As the title may give away, I was in attendance at Agile Tour London 2018. This was my first meat space interaction with the wider agile community! To say I was overwhelmed by the event would be somewhat of an understatement. There was so much information to take on and so many ideas to explore, even now I am having trouble with deciding where to begin with codifying it all in my head so I can apply some of the learning in the coming week.
There was a wide selection of topics being covered by various talks and workshops throughout the day, it was only a shame I could not be in several places at once. Luckily I was attending with my friend and mentor @ReevesHall with whom I co-ordinated so we would cover a good selection of what was on offer.
I am still going through my notes of the day and have diarised some time to do a more comprehensive analysis of my learnings and thoughts. I believe @ReevesHall explainined it would be "like drinking from an open fire hydrant and hoping some of it would sink in!" He was not wrong!
It was very interesting to hear some of the behaviours I have observed in my company being articulated as echos across most of the talks I attended. This did bring some of the magnitude of what we are trying to undertake (and I am helping to facilitate) at our company, into focus. This being said there was something I came to realise that I was certainly not expecting:
Even though we are only about 7 months into our agile journey, we have managed to achieve much more than I gave us credit for!
- We generally have co located agile teams (Product Owner, Team Members/Dev/Test and Scrum Master)
- Our agile teams have taken steps into being cross functional (T-Shaped)
- Our Product Owners attend the majority of the Daily Scrums to help with co-ordination
- Our agile teams have established the beginnings of developing internal relationships (DevOps)
- Our agile teams have are actively participating with the process!
These are just a few things off the top my head. Given how these were pointed out as some major pain points that other companies have been having, I could not help but take a moment to feel proud of what we had achieved in a relatively short amount of time. I am not saying that we are by any means perfect, but it certainly gave me some perspective on our situation.
If any of my colleagues happens to be reading this: You are doing AWESOME! Thank you!
I am keen to share my thoughts on the talks and interactions I had at the conference in a considered and digestible format. So let this be a statement of intent to challenge myself this week.
As a... Blogging Scrum Master
I want... to post a short article each day this week covering the talks/workshops at Agile Tour London 2018
So that... I can arrange, document and share my thoughts/observations.
I apologise that this entry may seem a little short and chaotic, but I hope you will return throughout this week to join me in exploring the insights this experience granted me.
Today's quote is from from Benjamin Disraeli:
The more extensive a man’s knowledge of what has been done, the greater will be his power of knowing what to do.
Be seeing you!