The crum SEx change… playing with words and with ideas, playing intellectually and physically, talking, thinking, laughing, moving, telling stories, writing poetry, celebrating failure, finding new questions, interacting, listening, feeling, dialog, conversation, passion, digging down (how low can you go?), exploring really tough questions… and then there was the warmth of old friends, the excitement of new ones – and it all related to a deeper understanding of Scrum. That was my experience of the Scrum Exchange 2006. Some personal highlights from other participants follow…

Personal Highlights

The event exceeded my wildest expectations!

Size and setting and informal flow was FANTASTIC.

The people and sponsors were wonderful and very open.

Having so many people believing in Scrum in the same place, exchanging ideas and experiences.

Meeting people who want to transform organizations.

Edgy, interesting, amorphous sessions.

Interesting insights into others who have been doing Scrum for a while.

Learned a great deal about Scrum in general; specifically, gathered info to promote and support the use of Scrum within my company.

The willingness of all participants to try weird stuff.

Scrum Intro and the self-organization activities (Key Principles of Scrum).

Realizing the connection/common theme behind all the sessions I attended.

Michael Hamman’s session about “requests” and “invitations”.

The general acceptance by everyone.

The Velocity Game.

Scrum Basics (green track).

Ending as a big group with Terry Sand and play and humor.

The arm twisting and entangling exercise (in Tobias’s session) was a great way to dramatically illustrate the power of self-organizing teams.

Teamwork – change – acting outside the box.

Pouring lemonade over a piece of cheesecake to the affirming sound of “ding” from the group: the power of positive feedback. [ref]

Bodywork – cutting paper, role-playing, games, especially Matt Smith’s “finger” solution to Power Games

Kert’s session.

Strangely enough, being able to come here while waiting to see my very ill friend was a gift. Thanks!

Dan’s session. I want his powerpoint slides.

Meeting people who have little experience and more experience – and sharing.

Conversations with people I wanted to meet, like Victor (Szalvay). Also new people, new friends and collaborating.

Rethinking ideas with new perspectives.

Realizing I’m not alone with the frustrations I am feeling trying to implement Agile.

Opportunity to get the input/advice of not only practitioners, but also other attendees – networking.

Kert and Steve’s classes provided me with a number of good ideas on how to help make my teams more cohesive.

Great new relationships.

Everyone was open to conversation, interaction and helping each other.

Great valet service!

The photographs on this post were taken by Alan Cyment (who, by the way, flew in from Buenos Aires for this event). There are more great photographs of the event at here. Enjoy.

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!