Agile NCR 2010

Update: 1 Aug 2010

Agile NCR 2010 was a good experience. The session I co-presented with Pk was well-attended, and by what I heard from attendees later, was well-received too. I'm glad that folks appreciated our effort in showcasing Agile buzzwords in action (ie, via photographs of our team which Pk took) rather than delving into vague and ambiguous definitions.

The presentation can be found here (do go through the slide notes): http://www.slideshare.net/amanking/agile-buzzwords-in-action

I also enjoyed some of the other sessions and networking with Agile enthusiasts there.

The keynote by Serge Beaumont was crisp and to the point. I appreciated how he suggested that one needs to get through at least 3 levels wrt Agile: following of practices, understanding of the principles and values, and eventually attaining mastery.

There was another session where the discussion started off with the speaker suggesting that not all team members should start thinking like a Project Manager (wrt budget, cost, etc) and someone in the audience questioned that saying such an approach would hamper people's growth which led to another attendee commenting that a lot of Indian IT professionals want to become PM within 3 years or earlier anyway and that's not healthy. I quietly listened to all this but my first thoughts are that anyone in the team should be free to think like any role they wish, as long as their contributions are worthwhile to the project. In ThoughtWorks I have seen people grow from one role to another while maintaining a balance, and yet trying out ideas within a project context as opposed to just formal off-project role-specific trainings.

Another session that evoked interesting discussion was by fellow-ThoughtWorker Sriram Narayan: Antipatterns of Agile Software Development. You can visit the link for some of the things he talked about. Many of these are contextual which is what Sriram tried to stress upon during his talk.

Overall, attending the conference was fun, especially when added with the things I mentioned earlier.

A side-note: ThoughtWorks is organizing a similar Agile conference in China, so just in case you'll be there, check this out: Agile China 2010

14 July 2010

Looking forward to co-presenting a talk on "Agile Buzzwords" at Agile NCR 2010 on Sat, 17 July 2010.

While I've always enjoyed attending such Agile conferences as it gives me a chance to meet other Agile enthusiasts, this conference is especially special:

• I'm enjoying working with my colleague Prashant aka "Pk" on the presentation, which will primarily be driven via photographs of fellow-ThoughWorkers in a team setting
• I'll hopefully get to visit our recently opened ThoughtWorks Gurgaon office: I haven't been there yet
• I hope to enjoy some Delhi food again

If you're at the conference, do catch up!

Tags: personal, technology:agile, technology:events, technology:talks Last modified 08:49 Sun, 1 Aug 2010 by AmanKing. Accessed 638 times Children What Links Here Share Except where expressly noted, this work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.