Notes from today's meeting

[Jason Dean]

Hi all,

I'm sending out some notes from today's meeting. Big thanks to those
who went and participated in our workshop/conference discussion. I
appreciated the great feedback. As is usually the case, when you put
several people together, the result is better than when one person
does the thinking. I'm attaching a pdf slideset of the information
regarding the first half day conference currently scheduled for Oct
15th.

I was hoping to be able to host the meeting at George Fox and make use
of the Marriott hotel across the street for the evening portion of the
workshop. That's not going to be possible unfortunately if we have it
on Thursday the 15th (they are too full on Thursdays). We can look at
doing it on a Tuesday, but I'm not sure how that would go over with
people. I received special permission to be able to host it on
Saturday the 24th if we want to, but the current workshop structure
isn't setup for that. I will contact BSU to see if we might be able to
host it there, I know they've done something for the local PMI group
and may be willing to help us out as well.

If anyone has good contacts with a venue that can host at least 50
people, please let me know. We are trying to keep the costs WAY down
for this first workshop and I will be looking for sponsors as well
(see the slides). The costs would need to cover the facility (if
necessary) and some water/snacks. The dinner portion would be no-host.
If any individual or organization that you know of might be interested
in helping, let's conference with them and I can help explain what
we're trying to accomplish.

We have a small subcommittee that will finalize the details (myself,
Krista, Amy) and let everyone know what the final details are very
soon so that we can broadcast out the information to our contacts.
When the time comes I would appreciate everyone helping with that
part.

Thanks all,
Jason

[Michael McCarthy]

I like it!  Good work.  One suggestion that is more of a comment, please empasize somewhere that the Agile process is usable beyond engineering and software.  I do believe that the commoly held belief for the lay persons point of view is that it is mostly limited to these two application areas.  By getting the message out that it is applicable in other areas of business (what are those parameters?) we can increase the audience base for the workshops as well.
 

Michael McCarthy

"Though this be madness, yet there is method in 't."

W. Shakespeare

---

From: Jason Dean <jasonl...@gmail.com>
To: apln-...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, September 9, 2009 1:12:15 AM
Subject: [APLN BOISE] Notes from today's meeting

[Jason Dean]

That's a great point Michael, thanks for the feedback. That is
something we can cover in the intro/overview portion. It would be
interesting to host a separate track focused on Agile for non-software
development. We'll have to give it some more thought about how to
integrate those concepts. Part of the discussion certainly applies to
organizations using it for the business side of the house. Scrum
provides an interesting and lightweight method that can be used in
lots of places.

[David Starr]

In my experience, Lean offers far more value to the enterprise and is an
easier sell to executive staff than Scrum. Just sayin :).

Also, for the ultimate in non-technical agile, have you seen this:
http://elegantcode.com/2009/08/31/code-cast-31-agile-for-families/

[Jason Dean]

In any enterprise there is opportunity for combining portions of the
different Agile methods to meet the needs. Lean offers some great
support to an enterprise in terms of predictability and (*gasp*)
control. Scrum is clearly not enough on its own, and to it's defense,
it isn't intended to be. Good engineering and business practices that
support an Agile delivery process are obviously still required. Lean
seems focused on control of the WIP, which is important, but knowledge
workers are not robots on an assembly line. The process needs to
support innovation and creativity as well as efficiency and quality of
delivery.

I haven't listened to the podcast yet, but I'm excited to. I've been
playing around with using Agile at home so this might be the thing
that pushes me over the edge. :)

Jason

[Rob Anson]

David, love your paper on Agile practices for families!  Besides demonstrating the versatility of the techniques, it is a good teaching tool.

 

I was really impressed looking through the slides for organizing the workshops--extremely well set up concept.

 

If you are looking for a venue for the Workshop(s), I could see about a couple rooms in the SUB here at Boise State. What I'm thinking about is, for time efficiency, perhaps we could take two connected rooms that have a movable wall between them, say Hatch A&B.   Start it open, close it for the parallel sessions, then open it for the feedback and dinner.  During the feedback session, catering could set up a buffet.  The tables could stay in place the entire time and it would minimize the amount of moving around people would need to do.

 

Catering would cost, but we could get the room free as a sponsor.  I'd guess we could do it for $10 - $12 per person, including coffee service and dinner. 

Rob Anson

 

 

On Wed, Sep 9, 2009 at 9:48 AM, David Starr <da...@elegantcode.com> wrote:

--
Dr. Rob Anson
Information Technology and SCM
College Business & Economics
Boise State University
208.426.3029   RAn...@BoiseState.Edu
--and--
Boise State Faculty Ombuds
208.426.6238     Facult...@BoiseState.Edu
http://academics.boisestate.edu/facultyombuds/

[Jason Dean]

Rob,

Thanks for the offer, that sounds like a great opportunity. I left you
a voice mail, if you could let me know when you have some time to talk
I would appreciate it. The price and location sound good.

Thanks!
Jason