Agile Learning Labs

Story-Focused Standups

A widely accepted agile practice is the daily standup meeting, in which each team member shares:

• What they have done since the previous standup
• What they expect to achieve by the next
• Anything that is getting in their way

Mike Cohn recently examined variations that shed additional light on the progress being made toward completing each user story. I wrote about it for InfoQ, and you can find the story here.

Cheers,

Chris

Agile Open California - Best Agile Conference Value on the Planet!

Agile Open California 2008
Agile: Principles to Practice

If you are involved in agile software development, regardless of your role, Agile Open California has something for you. Spend two days sharing best practices, discussing concerns, and learning about agile, from principles to practice.

Using the Open Space framework, conference sessions will be self-organized around the topics most important to the participants. Instead of talking heads, you will get collaborative discussion with people involved in all aspects of agile software projects. If you haven't experienced an open space conference before, you will be surprised at how informative, involving, and energizing this type of gathering can be.

This year the Networking Reception is sponsored by the Scrum Alliance, and will feature drinks, appetizers and a shot at winning JetBrains products such as IntelliJ, ReSharper, or TeamCity.

Agile Open California is a not-for-profit conference put on by a coalition of agile practitioners and advocates to provide an opportunity for learning, networking and growth. The event is made possible by the support of sponsors including: The Scrum Alliance, The Agile Alliance, Version One, InfoQ, and others.

I was so impressed with Agile Open 2007 that I volunteered to help organize this year's event. I hope to see you there!

October 6 - 7
San Bruno, CA
(Just south of San Francisco)

Cost: $250
(Really, just $250 for two days!)

Registration limited to 120 participants.

For more details and to register visit:
www.AgileOpenCalifornia.com

Cheers,

Chris

Agile Success Rate: Better than 90% says survey

The results of Version One's 3rd annual 'State of Agile' survey are in. According to the survey, agile practices are being used more widely and with impressive results. More than half of the respondents indicated that 90 - 100% of their organization's agile projects have been successful, and 93% indicated that agile practices had enhanced their ability to respond to changing priorities.

Read the full article here on InfoQ.

Cheers,

Chris

Lean Vs. Agile? No!

In a recent blog post, Martin Fowler explains how the question "Should I use Lean software development instead of Agile?" is based on a false premise. Agile and lean are so deeply interwoven that if you are doing agile you are doing lean, and vice-versa. It inspired me to write this article for InfoQ.