Rally was founded shortly after the signing of the Agile Manifesto, the document created at a 2001 meeting of leading software developers at Snowbird, Utah, that gave rise to the Agile movement. Since then, Rally has taken what we’ve learned from leading countless enterprise Agile transformations and funneled our collective experience into a formula that includes our Agile ALM platform and products, our expert coaching services, a vast library of educational resources, and a supportive community for asking questions and sharing advice. In celebration of the 10-year anniversary of the signing of the Agile Manifesto, Rally had a special commemorative activity at the Agile2011 conference.
The announcements we made at the conference are a culmination of Rally’s experience in helping organizations expand Agile practices to maximize value across the entire organization, along with strengthening support for multi-process development (check out these video interviews on SSQ’s blog to hear more). Our first announcement highlights Rally’s support for multi-process Agile. As Agile moves deeper into new functional areas, Rally’s Agile ALM platform, products and coaching services have been evolving to meet these diverse needs. When Scrum is not the best fit, we include support for other Agile methods such as Kanban and high-assurance methods to ensure that we can be the go-to partner for all enterprise Agile roll-outs. We announced:
Enhanced Kanban support, including support for Class of Service highlighting and reporting. Read this product blog post for more details.
A new Iteration Summary Panel for Scrum teams that provides in-product coaching assistance. The panel guides teams based on their performance and offers coaching-authored best practices.
Apps that support traceability and documentation in Rally within High Assurance organizations (check out this blog series on High Assurance Software Development).
Our second announcement signifies the bridging of Agile into the Project Management Office (PMO). In its 10th year, Agile’s mainstream appeal has broadened its reach from the technical to the business parts of the organization. We recognize the trend and are helping to ease the transition for all parties. We announced:
An update to Rally Idea Manager, the leading Agile ALM demand management solution. This release bolsters the integration with Rally and provides a new leaderboard to drive end-user engagement.
Availability of a new Agile Portfolio Steering services offering. This offering represents the next frontier of Agile and includes an interactive simulation to facilitate collaboration between Agile teams and business stakeholders.
Field Guide
At Agile2010, we provided vuvuzelas in celebration of the World Cup and, while I’m sure that many of you annoyed your families with these, we decided to leave you with a lasting educational giveaway at Agile2011. We assembled a content guide written by our coaches on Agile best practices. We hope you find this field guide useful in your day-to-day activities – download your copy here.
Thanks to everyone who contributed to the “Road to Agility” illustration, whether you were at Agile2011 or were following our progress on Twitter, Facebook and Flickr. In addition to celebrating the 10-year anniversary of the Agile Manifesto with the community at Agile2011, Rally also embraced the opportunity to reflect on how much we’ve learned from helping some of the world’s largest organizations apply Agile practices. We look forward to making continued meaningful improvement in our industry, and leading the next 10 years of Agile innovation.
Todd Olson is VP of Product at Rally Software. He is a marathon runner and cake baker. Find Todd on Twitter at @tolson.
In my post last week, Agile and Rally – We’ve come a long way, I mentioned that Rally has a special commemorative activity at our booth this year. Now that the conference is here, I wanted to share more about this cool activity and let you know how you can participate with us.
Illustrating Agility
Starting today and throughout the conference, Rally will be illustrating, literally, the past, present and future of Agile’s exponential growth from the Agile Manifesto through mainstream adoption, and beyond. We need your ideas to help shape this illustration! If you are attending the conference, please stop by the Rally booth during exhibit hours and tell us about your Agile adoption, your most important milestones and the trends you think will shape the future of agility. If you’re not at our booth, or not even at the conference this week, you can also tweet your submission #roadtoagility. Then be sure to stick around and see our performance illustrator Bryce Widom drawing submissions in real-time.
We will be sharing photos of the illustration throughout the conference. Join us on Twitter (the #RoadtoAgility hashtag), Flickr, Facebook, and through the comments below to contribute your ideas, share your thoughts and see how the illustration evolves.
Jean Tabaka is a frequent flyer on no particular airline, an author and Agile Fellow at Rally Software Development. You can follow Jean on Twitter at @jeantabaka
In 2001, the Agile Manifesto was created with 17 signatories from around the world. Following on the heels of the first XP conference in Sardinia in 2000, the Manifesto fired its shot of agility across the Waterfall bow. A year later, at XP/Agile Universe 2002, I found myself standing at a folding table with Janet Danforth of Facilitator4Hire. We were selling facilitation services to the members of the Agile community gathered at a Courtyard by Marriott in Lincolnshire, Illinois. Approximately 80-100 people had come together in that steamy summer venue to continue Agile discussions and to define ongoing growth of methodologies, practices and frameworks.
