It’s been a while since I last blogged here. I’ve been volunteering with a team that is preparing for AgileBazaar.org‘s “Deep Agile 2010 Empowering Teams with Agile Games” professional development seminar. I’ve participated on agile volunteer teams in the past (other DeepAgile seminars as well as a school technology committee). The common factor to success has always been that the teams were open about any challenges and direction, and that the teams developed a strong sense of “trust” between members and any end stakeholders.
While this has been true for every volunteer effort I’ve been involved in, it is especially true of the team preparing for this weekend’s Agile Games. Even though we are a volunteer team, we’ve met weekly for 14 weeks (alternating between teleconferences and in-person meetings each week, with only in-person meeting for the last few weeks). Volunteer meetings are similar to Scrums, but (by necessity) they are longer (1.5 hours on the average). We don’t time ourselves – instead we just “meet until we’re done”. We keep a story backlog in Google Docs which everyone keeps updated. We communicate openly, honestly, and with brevity. The last of these cannot occur until the team has first established the trust I’m speaking of. It is a real joy to be a part of this team.
Our biggest challenge is yet ahead: conducting the seminar itself. I’m confident that something will “surprise” us but I’m also confident that this team will rise to the occasion. We also have a strong set of established speakers: Lyssa Adkins, Tobias Mayer, Michael McCullough and Don McGreal, and Portia Tung. Each of these people, plus many AgileBazaar.org members and volunteers are experienced agile coaches or practitioners. Additionally we have another experienced agile coach (Ellen Gottesdiener) running our Open Space. We’ve surveyed our registered guests and, for over 50% of our attendees, this will be their first time experiencing an Open Space. I’m hoping the weekend will be a productive learning experience for everyone. You still have time to register! (Registered guests will receive more details about the weekend tomorrow.) If you can’t attend, be sure to follow #DeepAgile (or @BobClancy, that’s me) on Twitter. We want to extend the benefit of our work this weekend as far as possible!
Naturally I’m very excited about what we are doing. Mostly it’s because I highly value the team we’ve put together and the guests we’ve attracted. I hope to see you in Cambridge, MA this weekend!
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Bob Clancy
