Work Different

Getting here early at 5:20 – too early? My session next door and walls came down – why not avoid crowd and risk being in wrong spot?  [Got front row seats 😉 ]

Session start:  History of Snowbird with Alistair Cockburn and “Uncle” Bob Martin. The meeting was originally called Lightweight Methods conference.

What’s interesting is the Manifesto came out of this *team*; and just as this occurred to me Martin Fowler is talking about this quality.

Talking about would they change Manifesto, and [the role of the] individual [in Agile]. Ward Cunningham, founder of XP, mentioning importance of what almost sounds akin to a military unit. Growing a community of people that appreciates excellence.

Fascinated to see who grabs mic. What topic.

Jeff Sutherland: “It would not have happened with [any] one of us.”

Martin Fowler: hates the no “I” in team saying. Always an “I”- I will commit. I will be great [for the team].

Brian Marick:  [story of a ] software dev saying ” my job does not suck as much as it used to.”

[Question from audience.] What did they argue over most? Timeframe. (Jon Kerns)

Alistair mentioning [word] “iteration” was in contention.

Steven Mellor mentions [the word] “software” was used instead of code.

Ron Jeffreys – people want to do Agile but don’t want to do it. Likes to see us [the audience] taking to next level.

By the way – sitting by Lean master Mary Poppendieck, who totally changed how I think of performance reviews.

Alistair – like to see [the word] “agile” melt and just be the way people do things.

Steve thinks documentation needs real work.  [Why did someone code something in a particular way should be captured.]

Ken responds to Alistair that [regarding the word] “Agile” [we] should not let it disappear. May mean opacity is back.[ and that] the evil empire has won.

Ron Jeffreys example of a book and an illustrator who would only work alone and now will draw on the page. [This is interesting to me because it talks about the creative who wants to go off and be in “flow” all by themselves rather than collaborate.]

Want to hear from Arrie DSDM guy.  [He did not speak once during the entire gathering. Pity!]

Alistair mentions 2001 first time Arrie met Kent Beck.

Slowly slowly they are abandoning the park bench – standing, staying where they are. [Moderator got them back in shape later, though, reminding them of the rules.]

The manifesto came from the space between all of us (that Uncle Bob?)

Jeff Sutherland: Lean as a community of learning from the Japanese founders perspective. What actually happens is inspect and adapting. How the lean company’s became great. “Lean needs to be about people and rise to Agile.”  [What this was about was that the western notion of lean loses that sense of community.]

Ken Schwaber:  team

Alistair:  [Talking about when he first encountered Kanban that he thought it amazing that you could] pull out a foundation stone (time box) and nothing crumbled.

Ended with a skit with a bishop and [a salesman – one espousing the religion of Agile; the other espousing the religion of conferences, books and certifications.  I think Tobias Mayer would have loved that part! LOL 🙂 ]

8/9: Edited in the morning and put fixes in brackets for some reason.