For starters, I am just a “marketing guy” so take everything I write with a grain of salt… whew, got the whole marketing thing out there.  That feels better.  I am based in Vancouver, BC and have been on the board of my local user group “Agile Vancouver” for the past three years. I am just entering my second year of being a director of the Agile Alliance and have been Director of Marketing for VersionOne for coming up on four years.  I was the creator of the Agile Chronicles newsletter and have been its “editor” since I started at VersionOne. You can check out the current newsletter and subscribe here. I work extensively with agile community groups around the world to help support them in their efforts.  I also occasionally have something useful to contribute via Twitter.

A couple of weeks ago I was lucky enough to go to the Scrum Gathering in Shanghai, China to represent VersionOne and give a talk on Collaborative Chartering. It was a long way to go for 3 full days on the ground but what an experience it turned out to be. Bas Vodde gave a great keynote titled "Scrum doesn't work in China". It was a talk based on both his experiences and a survey he did on cultures and the acceptance of agile methods. China was one of many cultures involved in the survey. Bas has coached teams and worked on many continents and amongst many different cultures. One of the funniest things from his experience was something he has encountered in almost all countries: "That may work in the United States but it won't work here", "That may work in the Netherlands but not here" and even "that might work in Europe but not here in the United States, our culture just wouldn't support it". Apparently Agile methods will work anywhere EXCEPT where you currently are.

This brings me to my point. The Shanghai Scrum Gathering was organized by both the Scrum Alliance and a local, "on the ground" group. Right up until the start of the Gathering the local team fought against (or at least discouraged strongly) the idea of having an open space event as part of the proceedings. They simply thought: "That may work in other places but it won't work here. Our culture won't support a self-organized open space event where people get up and propose sessions to the whole group and hope people show up and are interested." Tom Mellor, Chairman of the Scrum Alliance, was the facilitator for the open space. He was aided by instant translation through headsets for those that didn't speak english and he had a bilingual assistant to paraphrase in Chinese as he went along. There we were with over 200 predominantly Chinese attendees wondering what would happen. What did happen as soon as he opened up the floor to session proposals astounded local organizers but not experienced open space practitioners.

People did as many do that are new to open space. There were a few initial 'brave souls' that were ready to propose their sessions as soon as Tom said 'go' and soon there was a constant stream until the marketplace (1) was overflowing. The coolest part of these session proposals was that, without prompting, the participants announced their session in both english and chinese if possible. Many had broken english but powered through it. It was interesting to see the stark difference between the fluidity and passion that came through when they spoke in their native language. From there the sessions self-organized and the first sessions started when they started and ended when they ended (2). In fact, many of the last sessions went well into the cocktail reception that followed the official session times. Like all open space events I have been part of, whether as facilitator or participant, the conclusion from newbies was the same: they couldn't believe the value they got out of it. They were excited about how it all worked, the richness of the discussions with peers and how much they got out of it.

Open Space does, in fact, work in China but maybe not where you are.. something tells me that may not hold true.

A side note: I was in Boston about a week after Shanghai at a great 1-day event put on by Dan Mezick and Agile Boston. There were presentations in the morning and the afternoon was dedicated to open space. Like Shanghai almost all attendees had never taken part in an open space. The main difference was that when Stephen "Doc" List (open space facilitator) invited folks up to propose their sessions there was a mad scramble by a huge number of people until a massive line formed. So many that not all sessions made it on the board. One of these sessions was someting I am keenly interested in: Agile methods outside of development. I found the other 3 folks that had expressed interest and we created our own space. Self organizing at its best! When Stephen commented on how enthusiastically folks new to open space got up to propose sessions there were jokes about the Boston personality, which inevitably included commentary on Bostonians' driving etiquette. Boston was a great event too, and like Shanghai there were a lot of open space converts at the end of it all.

notes:

1. The "marketplace" is where session hosts post their session titles within a grid that specifies time and location. This is an example from an AgilePalooza event held in San Francisco that had scrum, xp and general agile development practitioners discussing topics of interest to them.

Fishbowl discussion panels are a great alternative to traditional conference speaker panels. The key word is discussion - a discussion that happens strictly between the fishbowl panelists. There are six chairs set up in a slight arc, and one chair is always empty, so there are a total of five panelists at any given time. Discussion only occurs amongst the panelists. If there is an audience member that would like to contribute to the conversation, they need only get up and sit down in the empty chair. At that point somebody already on the panel must get up and sit down in the audience.

There are a two important points to discuss with both the audience and the panelists:

• If you sit down to be part of the panel you cannot simply state your point and return to your seat in the audience. You must wait until someone takes the empty seat – and be quick enough if there is somebody else looking to get into the audience!
   
• This is meant to be a discussion and long diatribes are discouraged. Don’t be afraid to light-heartedly scold someone for going on too long.

Seeding the panel questions
When running a fishbowl at the end of a day of presentations, it can help to make sure there are flip charts or a white board in each presentation room.  Attendees must be encouraged throughout the day to add their questions. These questions are collected and projected to the audience and panelists (if the projection can also be seen by the panelists it can help keep them on point). When a question comes up that is not clear, you can ask the person who wrote it to give context.  The key here is to make sure they are brief.

If collecting the questions beforehand is not possible, you can always take questions from the floor. The downside is that when people write down their questions it forces them to be concise.  Questions from the floor can be much more open-ended because people tend to describe the question instead of asking it.
 

