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
For me RallyON was one of those – you know what, I am living my dream – moments in life. My favorite town (Boulder) was filled with 150 of our largest and best customers along with 85 expert agile practitioners from our coaching, product and technical account management teams. It was a swarm of agile expertise all gathered to share with each other for the sole purpose of getting smarter and building community. And you know what?
It turned out great! We prepared very well, the whole company came together to support it and all the right people were there. Typical for Colorado, the weather was perfect on day one (see the video below), but snowed on day two. Check out the runners pictured on top of Mount Sanitas in Boulder for our charity run with the white streaks of snow on May 11th! Fortunately, many folks also joined the Yoga class inside and we ended up donating 260 meals to our non-profit partner, Community Food Share, during the corporate challenge month.
Don’t just trust me
Please don’t just trust my words about this being a great conference! Below are a few of the artifacts from the conference including a quick video, the conference community site, links to twitter stream from the conference tag #RallyOn11 and great questions posed to StackExchange. But, the most stunning artifact is that 99% of of the attendees surveyed said they would attend again and recommend it to another member of their team.
To give you a little taste of the setting and the energy, PLAY the video to hear a collective answer to: WHAT IS AGILE?
If you are interested in what happened at RallyON, view the Twitter archive, join the discussion, download the presentations or read the notes at the RallyOn.Rallydev.com site by clicking on the banner below. To comment or participate, simply login with your Rally username and password or create an account if you don’t have Rally credentials.
A HUGE THANK YOU
The overwhelming success of this two day event could not have happened without tons of help. A huge thank you to:
our customers who showed up ready to learn and share – as well as present over 100 open space topics
our product, technical account management and coaching teams for kicking day one off with Rally developed content
I kicked off the conference by saying this was all about building a strong community. By bringing our best users together with all of our internal agile experts, it was my hope that we could address some of the problems that Jean, Eric and Liz highlighted in late 2009 with their Community of Thinkers post. And, also to run some experiments based on the shortcomings that we highlighted in the #10yrsagile celebration conference and my post. Based on feedback, usage of the RallyON community site and the excitement from the show, I think we got a community snowball rolling toward the crest of the hill.
Please let us know how you thought we did, either physically or virtually, at the conference, and share your ideas for how we can continue building our community.
Recently, I was working on an introductory presentation about Kanban. A “thorough” Google search revealed how drawn out and convoluted many Kanban explanations can be. Was there one true answer I was missing? Something nice and succinct like, say, a tweet on twitter?
Acting on this and laziness, I decided to pose the following question to twitter:
I was so surprised by the number of great responses that I’ve decided to compile and share them with you here:
giff24:#kanban 130 chrctrs? PLS!!! I dnt hve time or patience 2 rd that much
erwilleke:#kanban combines systems thinking with a work-limited pull system to allow rapid maturation of teams and delivery of software.
davenicolette:#kanban “What 100-130 characters would you use to describe Kanban?” I’d use the cast of _Who Framed Roger Rabbit?_
knoxgourmet: Kanban is Scrum without the mess, no sprint planning, no midrange planning, no MSG headache.
kjscotland: Map the value stream, visualize, limit WIP & establish cadence. Reduce WIP to improve flow of value and individual fulfillment
agilemanager: #kanban visualize flow & limit WIP to encourage evolutionary change towards a lean outcome & high maturity culture
Sprezzatura: First establish your value stream. Next limit your work in progress. Then visualize & learn from your workflow. #kanban
most_alive: . #kanban: value flows, post-its move, step,step,step, workers unite
neontapir: Kanban uses visual signals to track and optimize work delivery through key stages in its lifecycle.
I like the commonalities around value, visualization, limited WIP, pull systems, cadence, and flow. This tells me that Kanban is speaking a common and useful language to a lot of us. And, its value can be articulated in a tweet.
But my quest goes on!
I encourage you to add to this list by submitting your own 130 character Kanban definition either as a comment to this post or as a tweet to me (@jeantabaka and use #kanban in your answer.)
In April, I’m attending the Lean SSC conference in Atlanta. There will be a lot of discussion about Kanban. I’ll personally carry all comments and tweets to the conference for inclusion in the discussion. If you’re able to attend, let’s stretch the envelope and go beyond 130 characters on Kanban.