Where we were
At the same time I was at my folding table in Lincolnshire in 2002, Ryan Martens was at a whiteboard in Boulder, Colorado. Ryan was brainstorming ideas about how he could use Agile practices to create a Software as a Service platform in the Agile domain. His goal? To provide zero-waste, low-carbon emissions applications and services for this growing, vibrant community.
In 2003, the Agile community gathered in Salt Lake City for the Agile Development Conference. This was my first time presenting at an Agile conference. Janet Danforth and I conducted a workshop: Collaboration 4 Agile Projects. And, unbeknownst to me, Ryan was also in Salt Lake City for his first Agile conference. As Ryan was busy engaging vendors about how they were supporting the adoption of Agile, I was busy networking with Agile thought leaders and helping to found “The Freaking Flock” (you’ll have to ask me about that in person!) Our paths were set and Agile was on the move.
Fast Forward to 2011
Now, in 2011, we are 10 years on from the Manifesto signing, 9 years on from the first sighting of me at the folding table, and 8 years on from Ryan’s first foray into the conference.
The Agile 2011 conference is an exciting one for both Agile and Rally. We are pleased once again to be a Title Sponsor of the conference. This year, August 8-12, Rally has 11 speaking sessions on the wonderfully vast and diverse program.
We’ve also participated behind the scenes in advance of the conference as producers, co-producers and reviewers for various conference stages. And, once again, we’ll have a booth where you can come to meet our Agile coaches, talk with our technical gurus, and see the latest that is happening with Rally’s Agile ALM platform and services. Plus, you won’t want to miss our special commemorative activity at the booth this year. Stay tuned to the blog and follow our Twitter hashtag #roadtoagility for more details on how you can participate with us!
Going back to my history of Agile and Rally and the conferences
Ryan and I never met at the 2003 conference. But in 2004, as the conference moved into the northern Rockies in Calgary, Alberta, 4 of us stood together at a folding table in a small hallway. Rally’s representation at that Agile conference was Ryan as President of the company, Richard Leavitt as our VP of Marketing and Sales, Brad Norris as our sole sales person, and me as the sole Agile Coach. At that point, none of us were speakers. However, Rally has had one or more speakers at each conference since: Denver in 2005, Minneapolis in 2006, Washington DC in 2007, Toronto in 2008, Chicago in 2009, and the 2010 event in Orlando. Additionally, Ryan served on the Agile Alliance board during the years of the Washington D.C. and Toronto conferences.
From the folding table to now
Some things have changed in Rally’s Agile journey. We’ve grown from a 20-person company in 2004 to over 250 people and counting. Ryan is now the head of the office of the CTO. Richard is now the Executive Vice President of Worldwide Marketing. Brad is our Vice President of Field Operations. And I am an Agile Fellow in the Office of the CTO.
From a Manifesto, a whiteboard, folding tables, and a single speaker to title sponsorship with multiple speakers, producers, reviewers, and booth presence in a true exhibit hall at a conference with over 1,600 attendees, we’ve indeed come a long way!
Jean Tabaka is a frequent flyer on no particular airline, an author and Agile Fellow at Rally Software Development. You can follow Jean on Twitter at @jeantabaka
I was fortunate and honored to be able to attend the 10 year Agile celebration in Snowbird, UT on February 11th and 12th. The 2-day meeting in Snowbird had four very positive attributes that allowed the 33 participants to produce a solid retrospective on the last 10 years.
Group busy in Snowbird, UT 2011
It was:
Thoughtful
Diversified
Well-facilitated
Collaborative
As a result, it was a very satisfying event because of the energy that Alistair put into it and the facilitation by Janet and Bob from Coach4hire. The event met all of Alistair’s objectives and everyone seemed to have fun. What more can you ask?
Maybe you want to know what came out? As a celebration and retrospective, we did a very good job of appreciating the positive things of the past 10-years and reflecting on the puzzles and issues.
We agreed that we achieved the following things in the last 10 years:
changed the mindset of a big portion of industry allowing folks to move past agile
recognition that software development is a team sport
emphasis on shipping and rapid feedback, higher level of trust
transparency, reporting & tracking
unit and automated testing is good,
worldwide acceptance that it is OK to be agile
What we did not do was make a plan. A small group did spend time discussing ways the Agile Alliance could evolve to support our maturing and growing community. As we were all from diverse companies and background, we were not in a place to really make a plan. Rachel Davies, Todd Little and I shared context from having been on the Agile Alliance board. And, Todd Little is taking many of the recommendations back to the Agile Alliance’s next board meeting in Stockholm. I have hopes to see some of these ideas surface at Agile 2011 that will be back in Utah in August.
If you are really interested in the events of the weekend, I would encourage you to read these posts and others that will surely emerge during the remainder of the week:
10 Years Agile Web Site – with background leading up the event – results will be publish here in future
There were four summary statements that the group developed with regards to what we, the industry, need to do in the next 10 years of Agile. Please know that the group does not see the high value in these summary statements, but in the details that are below these categories.
