On August 11th from 9 AM to 10:30 AM, Gil Broza and I will be moderating an all-star line-up of Alan Shalloway, Jim Shore, Jean Tabaka and Mary Poppendieck who are panelists at the Agile 2010 conference.  Here is our summary of the panel:

What is Lean? Is Lean the next “big thing” I need to learn — or is Kanban enough? Is Agile still relevant? To add to the confusion, there seem to be several different interpretations of Lean Thinking in the Agile community! In this panel, four Agile/Lean thought leaders and practitioners will discuss the essential elements of Lean and its relationship to Agile. Our panelists will share their ideas about Lean, show similarities they see between Lean and Agile, and help attendees understand (and perhaps reconcile) any differences.

This panel came about during last year’s conference in Chicago where Gil and I discussed what does our community really know about Lean.  Are we trying to reinvent the wheel?  Are there misconceptions about Lean in our community?  In our conversation, it became clear we were really passionate about hosting a conversation between members of the Agile community and thought leaders on the Agile and Lean communities on this topic to help everyone get a deeper understanding of both.  We also wanted to make sure that the experience is very interactive with the audience members giving the panelists feedback on how well they communicated their ideas.

I will be offering a short seminar about Scrum for PMI San Diego at the end of the month.  I am looking forward to speaking to a new audience about Scrum and providing education on what Scrum really is and what it entails.  In this two-hour seminar, I will be building on the concepts, principles and ideas I plan on exploring in the Welfare CSM class (more on that later) and at the PMI San Diego 2010 conference in May.  This should be really fun and a great opportunity to build your personal network, so if you are interested in attending, register here.

Here is the description of the meeting to help you understand my focus:

Having problems with Scrum? Are you getting all the benefits you were promised? Scrum is a framework for managing complex programs and projects by combining collaborative, self-organizing teams with short, iterative cycles. While Scrum is easy to set-up, true success and real improvements are frequently difficult to achieve. The simplicity of the Scrum framework regularly hides the essential principles – collaboration, visibility, self-organization, empowerment and respect – which your organization must support and cultivate for Scrum to succeed. In this 2-PDU workshop, Carlton Nettleton will share his insights into Scrum and lead you through a number of hands-on exercises and simulations to help you re-focus your efforts on the fundamental Scrum principles.

Hope to see you there!

It is that time of year again – waiting to see if your submission has been accepted to Agile 2010.  This year, it seems that stage producers are bit-by-bit releasing proposals that were accepted.  Since I did not get my magic email I can only presume that my submission was one of the ones left in the rubbish bin.  So, in effect I have been given a de fecto rejection letter because I am hearing about all the other people that are being accepted.

I am bringing this up because from my perspective parts of the process still needs to be worked out – especially how people are notified.  It is disrespectful to have different timing for proposals that are accepted versus proposals that were rejected.  The producers care enough to send acceptance notice, but not a rejection notice.  Is that the message the Agile Alliance wanted to send?  The only reason why I am complaining about this topic is that I care.  I care about transparency, respect for the individual and that the process adheres to its vision.  In my opinion, the process and the way its implemented doesn’t represent the values I tend to think of as Agile.

What burns me the most, when I tried to provide feedback to some participants of the review process, some reviewers got defensive and challenged me to do better.  Hold on there – I’m a stakeholder in your process and I’m dissatisfied with the execution.  It is not my responsibility to fix your process, that is the job of the Team.  Stakeholders just provide feedback and guidance on what our expectations are.  Don’t hand me a squirrel burger and tell me it’s a Big Mac – I’m not going to buy it no matter how great you tell me it tastes.  I am not sure if I had the expectation of getting a Big Mac, but I am not pleased that I am being told this squirrel burger is all I get.

Update: Eating a bit of humble pie served to me from a number of my peers.  I apologize for my words since they may have come of for being disrespectful of the time and commitment many volunteers put into building these stages.  That was not the intention, but I was offering feedback in the spirit of continuous improvement and inspect-and-adapt.

Just wanted to let folks know that I will be speaking at the PMI San Diego 2010 conference.  I will be running a full-day seminar on May 13th and a 60-minute tutorial on May 14th.  I am very excited about this opportunity and encourage folks to attend either day.

• Leaping to Success with High Performing Teams – in this May 13th seminar, I will be running a SIMSOC.  This is a great opportunity to participate in this exciting and interesting simulation to earn about what factors help teams self-organize and that high-performing state.  The last time I ran this class, it got great reviews and was a lot of fun.
• Agile Playground – on May 14th, I will be leading a tutorial which uses games to help people experience Agile principles.  I have found to really begin to understand Agile, one needs to experience the principles and values at an emotional level, rather than an intellectual level.  The exercises I will be using in the tutorial will open your mind to what Agile is all about.

