I've always maintained what I thought was an appropriate distance between my consulting work and the APLN Houston chapter. The chapter is about building a local community of agile enthusiasts and practitioners, not about promoting me as a an agile consultant. As a result, other than being available to fill in for a last minute speaker cancellation, I have never planned to present at a APLN Houston chapter meeting.
Recently however, the APLN Houston leadership team has been working on doing a joint meeting with the local WITI chapter. In talking with the WITI folks about what topics would be of interest, the APLNH team decided that one of my presentations would fit the bill and slotted me in as the speaker for the event.
When they approached me about this, I immediately said no; fearing it was too self-promotional. The ensuing discussion with the team was respectful of my wishes, but eventually ended up with them telling me in so many words "to get over it". That is about the time it started to dawn on me that being a part of a self-organizing, self-managing team means trusting the decisions of the team. I have an obligation to influence the decisions I don't agree with, as does every other member of the team. No team member however, has the purview to simply change the decision of the team.
So the end result is that I will happily serve as the speaker for the joint APLN Houston/WITI Houston meeting in August, thankful of the reminder from my colleagues that agile principles don't come easily and don't persist without constant nurturing from all of us attempting to evolve with them.
June 5th saw a midyear checkpoint meeting for the APLN Houston leadership team. Following up on the January planning meeting, the team took advantage of air conditioning at a local library (thanks to Shravan Arra) and spent a productive Saturday afternoon reviewing and evolving our plans for the remainder of the year. We also put two Innovation Games to use to help us. First Speed Boat as a retrospective for the first half of the year, then Prune a Product Tree to identify and set priorities for the second half of the year. A complete write-up is available on the APLN Houston site.
I'm looking forward to the next face-to-face meeting of the national APLN board of directors in July. It will be a follow-up to the meeting in Houston last January in which we identified a bunch of programs and initiative to re-vitalize the national organization. Our monthly conference calls help to keep things on track, but nothing beats everyone being together in the same room to extend friendships and working relationships as we share and debate ideas for moving the organization forward.
This time we will be in Salt Lake city which should be a nice weekend retreat. Pollyanna Pixton enticed us with the offer to host the dinners in her garden!
The APLN Houston leadership team has been doing some significant behind the scenes work in the last few months to add a bit formality to the organization for the purposes of continuity. Transitioning from the founding leadership to the next generation of leadership is often a traumatic time for professional organizations, so we are putting things in place now that will hopefully ease that transition when it comes. To that end, we have just finished incorporating the organization as a Texas Nonprofit corporation and appointed the initial board of directors to deal with the intricacies of being a corporation.
While this obligates us to do those things needed to remain a corporation in good standing, it will in no way change our leadership model. Having a self-organizing, self-directing leadership team has served the group very well since its inception nearly two year ago, and that is how the organization will continue to grow and prosper.
Thanks to PMI Houston VP of Communications Pankaj Gupta for including a recent article of mine in the February 2010 edition of Project Landscape.
The article, Agility: What's in it for me?, talks about what senior management should expect from agile teams.
I am honored to be speaking at the PMI Houston Conference & Expo again this year as a part of the Agile Project Management track.
I will be presenting:
- An updated version of my introduction to agility presentation, What's This Thing Called Agility? This has evoled over the last few months, incorporating feedback from some of my recent training workshops.
- A new presentation on agile planning and estimating, Agile Planning: It's All Relative. This too is excerpted from my recent training workshops.
- Finally, Byran Campbell and I will be presenting our joint presentation Accelerating Your Organization's Agile Adoption. This too has evolved over the last few months and will incorporate feedback we most recently received at the APLN Leadership Summit last November.
I am thrilled to report two more organizations are making their way on the path to agility. My client in San Antonio has completed their first agile project to rave reviews from their product owners. I am looking forward to returing to San Antonio to help start two more projects!
In addition I have just started working with a Houston engineering firm who has also taken their first steps. I recently completed Agile Overview and Scrum Basics workshops with them and look forward to getting started with some real projects.
I am honored to be speaking at local chapter events for PMI Houston in April and again in October. Check back for exact dates and programs.
January saw the second face-to-face APLN national board meeting, and a very successful and production meeting it was. Meeting in Houston, many of the board members were able to visit the APLN Houston chapter meeting Thursday evening before settling in for two intense days of discussion, debate and planning for the future of APLN. By special arrangement with Luke Hoffman, the group conducted an on-line version of the Speedboat Innovation Game with 30 representatives from local chapter around the county to gain valuable insight to how the national organization can better support local chapters. In addition the board used the Product Box game to drive more discussion and refinement of the organization's vision and mission. Read more about the board meeting from co-president's Jim Highsmith and Julie Chickering at Board Meeting Update January 2010.
APLN Houston is growing rapidly with membership now approaching 600. In January our leadership team had a great planning session to set our 2010 goals for the chapter (read more at Growing APLN Houston in 2010). It is a pleasure working with my friends and colleagues Ron Whitebread, Alan Bustamante, Barbara Brown and Allan Watty to continue to build APLN Houston into a leading resource to foster the understanding and growth of agile principles.
This year I am honored to serve as the stage producer for the Agile Adoption Stage at the Agile2010 Conference in August. As a part of the broader Leadership and Organizations theme, the Agile Adoption stage will focus on the activities and people involved in transitioning to agile principles. I am fortunate to be working with APLN colleagues David Chilchott and Derek Wade, who are serving as Assistant Stage Producer, and Reviewer respectively. With David's help we have gathered a strong team of reviewers and I look forward to the team creating a compelling series of sessions for the conference.