Agile2016 Wrap-up

Well Agile2016 is in the bag.

This years conference was the largest one yet. There were nearly 2500 attendees. That’s double what it was a few years ago. Day-to-day at the conference, there definitely felt like there were a lot more bodies. Of course that could have been the location too. This was the first conference in while that wasn’t held at a Gaylord “biodome” monster hotel. Instead it was held at the Atlanta Hyatt which is considerably smaller.

Getting into talks was a real hassle this year. Often the rooms were too small and filled up more than half an hour before the talk. People were queueing up outside the door more than an hour beforehand. It was kind of nuts. Other talks were in monster halls that were barely a quarter full. There were a lot of frustrated people.

There weren’t a lot of options for getting around the hotel either. There was a bank of elevators in the lobby that was regularly overwhelmed by the thousands of people trying to get to and from their rooms. It was kind of a mess. The rooms themselves were small and quite dark. All things considered, people were not very happy with the location for this year’s event.

As quickly became apparent, there is no lack of newbies on the bootcamp track this year. The room for my talk on impediments was packed. I heard the same for other bootcamp speakers. So the number of folks who are new to Agile is still strong. That’s encouraging.

I heard all the usual grumbling about how the various “scaling” efforts were boilerplate solutions that only enable the status quo. In the meantime, one of the most popular sessions I attended focused on creating a roadmap for transformation. In my opinion, the scaling conversation is a natural evolution of the adoption of Agile as it moves into the mainstream. It’s just not trusted by established Agile practitioners who’ve only seen healthy agile in smaller contexts (true). But that doesn’t change the fact that the big guys are feeling pain and want to get there. So like it or not, I think scaling frameworks are here to stay. And I for one, welcome our new corporate overlords…

I participated in one of the memorials to Jean Tabaka. It was very moving and it was apparent how many lives she had touched both directly and indirectly. I was there largely to support my colleagues who had worked directly with her. I found myself reflecting on what it means to be the kind of person who can share themselves that authentically with others. It’s not something that comes naturally to me. I found it instructive to ask myself how to be more genuine and authentic with people as I moved through the conference. I found myself doing battle with my natural tendency toward introversion – it takes a lot energy for me to put myself forward, to take an interest in others and try to engage.

The Impediments talk was a complete riot! I had a blast. The crowd was fun and the material, much to my surprise, continues to evolve in interesting ways that I never would have anticipated. More on that to come.

The self-experimentation talk was very challenging. Overall, it went pretty well, but I was challenged with doing a very interactive workshop in a gigantic space, I was also challenged with some of the ideas from folks who participated (thank you!), and I was challenged to consider if there are better ways to talk about experimentation. This was arguably the session where I learned the most as the presenter.