It was another great SL-Agile roundtable discussion this month. After the Agile Roots conference I wasn’t sure what to expect. This month we had the usual motley crew and few new faces. There were about 12-15 in total. As a bonus, Ron Holliday in town for a visit. Ron has been working with Fidelity for 15+ years and brings some great stories to the table.

Collaborative Culture

The first hour was devoted to a topic about team and company culture. There were references to Israel Gat’s keynote at Agile Roots. The core question was whether Agile presupposes a collaborative culture. I believe the consensus was that it does not.

My takeaway from that discussion was that Kay Johansen posits that the SL-Agile group mindset has been swayed against command and control cultures because of continued exposure to Alistair Cockburn. That may be true.

Estimating (part of a larger topic)

Zhon Johansen suggested that we only need to be as accurate in estimating as financial analysts are in predicting stock market behavior. He was talking about larger scale estimates.

Story Formats

There was an interesting report from one company about continued stress over the “correct” story card format. It seems they are deadlocked on making a selection. The group agreed that is doesn’t matter what the format is, just do it. Andrew Shafer commented that talk does not cook rice.

Agile Roots Conference Wrap Up

As most of the crowd attended the conference, we took some time to go around and have people mention their takeaways. Seems everyone got value out of the event.

Homework

Ron mentioned the OODA loop. This was a new concept to me and most of the group. So, your homework is to go read up on it at Wikipedia.