It was awesome! There were plenty of interesting presentations by different agile gurus. Brightest star was Dean Leffingwell who concentrated mostly on the Scaled Agile Framework (or shortly SAFe). Interestingly he was giving a lot of thought on XP practices. I had not realised they were such closely connected with the framework. I'm huge fan of both Scrum and SAFe and it was very inspiring to meet Mr. Leffingwell in person. As a matter of fact I was such a fanboy that I asked for his autograph. :)
(On the next day I participated in another session hosted by Nitor Creations where we sat around the same table. Discussion topic was Scaling Agile.)
There were four separate tracks and one could leap between the different tracks depending on personal preferences. The next talk I watched after Dean Leffingwell was by Arto Miekkavaara. He represented NeuroLeadershipGroup which is an organization founded by David Rock. I've been aware of the SCARF model for quite some time, but a little refreshment never hurts.
Next I watched a presentation by Neil Killick. It was about the currently very popular NoEstimates. I have to admit that I didn't really understand everything about this. But the main deal seems to be that instead of estimating in non-dimensional Story Points that describe both the size and complexity, we aim to split the work into such pieces that are of same size. That way the number of stories becomes the measure of velocity. Interesting topic never the less.
Even if Leffingwell had the keynote, I think maybe the most inspiring presentation was given by Andrea Tomasini. Good stuff about the Anatomy of an Agile organization delivered with a great passion. Thank you Andrea, I really enjoyed your spicy speech!
Most of the other talks were about processes and frameworks, but Janne Sinivirta went deeper into the actual work. He educated the audience about Lean Architecture. Yes, I believe architecture is needed. (Maybe it's because I'm SAFe fanboy...)
As a conclusion I'd say Scan Agile is a conference worth participating and gathered a lot of familiar faces from different agile circles here in Finland. Again next year? If possible, yes!
In the near future I will keep on pushing the Agile transformation in our company. (Or maybe push is not the correct word. Coaching and collaborating on the issue would be closer to truth.) I will also need to try the role of a Product Owner. Kind of like a jump to the other side of the fence to see if the grass is greener there. Interesting times ahead!
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