Last week, in Copenhagen, I had my first ever taste of moose. I also had my first taste of cowberries.  Both different and tasty and new to my palate. And so I suppose you could say my palate matured a little as a result. That alone could have been enough to make for an interesting week. But what do moose and cowberries have to do (if anything) with my passion around Agile transformations

Several weeks ago, I posted about my pending Agile Europe Road Tour . In that post, I mentioned that I’d be on an Agile grand tour in Europe for 6 weeks. And so here I am. The trip started in London, moved to Copenhagen Denmark, Aarhus Denmark, back to Copenhagen, and then on to Stockholm where I am right now. I’ll soon have a brief trip to Estonia, back to Sweden in Malmo, and the a final stop in London as the punctuation of the tour before heading home to Boulder.

Lucky for me, the variety of Agile conversations has been delightful everywhere. At the Agile Business Conference in London, it was wonderful to bring my “Community of Thinkers” message as a keynote. (And yes, for those of you keeping score, I delivered it barefooted :-) The keynote afforded me opportunity to once again promote my conviction about our actions as an Agile community. That is, as Agile matures and as Agile transformations are going mainstream, we must invite dialogue, inquiry and artistry in how we bring our “genius selves” to the continued healthy growth of Agile.

At the GOTO conference in Aarhus, I suspected that the very technical community gathered there wouldn’t be powerfully driven by Agile conversations. And yet, there was a full day of an Agile track. In that track I talked about Simon Sinek’s  ”The Golden Circle: Tell Me Why” with regard to Agile Adoptions. (The talk received a nice write up in Danish here.) Both in this track and in my keynote the following day, I found people clearly eager to be transformative agents in their organizations based on their Agile passions. My keynote on “Complexity Theory and Design Thinking in Agile Adoptions” helped further these discussions and even invited several people to approach me afterward to talk about how they now understood they work they really wanted to do in Agile. They agreed. Agile was more than just a set of engineering practices and more than the Scrum framework; organizational Agile and its growth are now moving beyond just a level set with IT disciplines. And it wasn’t too shabby to get to play Pong using my Smartphone, or to watch the annual Lego Mindstorm competition!

Liv, Jean, Aino, and Helene - GOTO Aarhus Denmark

Another part of my GOTO positive experience were the great people of Trifork : tireless volunteers and selfless sponsors of GOTO throughout the organization including their energetic CTO Kresten Krab Thorup. I was grateful to meet so many Trifork people, to enjoy their enthusiasm, intellectual curiosity, passion and knowledge. In particular, it was such a pleasure to meet Aino Vonge Corry, Helene Simoni Thorup, Janne Jul Jensen, Liv Beswick Skov, Marlene Staunstrup Hyldborg, and Simon Hem Pedersen. Also from Trifork, Jesper Boeg was kind enough to provide me with a copy of his book on Kanban, as well as a book on Personal Effectiveness by his colleague Troels Richter. And Jasper Bjergard Arildslund sponsored me in speaking at a Copenhagen ScrumGroup gathering. Such great enthusiasm around Agile and its growth in software development communities worldwide.

But the pinnacle to date of discussions about complex challenging Agile transformations has been during my time at Rally’s Agile Open Forum in Copenhagen October 19th. Why? Because, in that day of tutorials and interactions, we engaged as a community of executives looking to bring Agile success out of the IT group. We created dialogue about the challenges organizations face when we move Agile upstream from the IT work into the business, and downstream into Agile practices for deployment and maintenance. Besides the session presenters from Rally (Ryan Martens in a surprise appearance, Karl Scotland, Wanda Marginean, and me) we were very fortunate to have the insights of Peter Holmelin of NetOp regarding his experiences in adopting Agile and creating significant organizational change.

I feel so fortunate to have engaged as a sponsor, a speaker and a participant in this event. In Copenhagen, During that one day, we concentrated on seeking the next level of maturity with regard to Agile practices  effective scaling, and organizational change. I loved it. The level of engagement and the variety of conversations were definitely different than any other Agile event I have attended in the past.

