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Not much to update other than I’ve returned from Canada and have been busy running a couple of presentations around the place, most recently heading up to Manchester for a night to help Alex Scordellis out with the Manchester Geek Night he’s running regularly. I ran a session called The Agile Primer, essentially an introduction to agile methods. We had a great turn out and I particularly enjoyed the discussion that ensued both during the session and at the pub afterwards. It still seems that, at least in that one pub up north, they shut relatively early. My only regret about the trip was that I didn’t get to stay longer and see Manchester because the weather was so nice.

Yesterday I helped out an analyst group with their Master Class on Agile. Liz Keogh and I pair-presented on ThoughtWorks’ experiences and lessons learned with distributed development, titling the session Distributed Agile: An Oxymoron?. We then followed this up with the XP Lego Game that helped people keep awake after plenty of talking and a heavy lunch.

All the slides and resources, you can continue to find on my page of presentations and papers.

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What is it?
The European equivalent of the Agile20xx conferences, this year held at the University of Limerick Ireland. With less than 200 delegates (including presenters, paper writers, attendees, and organising committee) it trades off the wide spread of topics you get with 1000+ people for the corridor conversations and many opportunities for networking.

General Observations
With participation significantly down from the previous year, plenty of people talked whether or not it was losing its appeal. For the organising committee, they thought they should rebrand it (to something broader than XP) as they think that turns a lot of people away without realising the topics are much broader. Other corridor conversations uncovered its focus on the more academic world was starting to turn practitioners and industry-experienced people away, something I know some people reacted to based on last year’s experience.

Trends in the agile community
Scandanavia continues to adopt and seemingly lead most European adoption of agile, with representatives from Finland and Norway consulting and leading change in organisations. There didn’t seem to be many representatives from a single country, with the more noticeable trend focused around companies (like Siemen’s Nokia) sending representatives to learn more about agile.

Compared to many other years, it doesn’t seem like the European agile community is leading much innovation in this space. A number of sessions focused more on the softer side of agile including agile coaching, organisational change, and most of the keynotes more focused on case studies more than cutting edge ideas (with the exception of Dave Snowden).

Memorable Keynote on Complexity and Agile
Dave Snowden is an opinionated and thought provoking speaker with both feet in the industry and academic worlds. He argues that without a sound scientific model, you will never get the most benefit out of things and with that, talked about the relevance of complex systems (opposed to ordered or chaotic ones) to agile. I can’t do his talk justice and his company’s website has many more resources about this, including a podcast of his keynote (see Resources link).

To put in briefly, most scientific models base their assumptions on the idea of order or chaos. Order allows you to plan, chaos allows you to predict based on statistical analysis. He argues that most models are actually complex – you cannot plan or predict based on statistics because there is not true cause and effect between items. In a complex system, the agents in the system change in response to other things going on in the system. This is the case where repeating the same thing and expecting a different outcome (in a different context) would be highly likely.

He talks about ways of managing complex and complicated systems instead of what most people focus on (simple and chaotic) using the Cynefin framework. For complex systems, it suggests managing best using a Probe-Sense-Respond. In complicated systems, it’s Sense-Analyse-Respond. How this works in the real world, is about understanding what system you might be dealing with and use the appropriate system. If you’re working in a complex system, it’s worth probing (spiking), sensing (look for positive and negative behaviours) and responding (by encouraging factors that lead to positive behaviours and discouraging factors that lead to negative behaviours).

In many ways, I feel this is one of the ways that we commonly work.

• Probing = Time boxing work with some monitoring
• Sensing = Retrospecting and reflecting about things that went well, less well
• Responding = Adapting the process, or environment to suit

Agile Coaching becoming more important
The Agile Coach role (perhaps what might be mapped best to Iteration Manager for us) is starting to become a recognised role with the need to investigate what it means and help others into it. Liz Sedley and Rachel Davies ran two sessions focused on what it means to be an agile coach and what things the role focuses on.

Feedback on my workshops
After meeting a number of delegates from previous years, I was pleasantly surprised to see that some of them are still successfully using the material from my Test Driving Your S-Wing session I ran two years prior.

