be able to choose from one of four techniques to help improve your personal effectiveness. See here for more details on the session.

I’ll also be helping out with Chris Matts’s session on Real Options. He reckons learning about Real Options will change the way you make decisions forever. Come along to see if he’s right or wrong.

It was nice to catch up with many of my ex-colleagues from SpringSource (formerly known as Interface21) at the launch of Spring Exchange in London this week.

Since 2006 the company has grown by what feels like an order of magnitude. The collaborative nature of SpringSource’s product development teams with the user community has ensured that Spring adoption continues at the rate hot potatoes sell on a cold winter’s day.

I still remember the day Rod Johnson told me about his new company based on open source. Back then, Java open source combined with a business model were a rarity. The key problem was sustainability. For the product developers and most importantly for the product.

Having used a prototype of Spring back in the days when EJB was an emerging technology, Spring for me is a strong example of quality software through collaboration (with both open source and commercial partners) and constant innovation. It represents what a team of brilliant minds can achieve along with the wisdom of the open source crowd.

The next BIG technical conference in London will be QCon in March where you’ll get another chance to meet the Spring team. Maybe I’ll see you there.