Agile France 2010

Bruno Sbille opened Agile france with a keynote on learning channels, with a title that could be translated as "Neuro-linguistic Programming and Agile: eyes, ears, and touch." He explained that while we can all learn in multiple ways, people have one or two channels they prefer. The channels are visual, auditory, and kinetic. While he did practice what he preached, by inviting us to wave, clap, look at, make a noise, or otherwise connect with other people in the room, I was a bit frustrated that it wasn't more interactive.

In the second part of his speech, he presented a model on drama in the workplace, in which he identified the major roles that people play when there is a bout of drama: victim, villain, and hero. He then explained it's our job to recognize this role-playing, and to diffuse it. For example, a victim can refuse help from the hero; a hero can hold back from solving problems.

Oana Juncu led a session with a colleague (not sure of the name) called "How to assess the success of an Agile Project". I was interested in it because I am curious about quantitative metrics that can be used with minimal side effects; instead we discussed intangible factors and qualitative measures. Still, the session was effective and high-bandwidth; we identified success factors as a group that included things like responsiveness to learning, flow of value, reduced turnover, flexible yet stable code, etc.

For the day's first pause, I was busy setting up the room for our talk, so I didn't get to network.

Next Olivier and I presented "Speak Like a Native". We had about 20 people, including Esther Derby who had come, I suppose, in hopes for an English-speaking topic, but that it was not. We set the stage by giving a business context, then explained one user need at a time to each of the 3 teams--their task was to draw a user interface. As soon as they had something that looked potentially useable, Olivier or I would go do a "walk-through" by asking what happens when we click on buttons or select certain fields. It was designed to make people frustrated, and that it did. Then we did a retrospective to see why it was frustrating, what we might have done to make it go better, and we re-ran the activity. As always, we finished with a feedback piece--this time using a Blond ROTI.

At lunch, as I usually do, I introduced myself to someone I don't know and ate with them. We talked a little about where they're from and what they do, but didn't exchange contact info. After lunch I bumped into a few Agile Tour organizers, including Colin Garriga-Salaün and Gabrien le Van, then I wanted to go to Esther Derby's session but it was too full, so I headed out for the airport. It was good to have a little extra time to get there--the subway wasn't too full and I didn't have to rush.