I had the pleasure of attending the Agile Project Leadership Network (APLN) Fall Leadership Summit in Richmond, VA yesterday. This was a great event and I would encourage anyone to attend future APLN sponsored events. I collected some quotes I overheard yesterday and have provided some explanation as to why I found them interesting. Some of the longer quotes are paraphrases; please forgive any inaccuracies.

10. “It seems like all of this Agile stuff is just common business sense.”
This late question during the Lunch Panel was from one of the few attendees who has not yet experienced effective Agile practices. Of course, Agile is based in the common-sense business practices of increased communication, eliminating bureaucratic barriers, empowering the individual and collaborative management. These may be common sense, but I am not sure how common they are in practice.

9. “You should take your customer outside and shoot them.”
This laughable comment was suggested during a Think Tank session. The customer in question was demanding an Agile approach and refusing to prioritize a thousand-item requirements document. The speaker of this advice was joking, I think.

8. “Agile will not create competence.”
Steve Greene, Director of Tools and Processes at salesforce.com, emphasized the strength of his team as an indicator of Agile success and the panel agreed that the transparency inherent in an Agile approach will highlight those who are struggling to perform effectively.

7. “The embedded social engineering practices of Scrum give it a significant advantage.”
In a personal discussion with Robin Dymond, a managing partner at Lean and Agile consultancy innovel, LLC, he highlighted the important concept that Planning Poker, Daily Scrums and Continuous Integration are all examples of social engineering constructs designed to improve communication (and eliminate a huge barrier to positive project velocity.)

6. “I’m not sure if we are reaching your Zen state of Agile with this answer.”
Responding to a question regarding the “next higher state” of Agile teams, this Panel answer from Roy Maines of Wachovia received a few laughs.

5. “Our biggest challenge is translating the value of Agile into a pricing structure that resonates with our customers.”
I heard this comment stated several different ways by development companies/teams with external customers. The challenge being that the customers want to know “what is this thing (the final version) going to cost and how long will it take to build?” The answer was ultimately some version of “let us deliver something valuable in our first sprint and build on it from there.” Several people indicated frustration that this answer was not good enough for their customers.

4. “Now that our projects are Agile, we are discovering our infrastructure is struggling to keep up.”
Of course, this one was near and dear to my heart, as Stelligent specializes in helping companies overcome this challenge. Several leaders noted that their waterfall-influenced development infrastructure and software developers unfamiliarity with accelerated delivery principles was a barrier to fully realizing the advantages of their Agile transformation.

3. The entire presentation from Israel Gat.
Unfortunately, I cannot provide a simple “nugget” from Israel’s presentation that moved from the bitch-goddess Success through empirical analysis of the actual impact of Agile within BMC Software. The real-world, large-scale analysis of Agile’s overwhelming success within BMC was fascinating.

2. “Despite all advice from consultants, we went all-Agile, all-at-once.”
Another quote from Salesforce’s Steve Greene in a very interesting talk about how inter-related project dependencies prevented them from the tried-and-true approach of starting Agile with a small pilot and allowing it to build through an organization over time. Salesforce turned Agile all on, all at once, and has never looked back…an impressive story of corporate culture, resolve and confidence.

1. “At a minimum, I want to be able to react to market conditions. My desire is to shape market conditions. My goal for IT is to not get in the way.”
The keynote speaker, Niel Nickolaisen, CIO and Director of Strategic Planning, Headwaters, Inc. led off with this important business perspective on why companies have interest in being Agile. The ability to link Agile practices will business goals is a key skill for anyone looking to transform an organization. I felt this comment best reflected the sentiment of the panelist, speakers and attendees that Agile is not the end, it is the means; business value is the true goal.

So, what do you think? Did you attend the summit? What did I miss? Regardless, what do you think of some of these ideas and thoughts? Are you experiencing similar challenges and successes?