I also enjoyed running this year’s workshop called Biohazard: Engineering the Change Virus, focused on understanding change at an individual level rather than at an organisational level. We had plenty of great discussion and lots of story-telling that at least made me feel people understood the material and have a better chance of introducing beneficial change when they go back to their day job.

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Every year, a group of Retrospective Facilitators gather for a small residential conference alternating between US and European borders to share, inspire and better further the retrospective practice. This year, we ran it in Radstock, located just outside of Bath, UK. As far as I know, the conference has always run using Open Space rules – the result? In this case, thirty five participants (almost 35% of them new) ran and participated in sessions throughout a week.

Recurring Topics
Similar questions returned to the community including best ways to run retrospectives across distributed locations, what to do to ensure change is long lasting, and how do people run retrospectives differently.

Lessons (Re-Learned)
The conversations at the conference reminded me of a number of lessons I’ve learned before and certainly reinforced my own thoughts. Some of these include:

• Retrospectives aren’t just limited to What Went Well/Less Well or the Retrospective Starfish – In one open space session, the community contributed another 30 or 40 different new exercises to the fold. See the Project Retrospectives or the Agile Retrospectives book for some more ideas. Try something new! Facilitation is a difficult thing – Not everyone makes (or can be) a great facilitator. Poor facilitators will have a negative impact on retrospectives.
• Facilitators and participation create a conflict of interest – The most ideal situation is to have an independent facilitator. Those coming from an agile community seem to run into this dilemma the most.
• Preparing for retrospectives is essential – People don’t spend enough time working out who is the sponsor, what they want out of it, and how to design the session to meet those goals.
• Retrospectives have many outcomes – Some of these include a common story, shared vision, and a point of change
• Change is hard – Retrospectives play a role in change, it doesn’t guarantee it. Ensuring change happens or is sustained goes further than a retrospective.

Stories and Retrospectives
Norm wrote the original book on Project Retrospectives and intentionally focused it on telling stories. The retrospective was designed to ensure everyone has a chance to talk about their story, and also to work towards some sort of long lasting change. With heartbeat retrospectives and even project retrospectives, sometimes we don’t spend enough time on either of these aspects.

A really good model I learned that works even beyond this, and what every effective conversation is has is based on the ORID model (Objective, Reflective, Interpretive and Decisional). In many teams I’ve worked with or on mailing lists I read, I’ve noticed most statements formed in terms of only Reflective and Decisional. As an example, “I think we should do … because I feel this is wrong.” Effective conversations include all ORID aspects.

The People
I noticed the majority of people at the conference came from the agile space (of whom, seemed to label themselves as Scrum practitioners). Only a small handful of people seemed to come from outside the agile space, and in one way, I felt it diminished the conferences with many of the conversations focused around retrospectives in agile situations.

I would like to see more people practicing retrospectives who work outside of the agile space to attend to bring a different focus.

Beware the Meta Monster
Last year, I felt like something wasn’t quite perfect at the gathering and couldn’t quite place my finger on it. One metaphor that might explain it is the Meta Monster (talked about at previous gatherings). The metaphor of the Meta Monster exists when you put a bunch of experienced facilitators together. Instead of participants fully participating in each session, participants facilitate the facilitator (or at least suggest ways they would do it better). I would find it interesting to compare the gathering to a conference by the International Association of Facilitators. It’s not especially noticeable perhaps tempered by the retrospecting nature of this community. There is still something there though.

Here’s my quick attempt at picturing what the meta monster might be like (made online here)

New Books to Read

• The Art of Possibility by Rosamund Stone Zander
• The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
• The Art of Making Things Happen by Philip B. Crosby
• The Reflective Practitioner by Donald Schon
• The Skilled Facilitator by Roger Schon
• Art of Focused Conversation by R Brian Stanfield
• Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss what Matters Most by Stone, Patton, Heen & Fisher

New Links
NASAGA (http://www.nasaga.org/) – An organisation who also run a conference around simulation games

Memorable Quotes
“There is no resistance to change – just a lack of support”
“People don’t like to talk about their fears, so talk about challenges instead”

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It’s near the near the end of my second Retrospective Facilitator’s Gathering and just thought I’d post a few observations I’ve already made. I’ll write up the conference report soon enough.

