Inovis at Agile 2009 – Part 1 August 25, 2009
Posted by Stephen Chin in Events, Technology.Tags: Agile, agile2009, kanban, lean, SCRUM
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This is the first part of a series of blogs live from the Agile 2009 conference.
This year the Agile conference is being held in Chicago, the windy city, at the Hyatt Regency hotel. Even despite the economic downturn, thousands of practicing agilists have made the trip seeking process enlightenment and deep-dish pizza (not necessarily in that order).
Here is a view from the bridge near the hotel, which is right on the waterfront:
Chicago Waterfront Outside Agile 2009
The conference was in full swing today with presentations from Agile luminaries, such as Mary Poppendieck (creator of Lean), David Anderson (FDD inventor and Kanban expert), Jim Highsmith (creator of ASD), Mike Cohn (author and Scrum expert), and “Uncle” Bob Martin.
Here are some takeaways from the sessions I attended:
- Driving a schedule by utilization produces oscillations and unpredictability, while driving a schedule by throughput minimizes delivery time and also ends up maximizing utilization.
- Mary Poppendieck - Minimize rework (waste) by organizing features by market risk. Do the table stakes first and schedule features with a high amount of market volatility at the end.
- David Anderson - Focusing on quality also has a positive benefit on productivity, helping you deliver faster. The converse is not true… focusing on the speed results in both lower quality and project delays.
- Jim Highsmith
The day ended with a mixer event full of food, spirits, and agile games. You know it is a good conference when they have Wii Tennis, Rockband, and other team games available to geek out at:
Agile Practitioners Rocking Out
Still 4 more days of the conference to go!
