AgileEE 2011 Day one (September 23rd)

That's my third AgileEE conference and I must admit that conference organization becomes better year after year. Despite that I could not say same about the venue. Third year in a row conference venue is President Hotel.

Overall impression:

A lot of new faces (last year I can name at least one third of audience).  Same string quartet during conference opening coffee brake. Personally I don't get the issue with the badges... Peace of paper without the plastic cover. Till the end of the day most of the people had to repair them. QR code with the visitor contact data on the badge  - great stuff.  Good for possible employer and for meet-up.  Wi-fi quality is the same, means that if you want to have a stable connection  - use your own mobile Internet. Android app is quite useful. I must confess that I don't not fully understand the organizers PR move  "Agile is an adventure".

Let's  move forward to the presentations I participated:
1. Dr. Alistair Cockburn "Effective Software Development In The 21st Century: The New Face Of Software Engineering"

Effective Software Development in the 21st Century

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I found Alistar's talk very inspiring, but at the same time very abstract. The keynote basic idea is "it's all about people". That would not be Alistar if he would not talk about new certification, courses and stuff. It's all about the people of course but also it's all about the money :). Slides in here. Among the quotes: "Agile is the mind set"

2. Sven R?pstorff "The fast-tracked story point oracle"

The fast tracked storypoint-oracle (talk from AgileEE 2011)

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I liked a workshop very much. I've learned a couple of new estimation techniques. The slides is on the Slideshare. Had a conversation with Sven and find out that we both know a couple of German Agile coaches :) small world.

3. Lightning talks

A new format for AgileEE. Presentation should take about 8 min, with- or without the slides. So to the talks:

Dmytro Mindra @dmytromindra “Software Craftsmanship Revealed”

Lightening Talk: Software craftsmanship

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Really great talk about the craftsmanship and why tthe SW development is craftsmanship. Dmytro's presentation is better and better time after time. That is a geed example of right approach to the things you do. I keep a wrist belt still because I REALLY promise not write a crappy code.

Dima Malenko @dmalenko “Just Do It”

Lightening Talk: Just do it eng

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Very inspiring talk. Recommended. The first step is the most important and the hardest among all future steps.

Artjom Serdyuk @ek_artem "Why do they leave? And how make them to stay"

Lightening Talk: Why do they leave

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Artjom focused in the "people and interactions" once again. Also recommended. Slides.

Alexander Lutsaevsky @AlexLuts “The Kama Sutra of Retrospectives”

Lightening Talk: lama sutra of retrospective

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Alexander answered to a question "what to do if something is going wrong during your retrospective". Recommended.

J.B. Rainsberger fired up a short talk about SW product complexity and TDD. No slides. Great!

4. Piotr Zolnierek @pzol "Holistic Deployment"

Agile EE2011 holistic devployment

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A very very strange talk. Now looking to the slides I could not remember what exactly Piotr tried to tell us about. The presentation is about deployment and production deployment strategies. Nothing new or inspiring.

5. Andrea Provaglio (http://www.beyondagile.com/)  “Overcoming Self-organization Blocks”

Overcoming Self-organization Blocks

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Really great talk. Andrea is explaining what really "self-organizing" means and why it is so important. Quotes and thoughts: "Educational system is not up to date with the industry", "Adult to Adult instead of Parent - Child interactions",  "Rowing against the tide", "if you change something inside  - something outside changes as well"

6.  Elisabeth Hendrickson @testobsessed “Agile Testing, Uncertainty, Risk, and Why It All Works”

Agile Testing. Risks, Uncertainty and Why It All Works

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Probably the best talk of the day. The purpose and the meaning if the therm "testing" is defined very clearly. And the triangle "Intentions  = Actual needs = Implementation" is great. Recommended!!!

Other topics:

I decoded to place a book list and "stuff to think about" at the end of the Day 2 report