It’s great to be part of a community of people that remain passionate about a tool, and in many ways, share many other passions about sharing, learning and teaching. I’ve been able to reconnect with participants I met last year, connect with many more new people and even got to spend some time with some Thoughtworks alumni.

This year’s gathering included thirty five people, just fewer than ten more than last year. It’s still small enough to build relationships with people and just the right size to still have those great conversations. We held it just outside Bath, UK this year, and if not for my current project in Calgary, I probably would have been more coherent the first two days without the jetlag.

For me, the conference has been great so far. For some reason, I look back at last year and still think that I had some much deeper conversations with people. That doesn’t at all mean I haven’t had any great conversations though. I haven’t put my finger on why just yet. The community continues to impress and re-energise my own beliefs in the usefulness of this tool, and I’m very proud to be a part of and help contribute towards growing it even more.

Expect the conference report soon enough.

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I’ve been lucky enough to attend two of Thoughtworks‘ Away Days over the last month. Most recently I attended the UK Away Day this weekend that provided a great opportunity to catch up with some people and generate some new ideas. I’d write up more about the Indian Away Day I’d attended two weeks prior, but running a two week training course almost immediately has taken away my time to reflect and my memory’s a little foggy these days.

Here’s an overview of the sessions that I attended:

• A Lessons Learned session applying Ruby on Rails – An interesting session presented by Paul Ingles and George Malamadis about their approach to building a fully functional website with some of the pitfalls. I love these sorts of sessions as you get the insight into the decision making processes with talk about the constraints and thinking that pushed patterns into the direction of the end result. Really nice and a great topic to start leading into the Meta Programming session later than evening.
• The Space Within – Hosted by the very calm Manoj Ramachadran who ran through a number of exercises to help improve the “quiet” times in our lives and give us an ability to become more effective. I found this interesting as it gave me insights into other methods to try.
• Features of C#3.0 – Presented by Troy Gould and a great statement opening it along the lines of C#3.0 is included in .Net 3.5. How confusing is that? An interesting code example comparison by comparison of features new to C#3.0 introduced to support Linq. I think pretty much everyone was thinking how these features could be used effectively, and where they would be more likely (ab)used.
• Case Study of a Consulting only session – An ever excitable and interesting co-presentation with Luke Barrett and one of our clients where the focus wasn’t directly about delivering working software, but focusing on delivering value even earlier by clarifying a business case and helping evaluate its feasibility. I enjoyed hearing the application of the same lo-fi techniques and methods bringing value in a different space for once.
• Meta Programming – A fun session running through features of Meta Programming in Ruby by Farooq Ali and Julie Yaunches. I really enjoyed this session, and glad I could attend this since I’ve had the pleasure of working in the same room with both of these people and they’re passion for Ruby really shone throughout the presentation. They reminded me of the power language gives, and definitely helped me refine some thoughts I’d been having about the environment or approach needed to pull this off successfully.

I had a great time catching up with loads of people and had plenty of fun after the conference gathering at Sway.

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Topics or books I need to look into after attending the XP2007 conference:

• The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable
• Satir Change Model
• DSDM Practices
• New Peoplemaking
• The Psychology of Computer Programming

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Last week I attended the XP2007 conference (I hope to write more on that later), and found myself asked on several occasions by “newbies” to agile about “what they should do in xxx situation”. Happy to offer an ear, I found it nice being able to share my own experiences, and offer some guidance and a number suggestions they might take. Their responses varied and seemed to fall into two camps.

Some people gave my words some thought, and thanked me for my suggestions. They asked a few more questions about the suggestions and at least I felt they might try a few of them.

Others had a very different response, claiming that in their situation none of my suggestions would work. They went on to explain their situation in greater detail, asking many leading questions so much that I almost felt being cornered into giving a yes or no answer. Wary of the consequence of a definitive answer, I persisted in only giving them suggestions and the positive and negative impacts they might or might not have given my experience.

Unfortunately I didn’t feel like the latter camp took many of my suggestions on board, and I am sure will be eventually disappointed to find the elusive silver bullet does not exist. Although agile methods, their practices and values offer a lot, like many things in the real world, takes both effort and courage to make them really work.

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I’ve had a few days pass since getting back from the Retrospective Facilitators Gathering and since I’ve been working on a new project haven’t had much time to reflect on the last half of the conference.

