Agile2011 - Day 1 Summary

My morning session was on Multi-Sensory Kanban, presented by Ravindar Gujral and Andre Dhondt. Kanban is supposed to be visual. The session discussed ways to expand beyond just your kanban board. One example that they gave was connecting the computer to some speakers and when the the build fails, it creates a disturbing noise. There was also a discussion on using timers in a pomodoro technique; get the team focused on a problem and when the bell goes off, you re-evaluate where you are and what the next steps are. 

I only made part of the afternoon session due to a work-related conflict, but I did listen to a discussion on deliberate practice. Some of the key points here;

It must be designed to generate improvement 

It should focus on a weakness 

It should put you under stress. 

It requires thought/is mentally demanding 

It must be repeated a lot to achieve results

It's not fun

This session was by Tom Perry and I wish I could have listened to the rest, because it looked like it was going into how we can practice techniques to become better leaders. 

The real highlight though was the evening session, which featured a Q&A session by 15 of the 17 signers of the Agile Manifesto. They provided an insightful and humorous discussion on how the manifesto came into existence. 

The conference has around 1600 attendees. My real purpose in attending is to help promote the PMI Agile Certification (PMI-ACP sm). I was in the booth Monday evening discussing this with attendees. There was a lot of interest, both with current PMI members and folks who weren't active with PMI. The exam will be available on September 15th.