Thursday, October 15, 2009

Agile Tour 2009 Open Jam Part 2


Once again Agile Tour was an exciting event in the Philadelphia area. There was lots of energy around as beginners and practitioners could find an avenue to increase their agile knowledge.

The OpenJam gave people an opportunity to have open honest dialog around topics that they were passionate about. My blog first entry on the OpenJam covered the great topic of certifications.

This time I want to provide the session "Scum is Evil???" This was a great talk, where people could discuss the benefits of scrum over something like waterfall. It also got into issues where scrum just didn't go far enough.

I'll start with the list of cards from Scrum is Good, it is a much shorter list.

Scrum is Good:
Team Building
Burn Down Chart
Gave Agile Legs
Feedback Cycle
Regular Deliver of Software
Make Crap Visible
Failures have pushed evolution of Agile
Fail Faster then Waterfall
Customer Interaction
Scrum failure is visibility to Failure
Alternative to PMI
Works for Waterfall Executive Organizations
Scrum Tackles People Problems
Proven Process Documented
Generates Excitement about Development

Scrum is Evil:
Makes You Believe it Works
Failure is Delayed
Not Agile Revolution
$$$ For Certification
The Scrum Black Book
Outlived Initial Fame
Easy to be Evil
Scrum is the only Solution
TDD was not part until 2008
Separate from AgileAliance
No Change New Word
Product Manager on a Team
No Development Practices
Title of Scrum Master
Deceptive Marketing
Control
Burn Down Chart
Intentions are Wrong
Scrum Master is not a Coach
People play the wrong role
Scrum Failure is not Agile Failure
People do not Venture out of Scrum
Certification is Evil
Feedback has no Solution
Chicken Pig is divisive
Micro Manage and Oppress People
No Tools for Solving Problems
Leaves Staff Out
Is a Buffet of Practices


Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Agile Tour 2009 Open Jam Part 1


Agile 2009 came to Philadelphia and had some great sessions. It provided information for people new to Agile as well as experienced.

One of the three options available included an Open Jam. We had 3 topics that covered Certification, Scrum is Evil?, and Agile in a ERP. I want to thank all of the people who attended Open Jam. The discussion was great. For those who missed the sessions consider joining an open space discussion in the future.

The notes I have are based on index cards that were captured as part of the discussion. This blog entry will only cover the Certification topic that took place during session one. Look for the next entries in the coming days.

There were three main topics that came around our starting point of Scrum Certified Developers and scrum.org.

Certification:
Certified Developer
Training $4,000
Who can pay for training
3 day scrum training
Can't teach in 40 hr course
Language Specific certification is Bad
What skills should Agile developer have
Agility assessment
scrum.org scrum assessment online test
Who's plan is best for training?
Tom Mellor is the new Pres of Scrum Alliance
World Scrum board

Agile
What is Agile?
Distributes agile
Dev in one area, QA elsewhere
Lean vs Scrum, XP is Dead?
XP, pairing, TDD
Tracer bullet
Product people/QA Agile training is challenge
Team easy to work with
TDD is not QA
Use Manifesto to help push Agile
Buffet of practices
New AgilePhilly site, no feedback
General feedback people do not give
Start up XP/Scrum problem with no customer
Customer quick iterations
Feedback to create new stories

Improvement
Who tries to learn Agile
Incremental learning
Practices of an Agile Developer - Book
Read books
Participate in an Open Source project
Warcraft Quests to level up in Agile
Technology is always changing
Everyone is a social Web expert
Acknowledge flaws and improve
Blame/ownership CoCO
Egoless developer
Awaken developers abound Ego hold back
Discussion groups help learn
Hire for behavior not knowledge
Able to adapt to new environment
Teach other to learn
Learn from others