Goodness, what a conference. It’s been a while since I’ve been to any event with substance, and I was overwhelmed at the Agile 2009 Conference. The thing I love so much about this community is that they are absolutely committed to learning. So much so, everyone got a copy of a 400-page bound copy of research papers from the speakers. Amazing.
But how does one take pages and pages and pages of session notes, many new books to read, long lists of things to learn about and look into further … and formulate it into a coherent whole? I’m not sure I can. I spent a good chunk of time this morning simply consolidating my various lists, and had started typing up my session notes when I realized I’m approaching this as if it were a waterfall project. Not so good. So here’s what I’ll do:
Starting at the beginning, and publishing as I go through the material, I’ll step through it all. Simple, straight forward. If there is something you’d like to hear about, please send some feedback and I can write about it sooner than later.
Sessions I attended:
- Workflow is Orthogonal to Schedule by Mary Poppendieck
- Craftsmanship by Robert Martin
- Java and Ruby Tools for Code Quality by Steve Hayes
- Opening Keynote: I Come to Bury Agile, Not to Praise It by Dr. Alistair Cockburn
- Facilitation Patterns and Antipatterns by Steven “Doc” List
- Improving Obama Campaign Software: Learning from Users by Billy Belchev & Paul Baker
- Pragmatic Personas: Putting the user back into user stories by Jeff Patton
- Four Core Concepts for Fast User Feedback by Hugh Beyer
- Esther and Diana’s Excellent Retrospective Adventures by Diana Larsen & Esther Derby
- Increase Your Capacity and Finish Projects: Manage the Project Portfolio by Johanna Rothman
- Agile Infrastructure by Andrew Shafer, Paul Nasrat
- Learning is key to Agile success: Building a learning culture on your Agile team by Declan Whelan
- Closing Keynote: The Dawning of the Age of Experience by Jared M. Spool, User Interface Engineering
Books I now have to read:
- Agile 2009 Conference Research book edited by Yael Dubinsky, Tore Dybå, Steve Adolph, and Ahmed Sidky
- Real Options at Agile 2009 by Chris Matts
- Becoming Agile in an Imperfect World by Greg Smith and Ahmed Sidky
- Lean-Agile Pocket Guide for Scrum Teams by Alan Shalloway and James R. Trott (note: this is 200 pages and decidedly not pocket-sized)
- Contextual Design – Defining Customer-Centered Systems by Hugh Beyer and Karen Holtzblatt
I also spent a bit of time at the Live Aid stage, where conference attendees donated time to Mano a Mano to build a iPhone web application using agile principles. In only 3 days, they did an amazing job. The app was delivered only an hour before the keynote and it took in some $2700 in donations for the not-for-profit during the closing keynote.
Thanks for hanging in with me this far. For now, I’m off to reflect and do some research and reading.
Tags: agile
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