Here’s a condensed summary of notes I took:

• Four and a half days of an open space conference is extremely exhausting, especially in the desert. I think it’s a great way of running the conference and since I am who I am, I feel like I need to attend all the interesting sessions (of which there was plenty) and contribute or take out a lot of it. I’m very glad the organisers planned a small break at the end of Wednesday afternoon to help relieve some of this pressure.
• A retrospective facilitator’s toolkit can be minimal and at another end of the spectrum could easily fill an entire small suitcase with equipment that looks like an arts and craft or stationary store. Many that we listed include various types of tapes, various types and sizes of post-its, papers, cards, thinking toys, focus tools, food, tissue paper, pens, pencils, markers, dry erase, pins, hand cleaner, timers, and dots.
• Open space events help people solve specific problems. One I attended that seems particularly relevant to me and many people I know was called “Avoiding Burnout (How to be energised by your passion and not drained by it)”.

• Linda Rising’s quote: “You don’t get the thermometer out if you’re not sick”.
• Even people in the retrospective community make mistakes but are amazingly quick at reflecting, applying themselves and learning from it. It’s a community that really eat’s their own dog food (and this is a good thing – follow the link if you don’t believe me).
• Norm had a great story about how retrospectives and wisdom from their retrospectives are leveraged in the US Fire Fighting system. I found it fascinating how teams fighting fires hold reflections on how to improve their firefighting abilities while the US Fire Fighting Academy takes all those reflections, writes about them in journals, magazines and reports, teaches their students about the lessons learned from mistakes in the field, and lobby the government to influence and improve fire fighting standards.

I’ll get around to posting a final book list here sometime soon.

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So it’s at the end of the second day that I’m writing about my experiences at the Retrospective Gathering. I hope that this entry not only helps me to distil my thoughts, realisations, affirmations and respect for different opinions but I hope it helps other people understand what retrospectives are, how important they can be and why there is an entire conference dedicated to it.

I’ve attended and participated in several conferences in the past, and the gathering I’ve been part of two days so far feels very different to others I’ve attended. Perhaps part of it has to do with the size (26 or so people), or perhaps it has to do with a group of people sharing a common passion helping each other to learn and grow. Either way, I feel it doesn’t matter that you’ve published (or not published) any books, it doesn’t matter the number of times that you’ve attended, and it doesn’t matter how you choose to participate, as it feels like a safe environment to share experiences and push each other’s learning comfort zone.

We are running this particular gathering using open space rules and despite the small number of participants we get quite a few different streams of so many different topics. I will post a link to the area where we are currently collating results.

For me, even after only the second day, it has be a phenomenal learning experience. Despite everyone’s passions for the same thing, I’m fascinated how so many people found the role of retrospective facilitation through so many different paths. I think I’ve already come away with plenty of learnings that I will try to distil (so far) in the list below:

• Training and coaching other retrospective facilitators actually requires lots of thought and preparation – sometimes people aren’t or will never be completely suitable for running them but it doesn’t mean they can’t contribute to a valuable session with other facilitators.
• Despite my passion for the topics, I don’t think I’ve personally spent enough time promoting or encouraging retrospectives (or what I prefer to classify as continuous improvement at a company, team or individual level) in my company enough and I definitely will try more to when I get back.
• I learned a heck a lot more about Temperature Readings and I think I’ve addressed a lot of my fears and concerns about not using it inappropriately.
• Facilitating distributed retrospectives brings about a whole heap of its own obstacles and it’s good to have contributed to developing a toolkit for dealing with it.
• Gut feel plays an important part of the way facilitators seem to make decisions – though best practices may exist, judgement about when things are used and not used is more important than sticking to “best practices”.

There’s some really interesting resources I’ve accumulated so far, and at the end I will certainly ensure the list is put in one place, but here’s some of the items I’ve got to look into right now:

• Diffusion of Innovation
• Non Violent Communication
• The Elegant solution
• Innovation Games
• Corporate Cultural Survival Group
• Managing at the speed of Change
• Naming the Elephant
• Focused Questions
• New People Making
• Fearless Change

As always if you have managed to get this far, I would enjoy hearing your feedback, thoughts, opinions and questions on anything I’ve written about so far.

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