Keeping the questions moving
The discussion for each question is initially limited to a maximum of five minutes. After five minutes the audience votes whether there are five more minutes of discussion, or whether to move on.  This keeps the control of discussion in the hands of the audience as a group, and doesn’t allow one topic or person to dominate. We hand out auction paddles for voting that are red on one side (move on) and green on the other (five more minutes).   Prior to the auction paddles we used open palm (move on) and closed fist (five more minutes). This wasn’t as easy to judge sometimes - the big swaths of color really help.
 
A very special thanks goes to David Hussman for originally suggesting this technique for our first AgilePalooza in Minneapolis, and also for the idea of having a red card/green card for voting.

I am currently in my second year on the Agile Alliance board. We meet face-to-face four times each year (including at the annual agile 200x conference) and September’s meeting was planned for London. Coincidentally there was also the UK Lean and Kanban Conference happening in the days leading up to our board meeting. This meant a good chance to get to London a little early, get acclimated to the time zone and take in some sessions. VersionOne was also a sponsor/supporter of this conference so it was good for me to be there to "represent" but I assumed more of an attendee role than anything else.

As I said in my intro to the whole “fall journey” thing, there are a few people within this community that would like to differentiate themselves right out of the broader agile community but to me this seems more about “branding” than anything else. At its core, this community is a group of people that primarily are experienced agilists - whether they originate from teams using a scrum framework, eXtreme Programming, hybrid or other agile methods - but have moved towards something “new” to further the improvement of their software delivery teams. (Unfortunately, the branding/differentiating efforts may be doing more harm than good with people and teams that have just begun exploring a transition to lightweight methods.)

The conference was very interesting in that this was a fairly small group that had people very passionate about Lean thinking and the use of Kanban - Sometimes one or the other and to a lesser extent, both. There was some fairly divisive commentary by some of the community ‘leaders’ with respect to “Agile” or “Scrum” but this was mainly restricted to the consultant side of the house so I will put that down to the whole branding thing.

I find it really humorous when people talk about “doing” agile, I heard this a few times in regard to moving to Lean/Kanban from “doing agile”. I must have missed the point when agile development became a defined set of practices from which one cannot stray instead of an umbrella term for various methods and practices. Also interesting was the ability by many to use the words Lean and Kanban interchangeably. This bugs me in the same way as when people use the words Agile and Scrum interchangeably. These terms are related but not the same.

Since the entire Agile Alliance board was in town, the Agile Alliance sponsored a reception at the end of the second day for all the conference attendees and Agile Alliance members that happened to be in the London vicinity. This gave the Agile Alliance the opportunity to show its support for the Lean/Kanban community and for discussions with board members to learn about what the Agile Alliance has been up to and where it is going in the next few years. These receptions are something the board began doing at each face-to-face meeting starting in Paris last January. This gives the board the opportunity to interact with communities around the world, getting feedback and input into our overall roadmap so that we have a better chance of serving our community effectively. (The next reception coincides with the Agile Alliance board meeting in Atlanta. It will be Wednesday December 16th @ 6:30pm at the Marriott Perimeter.)

For me, like most conferences I attend, the best parts were outside the sessions - in the breaks, around the dinner table and at the pub in the evening. This is where practitioners get passionate, where the real meat is. There is less divisive talk and less concern about “my brand” over “their brand” – or at least when there is, it isn’t veiled and you can call people out on it! There is always lots of discussion about what is working, how people got there and more importantly, what is *not* working. Every traditional conference begs for these types of talks: what went wrong as opposed to a big [insert your fave method/practice] love-in. In a more personalized atmosphere people seem to be more open to discuss their experiences in detail. As a side note, this may be why open space events tend to be so successful in the eyes of attendees. It is more about sharing experiences that are open to discussion and debate. I will have more to say about the open space thing in a later post on the Boston AgilePalooza.

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Check out these Lean & Kanban resources…

• Jeff Patton debriefs his Kanban session during the AgilePalooza Openspace in Boston on YouTube.
• Jeff does a deeper dive with the article on Kanban Software Development Oversimplified on his site agileproductdesign.com.
• "Lean thinking" is a little more than a blog post, presentation and certainly more than you can fit into 140 characters or less…check out this really good Lean Primer (46 pages & 957k) by Craig Larman & Bas Vodde.
• Limited WIP Society - www.limitedwipsociety.org
• Lean Software and Systems Conference in Atlanta - April 21 - 23, 2010

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The fall season has always been crazy for conferences and community events. The main difference this fall was that I got to hit the high points (IMHO) in person.  This meant a serious amount of travelling – well, more than usual for me. My “excellent adventure” saw me log over 30,000 miles flown traveling to London for an Agile Alliance board meeting and the Lean/Kanban conference, Munich for the Scrum Gathering, Boston for AgilePalooza, back home briefly for Agile Vancouver’s 4th annual conference and then a quick trip to Orlando for Agile Development Practices. 

I am going to write up some posts covering each event but for me the most interesting part is thinking about the trips as a whole. I touched a really good sampling of different sub-communities that make up the broader agile ecosphere.  I got to meet tons of new people and see a lot of friends as well.

From the Scrum Gathering, where huge changes are happening within the Scrum Alliance, to my local user group conference in Vancouver that saw over 200 people come out to an event organized by a handful of volunteers, all these events are really about one thing: people looking to improve their craft and how their organizations deliver software.  And as much as the more commercially inclined within the Lean/Kanban community would like to differentiate themselves right out of the agile ecosphere, they are right in there helping to lead what agile is all about: change – constantly improving the way software teams work.