First, there was the volcano in April and some speakers couldn’t make it to Atlanta so we had OpenVolcano 2010. This was just an appetiser. Today was another tasty bite, a conference at Bletchley Park organised by Karl and Rachel (to coincide with Agile Coaches Gathering), with a bunch of great presentations initially destined for Atlanta.
- Karl Scotland – A Kanban Multiverse
- Mattias Skarin – Converting A Scrum Team to Kanban
- Simon Baker & Gus Power – Product Development in the Land of the Free
- Damon Morgan from uSwitch.com- Learn to Lean: Becoming a Lean Startup
- Benjamin Mitchell – Using Kanban to Get Knowledge and Continuously Improve
- Liz Keogh – Behaviour Driven Development: Learning as a constraint
- Eric Willeke – Value Stream Languages
The day was nicely concluded by Eric’s talk adapted on the fly and a quick fishbowl session.
Some of the recurrent themes I picked upon, were:
- visualising the work
- understanding how the work works
- understanding the product
- importance of creating good relationships with all people involved, identifying all stakeholders
- integrating IT as part of the organisation (not them v/s us)
- small, small and small – defying the complexity
- getting quick and frequent feedback, closing the feedback loop
- code is inventory not until it goes live but until it goes live and delivers value
- flow – making sure the work flows cleanly and there are clear exit criteria
- continuous learning by running deliberate experiments and collecting feedback
- the PDCA Shewhart (Deming) cycle
Kanban is becoming increasingly popular, useful and adaptable as a tool that help visualising the system and thus facilitating learning and creating a shared understanding.
The main challenge still remains with over-engineered organisations that are bafflingly refusing to embrace the lean goodness defending the status-quo.
Thanks to the organisers, the sponsors, presenters and all the great folk from the community. It was a day well spent.
Presentations and podcasts should be available on Skills Matter website.
- 08:30-09:00 – Registration and Coffee
- 09:00-09:45 – Karl Scotland – A Kanban Multiverse
- 09:45-10:30 – Eric Willeke – Value Stream Languages
- 10:30-11:00 – Coffee
- 11:00-11:45 – Simon Baker & Gus Power – Product Development in the Land of the Free
- 11:45-12:30 – Damon Morgan – Learn to Lean: Becoming a Lean Startup
- 12:30-13:30 – Buffet Lunch
- 13:30-14:15 – Benjamin Mitchell – Using Kanban to Get Knowledge and Continuously Improve
- 14:15-15:00 – Liz Keogh – Behaviour Driven Development: Learning as a constraint
- 15:00-15:30 – Coffee
- 15:30-16:15 – Mattias Skarin – Converting A Scrum Team to Kanban
- 16:15-16:30 – Close