Demand Technical Excellence
Promote Individual Change and Lead Organizational Change
Organize Knowledge and Improve Education
Maximize Value Creation Across the Entire Process
At Rally, we are planning on being here for the next 10 years even as the industry moves from revolution to evolution:
“The mission now is incremental improvement. It’s evolution, education and improving levels of maturity, rather than a revolution. The enemy is now within. The enemy is as Joshua Kerievsky put it “all the crap I see out there” despite 10 years of Agile methods.” – From David Andersen’s post
10 Years ago as the Agile Manifesto was being crafted in Snowbird, UT, I was working at BEA Systems on E-commerce product and its web services strategy. Agile has had a big impact on my past including the Global Village team in 1995, operating Avitek in the late 1990′s and through the first four releases of BEA’s Ecommerce solutions in 2000. I had read Kent Beck’s white book, but I did not notice the Snowbird event in 2001. It was not until I had left BEA in late 2001, that I noticed the snowball forming. I am very happy to have been personally and professionally part of helping this critical industry scale the benefits of software agility.
I feel like I owe a big Thank You to the whole community, we really made progress and it has been a great last 10 years. Now, I am really looking forward to the next 10 years where we are able to use these attitudes, beliefs, skills, capabilities, awareness, and sensibilities to work with with some of societies most complex difficulties.
After reading the Manifesto for Agile Software Development in January of 2002, Rally really took shape. I am proud of my involvement in the software industry for the last 25 years, but the last 10 have been fantastic thanks to the group pictured below, who came together in February 2001 in Snowbird, UT.
A ten year mark is the perfect time to stop and reflect and the 10-Year Manifesto anniversary is no different. In this spirit, Dr. Alistair Cockburn, one of the original Manifesto authors, is hosting an open discussion on February 12 with a group of 35 individuals from varied backgrounds in our industry. I am proud to attend and we are proud to be a sponsor of this event. I look forward to joining in the reflection, discussion and celebration with other attendees at the Snowbird resort. (With these recent storms, the 100+ inches of base and 14″ of fresh snow should make for a great weekend.)
The event theme is “Solved, Solvable, Unsolvable Problems.” As participants we’ve been challenged to consider the following three questions:
What problems in software or product development have we solved (and therefore should not simply keep re-solving)?
What problems are fundamentally unsolvable (so therefore we should not keep trying to “solve” them)?
What problems can we sensibly address – problems that we can mitigate either with money, effort or innovation? (and therefore, these are the problems we should set our attention to, next.)
What do you think? What are your answers? What other questions should we be asking of each other? The Agile community needs to be an active part of the anniversary celebration and the conversation it creates. Please take a moment to stop, reflect and make your own contribution to this event. Visit the ‘10-Years of the Agile Manifesto‘ website to join the dialog. You can also post your photos of agile development from the last decade to the event’s Flickr group. Follow and contribute to the discussion on Twitter using the hashtag: #10yrsagile. And, share your thoughts with us in the comments below.
The Agile Manifesto 10th anniversary will continue at the Agile 2011 Conference scheduled for August 7 – 13 in Salt Lake City. Agile 2011 will provide another opportunity for the Agile community to reflect on the Agile Manifesto and how it contributed to software development over the last decade.
Saturday’s Snowbird event marks an amazing 10 years in the software development industry. This is a great opportunity to think about how far we’ve come and what we can accomplish in the next 10 years. What’s on your roadmap for 2021?
I have a systems archetype in mind that is troubling me. I am annoyed that some of the current (and past) one-ups-man-ship around Agile is distracting us from the useful constructive dialogue I crave.
The archetype I am thinking of “Escalation” is where “my fix is your nightmare and you have to lose in order for me to win“.
Situations can get sticky with too much escalation
Think of the American movie “A Christmas Story” about young Ralphie Parker and his own dilemma with “Escalation”. In this classic scene, Ralphie’s friends Flick and Schwartz dispute over whether a person’s tongue will stick to a frozen flagpole. Schwartz ultimately issues Flick a “triple dog dare” (the most serious of childhood dares); bypassing “triple dare” and resulting in a serious breach of boyhood protocol.
Dares, blames, accusations and hard stances all contribute to the distraction and destruction that is associated with “Escalation”. When everyone is trying to win, the system suffers. Anyone’s “win” is nobody’s win; and anyone’s “loss” is everyone’s loss.
I see no place for this in Agile and yet the fight is on. Triple Dog Dares are becoming business as usual.
Escalation is Killing Agile.
So why the heck are we involved in so much escalation around things like “My Agile approach is better than your Agile approach” or, “Well, you’re only in it for the money” or, “I’m going to make fun of you until you stop what you are doing“?