For 2010, lets find ways to focus on teaching our craft and growing the world of skilled software development professionals instead of trying to figure out who is “right.”
I believe much of the “Escalation” that Jean is seeing was correctly titled by Regina Mullen as a battle to be “right.” (see and read Escalation is Killing Agile – Can We Please Stop It? and Escalation is Killing our Healthy Conflict in Agile). That behavior focuses on carving up the pie instead of growing the pie. There has been so much added to the field of software development methods, tools and techniques from the guiding ideas of Agile. Now is not the time to stop and eat.
For me, 2010 is about continuing to grow the Agile software development pie’s reach and innovations.
I believe one of the key fixes to the problem of escalation can be found through increased professionalism and certification in Agile. By raising the bar through “difficult and skills-based certification,” as Brian Marick and the board at the Agile Alliance described, we can advance the Agile discourse through :
a defined a bar that is deep in skill, knowledge and practice
a significant enough bar to engage College and University study and examination
research and curriculum that explore the tough questions in a scientific method
development of more flexible or “T” shaped individuals that can see and work beyond silo roles.
I am a member of a community of thinkers and I believe that communities exist as homes for professionals to learn, teach, and reflect on their work.
A Community of Thinkers creates more leadership in our profession. I see the expanding certification efforts in 2010 as great steps in these directions:
I encourage everyone in our community to figure out how to put energy toward one or more of these efforts. The benefit of actively learning, teaching and reflecting on our work should lead us all to expanding civil dialogue that works to understand all points of view and keep expanding our thinking. Thus broader education and difficult certification helps create a “Community of Thinkers.” And, a Community of Thinkers will create a virtuous cycle of win/win and thus a larger pie for all.
I had the fine fortune of spending a day with Liz Keogh and Eric Willeke in Boulder last week.
What a wonderful experience! The three of us gathered with the goal of producing something for the Lean and Kanban software community. We didn’t know what that would be. We just knew we felt strongly that we should give something to the community.
We were heavily influenced by past conversations with Chris Matts, his call for “fewer leaders, more leadership”, and a desire to see the Lean Software and Systems Consortium (LSSC) learn from some of the trials that other communities and community-leading organizations have undergone. Ryan Martens, the CTO and a founder of Rally, also provided thoughtful input to our discussions during the day.
As we talked, we discovered something. We were all keenly interested in the general notion of “community”. We became less convinced that the LSSC needed a challenge from us, and more convinced that it was applicable to software communities generally. For me, this was a deeply personal statement and commitment. It played heavily into my recent blog posts on “Escalation”. And yet, together, Liz and Eric and I found the same deep conviction. So as you look at the statement I provide below, if it’s exactly the same as the copies on Liz or Eric’s sites, it’s only because their arguments were equally sound and convincing.
Because of that personal nature, we wanted to avoid putting our statement up as some kind of manifesto that people can sign. If you feel strongly enough about this statement that you would want to sign up, copy it. Post it on your own site. Attribute it to wherever you got your copy from – the act of sharing is more important to us than the act of creation – and feel free to change it so that it reflects your own values. I don’t think that any statement like this can ever be perfect, nor will we perfectly live up to it.
I am a member of a community of thinkers. So are you.
“A Community of Thinkers”
I am a member of a community of thinkers.
I believe that communities exist as homes for professionals to learn, teach, and reflect on their work.
I challenge each community in the software industry to:
reflect and honor the practitioners who make its existence possible;
provide an excellent experience for its members;
support the excellent experience its members provide for their clients and colleagues in all aspects of their professional interactions;
exemplify, as a body, the professional and humane behavior of its members;
engage and collaborate within and across communities through respectful exploration of diverse and divergent insights;
embrace newcomers to the community openly and to celebrate ongoing journeys; and,
thrive on the sustained health of the community and its members through continual reflection and improvement.
I believe that leaders in each community have a responsibility to exhibit these behaviors, and that people who exhibit these behaviors will become leaders.
I am a member of a community of thinkers. If I should happen to be a catalyst more than others, I consider that a tribute to those who have inspired me.
RallyDev.com
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.
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.
I had the fine fortune of spending a day with 
