Saturday, May 31, 2008

New User Story Format

After meeting Chris Matts and I at XtC May 13th, Liz Keogh pensions off the “As a <user role>... I want… So that…” format for writing user stories, first proposed at Connextra (Tim Mackinnon was team lead, I don’t remember if it was his idea)—about 5 years before the BDD thing started. [Update: Thanks to Steve Freeman for the additional detail here]

I love Liz’s new format…

In order to <achieve some value>
As a <role>
I want <some feature>Technorati tag: XtC, BDD, Behavior+Driven+Development, Extreme+Programming, Agile

High Maturity Agile Team: Sky in London

I’ve been visiting the UK a lot recently - at least once per month. On one of those visits, Steve Freeman, took me out to visit a team at Sky satellite broadcasting being run by Simon Baker and Gus Power. They blog at Agile In Action. If you haven’t already go check it out and add it to your blog roll and RSS feed. Why? Because these guys are great!

I’ve rarely seen such a mature and well run agile team. Gus was all apologetic about how they hadn’t yet matured to provide the financial metrics to show return on investment against features developed like I describe in my book. The truth is I’ve never seen a team that could do it consistently. At Corbis we were only partially capable of relating cost and investment to realized value in the market.

I happened to be there the day they were finishing up a weekly iteration and demo’ing to the product owner prior to deployment the next day. Gus and Simon have created an agile team on a floor of a building out in the western suburbs of London. They’ve moved the business team (product owners) on to the same floor to provide instant availability on-site customers. The development team works in an open environment. Everything is being tracked on white boards. They have a separate room with print outs of metrics and indicators of the team performance.

The team appears to be capable of highly predictable weekly releases and is constantly examining and improving its processes. For all intents and purposes they are a “high maturity” agile team. A team that would exhibit most of the practices required for a CMMI ML5 audit. It’s rare to see something like that and Simon and Gus have to be admired for their management prowess. I didn’t get to meet their senior management but clearly the leadership at Sky “gets it.” I understand that they hope to scale the processes from this one team to a larger organization. Enterprise scalability. The one aspect that would needed to truly claim that Sky is a true “high maturity” agile team. There are very few truly high maturity agile organizations. Sky has the opportunity to become one of them. I wish Simon and Gus good luck and I hope to visit them again in future and see them continue to move up the enterprise agile maturity ladder. Technorati tag: Agile+Management, Software+Engineering, CMMI, Simon+Baker, Gus+Power, Steve+Freeman, XP+London

APLN Summit: Our unique conference format

Some people have been asking about our very special conference format for the APLN event in Seattle. Register today!

Many of our local chapter members are bored with traditional conferences where speakers simply deliver powerpoint slides. Most of those are available on the web. There are several places to see me talk about kanban for example. So why would you pay to see me repeat something, when you can watch it from the comfort of your desk at your convenience for free? Indeed.

So the local chapter folks wanted an “un-conference” - a collaborative open-space format. That was step one.

However, we wanted to have a draw for the event and give participants the chance to have direct face time and interaction with thought leaders in the industry and agile community. So we decided to invite 16 speakers and have them pair up to run 8 open space sessions. They got to choose the topics. So that turned it in to a directed semi-open space event. But it puts more certainty in to the program and gives attendees a stronger idea of what they can learn from the event. In short, it makes the event more marketable to a conservative audience. That was step 2.

Now the more astute followers of the APLN will realize that we copied this format somewhat at the Dallas APLN regional summit in the winter. In Dallas we had the speakers facilitate the Think Tank sessions. So it’s true that the idea isn’t completely new to APLN summits. However, the idea actually came from the Seattle organizing committee, as we’d already laid that plan for our summit.

Step 3 was the realization that the Seattle audience is very conservative and that when we hold a local chapter meeting in open space format the attendance falls. So we decided to make Day 2 a traditional conference with presenters. The presenters are the speakers who facilitated the open space sessions on the first day. What makes the conference unique is that the content on Day 2 will be created on Day 1. So you simply can’t see it on the web in advance. It will be all new!

We intend to package up that Day 2 presentation content and give it to attendees as a takeaway. We haven’t decided the format yet but there will be a takeaway, and that was step 4. We give attendees something to take away and show their boss as a tangible value for the $400 attendance fee.

We round out the event with key note speeches and a panel session at the end of Day 1. The panel should give some relief to those who’ve been working hard all day in their open space sessions.

We’re excited to have folks like Dale Christian and Lisa Haneberg who will draw an audience in the local community and wider Seattle-Tacoma metropolitan area.

Finally, we give a softer networking opportunity with a cocktail reception at the end of the first day. Half the attendance fee goes to cover the catering. So come along enjoy the great venue on Seattle’s waterfront. Enjoy some great food and drink. Enjoy rubbing shoulders with the notable folk in the agile community who are giving their time for free to participate. Learn something. Take something back to your colleagues. And support the APLN and the agile community in Seattle.

So it’s a conference, and it’s an unconference. It’s a lot of fun. Register today! Technorati tag: APLN, Project+Management, Management, Leadership, Agile, Lean, Lisa+Haneberg, Dale+Christian

APLN Summit: Sponsorship Package released

We released the sponsorship package for the APLN Seattle Leadership Summit yesterday. You can get it here.

Our strategy with the conference has been to focus on raising sponsorship and be very professional about it, in order to keep the ticket price low. It is this strategy that has enabled us to keep the attendance fee to $400 or less. The early bird still has more than two weeks to run so sign up now and save $100 at only $300.

I’d like to congratulate Rally Development who were our first fully confirmed sponsor. Rally bought a Silver sponsorship package before we’d even released the document. They’ve also offered to print banners for the event. Thank you Rally. We really appreciate your support.

We also have two verbal confirmations on Gold level sponsorships and I hope to announce those formally next week.

So if you are reading this and would like your firm to be associated with our event, the mission of the APLN, and the agile community in Seattle, then get your skates on. We expect to sell out of Platinum and Gold sponsorships before the early bird registration closes on June 18th. Technorati tag: APLN, Project+Management, Management, Leadership, Agile