August 14th, 2006
SX: The Beginning
The Scrum Exchange (SX) in Palo Alto, California is just three weeks away, so I thought it was time to start blogging about it. In this post I’ll give a brief summary of my experience in organizing this event; later I’ll add posts about the event itself, and I hope other attendees will also contribute to that effort.
The idea for this event had been hovering at the back of my mind for a while. I think since Kert Peterson, Michael Hamman and I had a chat at the Advanced Scrum Master training in Boulder in January 2005 when Kert conceived the idea of Agile Interactive (a name and concept which I have boldly and unashamedly stolen for one of the tracks at SX). The general concept was to stage a small and intimate event where interactive and experiential ways of learning could be explored. All of us felt, in some way, that a new way of building knowledge of Agile ideas and practices needed to emerge – that talking and showing powerpoint slides was inadequate to express the concepts inherent in the Agile paradigm. The idea was just a bud back then, and none of us had the time to pursue it much further, but it continued to quietly blossom.
When I attended another Agile event almost a year later the idea surfaced again. I was dissatisfied with the format of the event, which was essentially all Open Space. I think the concept of Open Space is a good one, but in practice, and in my experience, it has consisted of much rambling discussion, with people writing lots of stuff on flip charts, some of which gets transcribed to a wiki… and then what? The event was packed with bright people, all involved with Scrum and Agile in some way, all willing to share their experiences and explore, and yet it appeared that the forum for that sharing was limited. Dialog is good, but it is only a small part of learning. The problem, as I saw it, was that we were all sitting on our butts and talking. Yap, yap, yap. I was bored, I felt constrained, and I wanted to move around. My mind was getting a lot of input, but my body was uninspired, unchallenged. Why does that matter – this is software stuff we are taking about, right? I don’t know why it matters, but I do know that it does. I was unable to embody what I was hearing, and most of it was gone within a few days, as I knew it would be. 1
Some people can learn through head input alone. I cannot, and I figured I was probably not alone with this learning handicap. I talked to a number of people about this over the next few months, regarding their feelings about the particular event and of Open Space in general, enquiring what they felt was positive and what was lacking at this event, and in this form of learning. I don’t know that I came to any firm conclusions from these discussion, and the vision of the event that developed was more gut response than an acting on carefully analyzed data.
During the Scrum Gathering in Boston, in April of this year I discussed the idea with Victor Szalvay. Victor and I have been exploring partnership in various ways (as we Scrum trainers tend to do) and this seemed like a good opportunity to do something else together. Both of us were willing to take a financial risk on this event, and it was good to be able to share that risk.
To begin with I focused attention on those facilitators I felt would be able to deliver a more experiential type of workshop and invited people I had worked with personally. With Victor’s influence the event gradually expanded to include a Scrum Starter track and an Advanced Agile track. We widened the invitation to include additional west coast Scrum trainers. Even so, the focus of “learning-by-doing” was kept to. All facilitators have been asked to keep the powerpoint/lecture aspects of their workshops to a minimum, and experiment with a more interactive approach. Probably the most physical of the workshops will be those in the Agile Interactive track, but it is hoped that all sessions fit the general theme of “Agility in Motion”. We shall see.
The Scrum Exchange event is probably best described by this paragraph from the web site:
The Scrum Exchange is an open event aimed at all those involved in, or intrigued by Scrum and other Agile practices. The theme of the event, Agility in Motion is intended to promote the idea that Scrum and Agile need to be experienced, not taught. The event will allow for the exploration of new ways of thinking and learning about being Agile. This will be achieved through experiential and interactive workshops, rather than traditional presentation methods. Come with an explorer’s mind, and be willing to step beyond your comfort zone.
More SX blog posts are planned. Watch this space…
1. By coincidence, as I was writing this post Pete Deemer sent me this video link in which the speaker, Ken Robinson, discusses the need to include creativity as a core subject in our schools, and refers in particular to people who “have to move to think”. If you need clarification on what I am getting at in this post, watch the video. Thanks Pete, excellent timing!
August 17th, 2006 at 7:42 pm
There’s a lot of interesting stuff hiding under the covers here, I think.
Starting from the end, I’m one of the people, I think, who sometimes need to move to think. For me I think it’s the change in focal length that’s important, as if by looking into the distance my brain switches to looking at a broader picture. Moving helps, I can’t think why.
On learning agile; I’ve found sessions that combine a problem to solve and a technique to try when solving it work well, specially if the group have a retrospective afterward (possibly not immediately afterward – time to think first seems to help).
I think the Extreme Tuesday Club may be a place to ask for experience in this respect, they’ve been having meetings of various formats every week for years.