Thoughts from the Agile 2007 conference

I was very impressed with the breadth and quality of the experience reports. I attended several and found interesting observations and learnings from all of the speakers. We need more of this.

www.ript.com looks promising. Not really sure how I’d use it, since I’m not the target market, and the product team seems to have done their homework. But, I’m playing around with it a bit to see how we might be able to work.

I saw a demo of Thoughtwork’s mingle. I was really saddened by the poor use of screen real estate. My non-scientific analysis of the screens suggested that more than 50% of most of the screens was devoted to labels or whitespace. We know more about usability than this. Which brings me to a really crucial tools rant: I find current approaches for representing complex project structures (multi-project status, multi-release/fielded product status, inter-dependencies) inadequate, at best. Who will create the really killer status app?

Super snack? Dried fruits and nuts. So much better than the standard stale greasy cookie.

Lots of energy (thankfully!) about portfolio management. I’m guessing that the PMO panel (myself, David Anderson, Liz Barnett, and Neil; moderated by Todd Little) drew at least people 200 people, with a lively discussion of prioritization schemes and funding options.

I’m proud that our experience report (with Peter Hodgkins from VeriSign, located here) was so well received. Pete did a great job of framing quality levels, which we thought would create some interesting discussion, but seemed to be mostly received as good common sense. Which it is.
I can tell I’m getting older because it took me longer to recover from the late night meetings. Where we talked about agile things, of course. (This last comment in case someone from work is reading).

The conference was too long. Too many tracks and the mechanism for finding what you really wanted was atrocious. I’d prefer a shorter, more focused conference.

The Conference Within a Conference (CWAC) had the most interesting discussions. I should have hung more with that crew. I will next year.

enthiosys agile product management - agile product management, motivated from within