Agile Development Blog

I’m excited! Next week is shaping up to be something of an epic little timebox for me: 3 keynotes in 3 different cities in 3 days. I love it! Sustainable pace? Well, maybe not every week. But next week has me fired up. I’ve got a definition of Done Done Done that has me flying high.

Here is what’s on the agenda for my 3-day extravaganza:

April 5th finds me in Chicago, an old haunt of mine.

I’ll be part of one of my favorite events with Rally and its partners: “Agile Comes to You”. The keynote? “12 Agile Adoption Failure Modes.” I’ll be talking about negative patterns for Agile adoptions. Yes, I know there are more than 12 ways to ensure an Agile adoption fails. But I only have 30 minutes to speak :-) Heading back to Chicago, I look forward to making new friends and meeting up with old friends, especially one of our panelists, Brendan Flynn of PointRoll. I’m eager to find out what Chi-town is up to with the move of Agile onto “main street” (or is that the Magnificent Mile?) Want to join us? Sign-up here, come say hello at the Chicago Marriott Downtown, and share some of your experiences and queries.

April 6th I hop over the border to one of my favorite Canadian cities, Toronto, Ontario.

Here again, I’ll have the honor of bringing my keynote perspectives on how Agile adoptions fail. I’m eager to learn with attendees what they have seen in this great city and the surrounding technology area about their Agile adoptions. And, I look forward to our discussions on how we can truly succeed in adopting Agile for great, sustainable business value. If you are in Toronto on the 6th, join us in this “Agile Comes to You” event at the Toronto Grand Hotel and Suites by signing up here.

April 7th I return home to Denver, the “Mile High City.”

And yes there is another event in store. I’m very honored to have been invited to be the keynote speaker at the inaugural “Mile High Agile” event. This is going to be a particularly special event for me. My colleagues Rachel Weston and Zach Nies will be co-presenting on “Using Agile Principles to Solve Tough Problems in Your Business.” Rally as a Platinum Sponsor is investing in our great Agile community in the Denver area. The air may be thin up here but the interest in Agile is deep and passionate. We are extremely fortunate to have a group of wonderful, hard-working organizers from the Agile Denver group: Brad Swanson, Somnath Ghosh, Walter den Haan, Tom Smallwood, Eric Cussen, Jim Turosak, Jan Beaver, and Jon Archer. Brad has worked with me to engage in one of my favorite topics for the keynote, “Elevating the Agile Community of Thinkers.” This talk affords me the opportunity to continue to share my passion about community as thinkers and thinkers as community in our Agile world. To all my friends along the Front Range here in Colorado, I look forward to seeing you at The Plaza at the Denver Merchandise Mart.

Coming full circle, my “3 strange days” will move through Agile failure modes to the great community of thinkers we gather in our Agile growth and success. As Captain Picard would say, “Warp One! Engage!

Jean Tabaka is a crash skier, college hoops shredologist, author and Agile Fellow at Rally Software Development. You can follow Jean on Twitter at @jeantabaka