Karl Scotland - Agile Open Forum, Copenhagen Denmark

All in all, you might say that, as I have been on this tour, I see that the Agile community is primed to stretch the “knowledge discovery process” posited by David Anderson in his blog based on his application of Michael Kennedy’s work in Lean Enterprise guidance. In the discussions in London, Aarhus, Copenhagen and now Stockholm, we’ve been challenging ourselves to expand the definition of knowledge and the definition of discovery as Agile expands: when does the discovery begin, and when does it end (if ever)?

To that end, I’ve been listening to these leaders of large Agile adoptions. And I’ve heard the need to create greater understanding around the value and disciplines of Agile Portfolio Steering. (In fact, Wanda Marginean led a great afternoon session game on Enterprise Steering based on work by Rally colleagues Isaac Montgomery and Ronica Roth.)

Now I am in Stockholm. Thanks to a colleague from the LSSC community, Joakim Sunden of Spotify, I have been invited to a number of additional Agile events here. The level of discussions of Agile transformations continues to concentrate on organizational issues. I’m excited about my upcoming talk at the LESS2011 conference on Systems Perspectives in Agile Adoptions through Visioning and Learning Models.  I can’t wait to hear the participants’ experiences and challenges, to engage in all the interactions and, perhaps, to continue to expand my palate as well.

And so my Agile Europe Trip continues. As for my taste in food though, I know right now I won’t be tasting the specialty found on my dinner menu in Stockholm last week: “Långhalsar” in Swedish. Or if you prefer English: “Barnacles”. Gotta draw the line somewhere.

Jean Tabaka is a frequent flyer on no particular airline hence no particular status, an author and Agile Fellow at Rally Software Development. You can follow Jean on Twitter at @jeantabaka

I’ve been thinking about leaning a lot lately, and not of the pressed-wood bookshelf nuisance variety. I talk about Lean with my colleague and President of Rally, Ryan Martens. So when I talk about a leaning bookshelf, I’m referring to my interest in Lean in all its forms. I am talking about the books I’ve been reading  that pertain to Lean. And, more specifically, how can I turn my “Leaning bookshelf” into a continuous “learning bookshelf”?  How can I think about my evolution of thought and practice with regard to Agile as influenced by Lean? What could be a good, rewarding goal?

And so, through discussions with Ryan and some of my own quiet thought, I came up with a goal of improving my notion of learning. Yes, for me, that seems to be what I am discovering more and more about Lean:

• How to learn
• How to teach others to learn
• How to encourage organizational learning
• How to avoid/eliminate re-learning

And so in this post, I thought I would share what I am reading, have read, or am about to read, and ask you for your comments and recommendations with regard to my leaning—>learning path. Some of the books may not look directly associated with Lean. I just know that they have been part of my lean learning journey.

The Contents of My Leaning Bookshelf:

1. Getting the Right Thing Done – Pascal Dennis
2. Hitotsubashi on Knowledge Management – Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiro Nonaka
3. Implementing Lean Software Development: from Concept to Cash – Mary and Tom Poppendieck
4. Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit – Mary Poppendieck and Tom Poppendieck
5. Lean Thinking – James P. Womack amd Daniel T. Jones
6. Lean Transformation: How to Change Your Business into a Lean Enterprise – Bruce A. Henderson and Jorge L.Larco
7. Learning to See – Mike Rother and John Shook
8. Managing to Learn – John Shook
9. Product Development for the Lean Enterprise – Michael N. Kennedy
10. Ready, Set, Dominate – Michael Kennedy, Kent Harmon, Ed Minnock
11. Scaling Lean and Agile Development – Craig Larman, Bas Vodde
12. Scrumban – Corey Ladas
13. The Knowledge-Creating Company – Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi
14. The Elegant Solution – Matthew E. May
15. The Toyota Way – Jeffrey Liker
16. Thinking Beyond Lean – Michael A. Cusumano and Kentaro Nobeoka
17. The Art of Lean Software Development – Curt Hibbs, Steve Jewett, & Mike Sullivan
18. The Goal – Eliyahu M. Goldratt

Looking at my leaning bookshelf and thinking of my focus on learning, I realize I haven’t included any Senge books or others about organizational learning. That will have to wait for another post.

What books are important to you on your leaning/learning path?