Agile Open 2011
By Lisa Montaño / Filed under Agile, Collaboration, WORK is GOOD / September 23rd, 2011
Photo credit: Craig Jones
The spirit of collaboration and creativity reigned at the 2011 Agile Open at UC Irvine, September 15th and 16th. Organizers clearly established the Agile focus from the very beginning, arranging the main conference room’s seating in concentric circles, inviting participants to post topics of interest on the open space whiteboard for inclusion in the day’s discussion sessions.
Participants who offered up discussion topics facilitated the sessions, which included subjects such as “The First Retro”, “The Agile Mindset”, “The ‘Proxy’ Product Owner”, “Kanban”, “The Trust Paradox”, and “Agile Chartering”, just to name a few.
As a non-technical Agile enthusiast, I gravitated toward the sessions focusing on developing teams, fostering communication among teams and with business leads, and Agile planning methods. I appreciated the diversity of skills and experience of participants, the candor, and the openness with which attendees offered up their individual experience and insight to problem solve and collaborate with one another.
I walked away from each session with a nugget of new insight and opportunities for multiple approaches to common and practical issues facing organizations.
One of the best insights of all that we seemed to reach repeatedly, was that many of the issues can be resolved by sticking to the basic Scrum and Agile principles of face to face communication within the team and stakeholders, from the outset of a project concept, through the life of the last iteration. Communication, from concept to conclusion, was the overarching thread that held most of the themes together over the course of the conference. Communication in its many forms, face to face, written, graphical, in collaborative meetings and interfaces. The ability to communicate with honesty, compassion, and passion, is what makes our potentials great when we work together.
Click here to read more about the event.
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- Pay it Forward Panel at San Francisco Agile 2012 Conference
- An Open Space event for Southern California IT
