What's your experience coaching teams toward being Agile?
I began working with Agile processes around 1998 from a paper about Scrum by Ken Schwaber (given to me by a co-worker) and from Jim Highsmith's book, Adaptive Software Development. It just made so much sense then… and it still does. Since then I have been a player-coach on multiple teams working in multiple environments. I've coached multiple XP teams now and I am currently working with a distributed Scrum team and incorporating important practices that have been missing, such as test-driven development and automated "story testing" (in my case with FitNesse).
What do you plan to learn /explore at this conference?
Specifically, I'm hoping to learn/explore more about coaching and mentoring in a distributed setting. I'm experimenting with a concept of establishing a core team and having that team "manage" multiple contract resources while bolstering quality of both the application and its code base.
In addition, I've been to multiple open space conferences now (i.e. XP Day Manhattan, CITCON Denver) and I know that with the caliber of the group there will be a lot to learn that I don't know I need to learn today.
How do you plan to contribute?
I plan on being open and honest about my experiences with the handful of teams I've been on, especially with respect to what I've seen work and problems that I've had to work through. For example, the last team I was on, I was able to get them to try "promiscuous pairing", but not to the switch rate of every 90 minutes. We switched on average 3 times a day (counting starting in the morning as a switch). I found a lot of advantages to the concept (insight into all stories, better collective code ownership, etc), but others on the team also struggled with it (unable to switch task context quickly, lack of sense of completion, etc).
I began working with Agile processes around 1998 from a paper about Scrum by Ken Schwaber (given to me by a co-worker) and from Jim Highsmith's book, Adaptive Software Development. It just made so much sense then… and it still does. Since then I have been a player-coach on multiple teams working in multiple environments. I've coached multiple XP teams now and I am currently working with a distributed Scrum team and incorporating important practices that have been missing, such as test-driven development and automated "story testing" (in my case with FitNesse).
What do you plan to learn /explore at this conference?
Specifically, I'm hoping to learn/explore more about coaching and mentoring in a distributed setting. I'm experimenting with a concept of establishing a core team and having that team "manage" multiple contract resources while bolstering quality of both the application and its code base.
In addition, I've been to multiple open space conferences now (i.e. XP Day Manhattan, CITCON Denver) and I know that with the caliber of the group there will be a lot to learn that I don't know I need to learn today.
How do you plan to contribute?
I plan on being open and honest about my experiences with the handful of teams I've been on, especially with respect to what I've seen work and problems that I've had to work through. For example, the last team I was on, I was able to get them to try "promiscuous pairing", but not to the switch rate of every 90 minutes. We switched on average 3 times a day (counting starting in the morning as a switch). I found a lot of advantages to the concept (insight into all stories, better collective code ownership, etc), but others on the team also struggled with it (unable to switch task context quickly, lack of sense of completion, etc).