RallyDev.com
Last week at Agile 2009, I attended a great panel discussion with previous winners of the Gordon Pask Award.
For those unaware, the Agile Alliance states that “The Gordon Pask Award recognizes two people whose recent contributions to Agile Practice make them, in the opinion of the Award Committee, people others in the field should emulate.”
Rally’s newest Coach Aaron Sanders facilitated this 90 minute sessions in three blocks: (1) Q&A with the award winners, (2) Q&A with the audience and (3) reflections by the award winners.
Here are some of my favorite insights shared by the panel:
- “Situational Learning concepts are important as people move beyond agile-by-the-book”
- Here to drive more innovations in “Diffusing agile into the organizations quickly”
- I am focused on coaching as agile has moved beyond selling into “How to do it.”
- Next up – practices for the product/business side to help them build “just enough”
- “I am interested in complex selling concepts as agile is trying to spread up.”
- BDD is just TDD done right (unit and acceptance/story test driven development) – pushes the focus to design and drops the word TEST – this is good.
- Chicken’s and Pigs hurts when trying to create “One Team.”
- What’s Next – Create an “Agile Philanthropy revolution”
- Us versus them – beat them is a human fear response
- Middle managers are often scared
- People who are advocating more then asking – are hard to build trust with
- Next for me is “Whole Company” and Governance strategies
(Last year’s winner Kenji was not at the conference, but you can read a great interview with him on Aaron’s blog - Interview with Kenji Hiranabe – 2008 Pask Award Winner – it gives you more of the flavor of the actual session)
It was great to see that they all had meaningful answers to the question regarding how the award had affected them. Three cheers to Brian Marick for idea and Three Cheers to the awardees for making something out of it! The highly interested members of the audience included Jean Tabaka, Esther Derby, Rachel Davies and about 20 other folks.
If you have not been to an Agile Conference, this kind of intimate gathering is common and why so many people come back year over year. It’s sessions like this that have helped Agile 2009 become such a wonderful mix of new and old, small and large as well as academic and professional.
I look forward to seeing Simon Baker & Gus Power from the UK and David Hussman, the newest Gordon Pask award winners, using their award to extend their influence on the industry. Congratulations gentlemen and Congratulations to the team of volunteers that put on another strong Agile Conference. See you in 2010!