How is ANY of this furthering my growth or our organizations’ growth in Agile?
In a systems view of the world, we can see patterns made up of balancing loops and reinforcing loops. In the case of “Escalation”, we see factions sucked into a downward spiral reinforcing loop of fighting. The more someone fights, the more the fighting continues.
In our case, the fight may be about certification, or timeboxes, or engineering practices, or continuous improvement, or tools. Fights then lead to blaming and finger pointing. And in the systems view of things, once you get into blaming individuals or other parts of the system, your system is broken. Not the individuals, the system.
So in our Agile world, I ask, “How is this fighting useful? Could someone explain that to me? And how is it our system has metamorphosed into one that allows (encourages?) blame and mockery, one that remains so, or even worse, seeks to move further and further into this archetype?“
For me, a more useful approach is to find balancing loops. Here, we seek to create more knowledge in dialogue not blame. We seek insights with others interested in dialogue, not in escalating debates and accusatory blame. We look toward inquiry versus advocacy and so we seek people interested in this kind of work, not fighting.
One way I intend to take advantage of balancing loops is to seek people interested in Agile growth NOT in attacks on approaches or individuals. I’m thinking, for instance, of Linda Rising as a good example. Linda has been our steadfast beacon of reaching into kindness versus violence or fear or confrontation to use our personal perspectives usefully and creatively.
I’m done with all the distractions that don’t feed my growth. I’ve lost the ability to abide behaviors that don’t give evidence of what was written with conviction in the Agile Manifesto. The train has left the station on a number of initiatives within Agile, Let’s stop fighting them. More fighting isn’t going to make anything go away. Instead, we will just feed “Escalation”. Let us get on with where each of us can find and contribute to growth. Please.
Here is my personal commitment going forward:
My personal commitment is to seek those interested in creating more and more insights about how we can grow and learn. I will seek dialogue around various Agile approaches and what can contribute to the growth of Agile. I will not take delight in anyone’s cleverness or meanness toward an approach they don’t support. I will seek voices of engagement, deeper intention, non-blame, and creative inquiry. “Escalation”, to me, is like the old joke of trying to teach a pig to sing: it only annoys the pig and it frustrates you. I have no intention of spending time with such activity in Agile. It distracts and annoys me. You’ll have to figure out for yourself how it serves you or hinders you.
So, moving forward, let us think about true dialogue. Let’s challenge ourselves if that is what we invite in each of our interactions. To add encouragement and inspiration, think about the etymology of the word – dialogue:
From the Greek “to gather reason through speech, usually between two people“. I invite each of us to reach for gathering not escalating.
Without this intention, we will all lose.
About the Author: Jean Tabakais a wine enthusiast, author and Agile Fellow at Rally Software Development. Subscribe today to get free updates by emailor RSS.
Recently, I filmed several “Chalk Talk” videos about some of the basics of Agile software development.
These 3 – 5 minute informal videos are intended to provide quick, easy introductions to Agile topics. This first set of talks focus on thee Agile Manifesto, the Iteration Retrospective, and the Iteration Demo and Review (yes, I think these latter two are different!) My intent here is to provide you with an alternate way to get access to these fundamentals.
These easy-to-follow videos are great resources to share with your team as they are getting up to speed on the Agile process.
Besides being a quick-start source for your own team, consider using these videos as a quick reference for others. They can be an easy introduction to Agile for people in your organization interested in getting some basic “look-and-feel” without having to read several books. My hope is that each “Chalk Talk” starts or furthers a conversation about the particular topic. I started with the Agile Manifesto in order to lay the ground work about why anyone should care about Agile, what were its roots.
The other two topics are provided here are in no particular order. They are just topics about which I am passionate. I also chose these 2 “Chalk Talk” topics because I find they are very often misunderstood with regard to purpose and attendees and agenda. See if these meeting descriptions look like your iteration meetings.
I have some other Chalk Talks already queued up, so stay tuned! I plan to keep recording Chalk Talk videos around Agile principles and practices. I’d love to hear your feedback on what other topics you’d like me to cover. Coming up, look for an overview of Scrum and some of the other meetings we use in Agile. For now, watch these videos and tell me what you think.
RallyDev.com
Rally was founded shortly after the signing of the Agile Manifesto, the document created at a 2001 meeting of leading software developers at Snowbird, Utah, that gave rise to the Agile movement. Since then, Rally has taken what we’ve learned from leading countless enterprise Agile transformations and funneled our collective experience into a formula that includes our Agile ALM platform and products, our expert coaching services, a vast library of educational resources, and a supportive community for asking questions and sharing advice. In celebration of the 10-year anniversary of the signing of the Agile Manifesto, Rally had a special commemorative activity at the Agile2011 conference.
