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.
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
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.
I had the fine fortune of spending a day with 
