Agile 2009 - Day 1 in The Bag!

Well... Day one is in the bag! Oh how rich it was to surround myself with many Agile people and immerse myself in all things Agile.

It seems the ongoing theme has to do with transitioning Agile or moving Agile in a continuous new frontier so that organizations both large and small could embrace it.

Oh how sweet it was to be exhausted with sore feet after shaking so many hands and kissing babies etc. A special thanks to all of you who stopped by The VersionOne booth and said hello!

I want to invite all of you to come by the booth in Chicago and pick up your copy of the Definitive Agile Checklist. I have a handful of autographed hard copies in the booth that you can take back to your Agile Teams! They are FREE of course!

The Agile 2009 conference has been rich in content and meaning. I will give a more extensive review of the conference at the conclusion. Now off to the keynote by Dr. Cockburn!

My Trip To Agile 2009

I bit the bullet when I thought that Frontier was going to be sold and started booking most of my trips on Delta. Now don't get me wrong, for the most part their service is pretty good and Salt Lake City is a hub. The thing I was looking forward to the most after gabbing with Mike Cottmeyer was enjoying the in-flight wi-fi service. We started at one gate with a 737 that was not equipped with Wi-fi. I was disappointed but quickly rejuvenated when they announced the gate change since I knew most of the 737 fleet has been fitted with internet service.

Wouldn't you know it, the second plane did not have internet either. I was none to happy at the discovery as I planned to get some work done and even planned to book some additional Delta travel to Seattle next week. Needless to say, this was not the best way for me to begin my trek to Agile 2009 in Chicago. I kept telling myself that I needed to find a positive in all of this. After a short recap of the previous three days, I was quickly able to identify three VERY positive things that happened for AgileDad leading up to the Agile 2009 conference:

The July Agile Mentor newsletter was finally published and I have been getting a lot of buzz and feedback on the topic of the hunt for team perfection. Many people could relate to the managers searching endlessly for the perfectly efficient team. Many of you even offered feedback regarding how you deal with this scenario.

The August Agile Mentor Newsletter was released! Christian did a FANTASTIC job of highlighting the cost of a bug and really drove home the need for embracing Test Driven Development. Word has it that this hot topic will continue to produce feedback and will not go away until Agile embraces a defined way to handle bugs and testing.

The Definitive Agile Checklist was released by VersionOne. After working on this for nearly two months, it was nice to see it all come together in a neatly packaged document. I was ecstatic with the reviews I received regarding the beta copy and the final edition looks and feels even better. I wish there were more ways for me to thank the team for making this classy document available to every team out there for free!

For that matter, ALL of the documents listed above are available for free and always will be! So to sum things up, even though Delta did not want to bump me to first, the flight was delayed over a half hour, and there was no wi-fi anywhere to be found, I would be remiss to say this was anything less than a great week! I may not get the elite treatment that Cottmeyer does from Delta, but at least I can relax and chalk it all up as a great flying experience. See you all at Agile 2009! MDW Here comes AgileDad!

The Definitive Agile Checklist

In an earlier post, I had commented on just how busy I have recently become! One of the projects I have been working on as an employee of VersionOne, I have hopes will become an industry standard document that is used to monitor the Agile Adoption Process of Agile Teams.

I put together a document called the Agile Checklist. The irony of it all, is that the document grew from what it was originally designed to do into much more than what you would expect to see in a standard checklist format!

It is a completely free download from VersionOne and I hope to soon feature the checklist here on AgileDad as a download. Every organization that I have introduced to this document have all proclaimed that is is very insightful and the pilot document was VERY well received. I normally do not go on and on touting my own accomplishments, but I really feel strongly that this document, (which I hope will one day hang on the walls of every team room), will provide teams with the 'missing piece of the Agile puzzle', that everyone has been afraid to put out there!

Go on over and download the document! I assure you that you will not be disappointed! I an hoping that loads of you at Agile 2009 will come over to the VersionOne booth and want a soft copy of the document. Who knows, if you catch me in the right mood, I may even autograph a copy for you.

Have a great weekend and GO NOW and get the Agile Checklist!

The Cost of A Bug - It's Published!

We got such an overwhelming number of comments to the original post with regard to the cost fo a bug, we decided to take it all one step further!

Christian Hargraves put together a wonderful Agile Mentor Newsletter for the month of August entitled The Cost of a Bug. The feedback I have received so far has been amazing! The data is all there and people are truly suprised when they see where failing to have correct testing practices in place winds up costing them a whole lot of money and time!

Christian has proven to be an authoratative voice when it comes to getting things done and he has been sought after throughout his organization as a result to help them improve the process. I have had a number of people ask me if I would allow for them to be published in the Agile Mentor Newsletter. The answer is YES! We encourage those of you in the Agile community who have a topic you are passionate about to shoot over an email and we will see what we can do to get your thoughts out to the rest og the Agile World!

I would like to thank those of you from all over the world who continue to read and support AgileDad as we continue to grow. Our goal is to be recognized as the foremost authority on Agile Topics available on the web! With your help we CAN achieve this goal! Send us an email with a topic you would like to contribute or tell us about a topic you would like to learn more about.

As they say in Disneyworld, we are all Ears!

Lee@AgileDad.com

Agile 2009 - Prep Time - Continuous Improvement

I have been debating with myself recently as my goal was to do a post a day leading up to Agile 2009. I am sad to report I have failed in this effort!

The truth is, work calls and I have been very busy. In this day and age I would call that reason to celebrate! I had a guest writer slated for the July 2009 Agile Mentor Newsletter who bailed at the last moment making the release of the Newsletter MUCH later than I would have liked!

The GREAT news is that the guest Author Christian Hargraves has already submitted the content for the Agile Mentor August Newsletter which I will try to roll sometime today!

The July newsletter is entitled The Hunt for Continuous Improvement. It is a great recap of a team searching for the ever elusive team efficiency that every manager seeks as a result of limited visibility. I don't want to give away the punch line so I will let you go and have a read.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, I am preparing to head out to Agile 2009 in Chicago! During every breakout time, my feet will be firmly planted at the VersionOne booth! Come on by and say hello as I just LOVE to meet AgileDad followers! I will also have freebies to give away!

Anybody interested in doing a breakout session at the conference, send me an email or leave a comment and we will make it happen! See you all soon!