That is what I have scheduled for the month of May, I have more exciting stuff planned for June.  Stay tuned, in the meantime, please register for the PMI San Diego 2010 conference today.

Finally had a few moments to write about my upcoming speaking engagement at the Orlando Scrum Gathering from March 8th to March 10th.  I am VERY excited about the chance to speak at a Scrum conference and I was lucky enough to be selected to provide two presentations in Orlando.

1. Prioritization with Pugh – this workshop is designed to provide Product Owners a new tool to help evaluate conflicting priorities and focus the discussion on factors that matter to the business by using a Pugh matrix.  Pugh matrices come from the Lean world and are an excellent collaboration tool to resolve conflicts from conflicting stakeholders.
2. Insights Into Scrum Illuminated by Lean – this Pecha Kucha will focus on how we can learn more about the essential elements of Scrum by looking at the Lean principles embedded natively in Scrum.

I am facilitating an Agile Playground session with June at XPSD tonight.  Stop by if you are interested in learning some Agile games and want to have some fun.  Here is the short write-up from the XPSD wiki:

“What is Agile software development? What are the essentials I need to know about this stuff? Why is my Agile team so dull and boring? Looking to get energized? Come to this introductory session hosted by Carlton Nettleton & June Clarke and they will demonstrate as many Agile principles and practices as they can in 75 minutes of fun through a variety of short simulations and participatory games. Walk away with the critical insights, the “ah-ha” moments, where the essential Agile concepts slip into place and make sense.”

Here are my submissions to PMI San Diego’s 7th Annual PM Conference scheduled for May 12th to 14th.  I am hoping that one of them gets accepted.

1. Leaping to Success with High Performing Teams: this is a one-day workshop on the importance of team building through SIMSOC.
2. Debunking Myths About Agile Software Development: this is a new presentation for me and I am really excited about the format.  Instead of your typical powerpoint presentation where I dissect each of the common myths I have and the the audience passively listens to me, I am going to engage the participants in collecting the myths and we’ll have a conversation about the myths they are interested in learning more about.
3. Agile Playground: another one-hour tutorial where we are going to play games to illustrate common Agile principles and concepts.  Hat tip to Tobias Mayer for the great name.

If you are looking to see me speak in person, be sure to come to the Fullerton Code Camp.  I will have three presentations on Agile.

1. Experiencing Agile Through Games: Are you bored at work? Is your Agile team devoid of fun? It could be that you are following the mechanics of your process, but missed out on the critical insight, the “ah-ha” moment, where everything clicked and it all fit into place. Come to this session hosted by Carlton Nettleton and he will demonstrate as many Agile principles and practices he can in 75 minutes through a variety of short simulations and games. Walk away energized and excited about working on an Agile team.
2. Agile Planning Workshop: Every time I speak about Agile software development, I often hear this statement, “Agile teams never know when they are going to be done.”  With the teams I coach, this is not the case.  Come to this workshop and we will walk through the steps I use when planning an Agile team.  Learn the practical tools and techniques for estimating, planning, reporting progress and keeping the stakeholders in the loop. This session will focus more on principles and tools used in Agile planning.
3. Debunking Myths About Agile Software Development: With so many myths surrounding Scrum, Extreme Programming, Lean and Agile software development these days how is someone supposed to succeed with these processes when there is so much half-truth and opinions masquerading as practice and fact? In this workshop, we will look at the myths surrounding planning, deadlines, documentation, architecture & design, requirements, testing, pair programming and other common misconceptions about Agile teams. By the end of this session, Carlton Nettleton will provide real facts about Agile software development, refuting many of these myths once-and-for-all.

Tonight I will be promoting my upcoming class on Nov 12th to the monthly meeting of PMI in San Diego.  In addition, I have five minutes to talk about what I do and talk about the upcoming class.  I am not exactly sure when I will be “on”, but networking starts at 5:30 PM and the keynote speaker begins 7:45 PM.  This should be a lot of fun!

This year, the Agile Alliance and PMI formed an Agile Community of Practice.  The community was formed because both sides recognized their is a lot of misunderstanding about each other, yet we often talk about improving the same types of things.  In the sprit of that enterprise, Look Forward Consulting decided to sponsor the October meeting of the PMI Chapter in San Diego and act as an ambassador to the project management community in San Diego.  For those of you unfamiliar with PMI San Diego, their mission (from their website) is:

“…to serve the professional interests of chapter members by enhancing expertise through project management education, training, and PMI certification preparation; as well as, promoting association and networking within the project management community.”

In practice, this means helping project managers make connections with other project managers, educate each other on the latest techniques and promote their ideas in their profession.  It sounds an awful lot like what we do at XP San Diego.  This should be an interesting collaboration and I am looking forward to meeting some new people.