1. A very strong shift away from process and methods towards values, prinicples and mindset.
   It seems the day of over-indexing on process and tools over individuals and interactions has finally ended. There were certainly way more talks on the softer side of agile than there was in process, practices and techniques.
2. The introduction of a ‘self care’ track.
   Somewhat aligned with shift towards the softer side of Agile, this new track is finally recognising the challenge that many Agile Coaches face in keeping up their personal momentum and health when potentially having little support mechanisms inside of an organisation that they are helping to change.
3. A strong focus on coaching skills and capabilities
   Not entirely unexpected or new, but it was great to see conferences moving away from basic or ‘introductory’ content to support the continued growth of those who have been doing agile for a few years. This is a sign that Agile is continuing its momentum by not just focussing on Scrum Masters and Product Owners.
4. Clean language and NLP. According to a few other coaches this is not new and has been around for the last few years but I seemed to have missed the messaging on this. The intent behind this isn’t too dissimilar to Non-Violent Communication, in that it is a way of deliberately using/choosing language to limit interpretation or suggestive reframing.

In addition to these new trends what stayed the same included:

1. A continued focus on technical practices, especially associated with automated testing and DevOps
2. A continued growth of focus on Business Agility, but still not a lot of stories of people doing this and still quite a bit of confusion on how to apply Integral in this space.
3. Great corridor conversations! Stay tuned to a few of these turning up on the Agile Revolution Podcast.

Second annual event in Boston, Massachusetts tailored to Agile software developers will explore current and emerging technical practices

PORTLAND, Ore., Jan. 25, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Agile Alliance today announced the program for the Agile Alliance Technical Conference (#AATC2017). The event, to be held April 19 – 21 in Boston, Massachusetts, will focus on new advances, new challenges and new directions in Agile Software Development as applied to today’s technical work.

This highly-anticipated event will feature keynotes by Ron Jeffries, (RonJeffries.com), Chet Hendrickson, (HendricksonXP) and Dr. Anita Sengupta (NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory).

Other speakers include Bridget Kromhout (Pivotal), Robert “Uncle Bob” Martin (CleanCoder.com), Ron Quartel (Premera Blue Cross), Declan Whelan (Leanintuit), Craig Buchek (BoochTek), Doc Norton (CTO2), Fred George (Fred George Consulting), James Grenning (Wingman Software), Kent Graziano (Snowflake Computing), Jeff Langr (Langr Software Solutions), Jeff Morgan (LeanDog), Stephen Vance (EBG Consulting), Zachary Shaw (Brightcove), Llewellyn Falco (Spun Laboratories), (Kief Morris (ThoughtWorks), Arlo Belshee (Industrial Logic), Pete Cheslock (Threat Stack), Rebecca Skinner (Asteris, LLC), David Grabel (Emergn/Vistaprint), Brian Haggard (Emerson Electric), Sam Livingston-Gray (Real Geeks, LLC), Rebecca Wirfs-Brock (Wirfs-Brock Associates), Andrea Goulet (Corgibytes), Woody Zuill (Independent), Laura Bell (SafeStack), Alex Freire (Industrial Logic), Alan Shalloway (Net Objectives), Daniel Bryant (Spectoabs/OpenCredo), Terran Melconian (Independent), Josh Long (Pivotal), Dave Farley (Independent), Michael Feathers (R7 Research and Conveyance), Brian Felton (Emerson Climate Technologies), Giorgio Natili (GN Studio) and Alan Shreve (ngrok.com).

The three-day conference is built around three themes: Core Technical Practices, Team Technical Practices, and Technical Practices at the Organizational Level. It will explore topics such as new and updated core development practices; integration of user experience (UX) principles; advances in testing practices and automation; the evolution of tools and techniques that bridge development, deployment and operations; and the growing importance of Big Data across the entire spectrum of activities.

“Agile is now a multi-disciplinary field that includes Developers and QA, of course, and also UX Designers, Infrastructure Engineers, Data Scientists, Cloud Specialists and more,” said Brian Button, Co-Chair, Agile Alliance Technical Conference 2017. “This conference will explore the wealth of new Agile tools and techniques, new patterns and practices.”

“Practitioners from all involved disciplines will gather at AATC2017 to address new advances, new challenges and new directions, to learn from world-class experts, and to practice our craft together,” said Craig Smith, Co-Chair, Agile Alliance Technical Conference 2017. “It will be an immersive and deeply engaging experience which unites engineering and architectural ideas under the umbrella of Agile thinking.”

Group discounts are available.

For more information and to register for the event, please visit the Agile Alliance website.

About Agile Alliance

Agile Alliance is a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting the concepts of Agile software development as outlined in the Agile Manifesto. With nearly 35,000 members and subscribers around the globe, Agile Alliance is driven by the principles of Agile methodologies and the value delivered to developers, organizations and end users. Agile Alliance organizes and supports events to bring the Agile community together on a global scale.

Media Contact

Pam Hughes
Marketing Chief, Agile Alliance
+1 971.204-8989

SOURCE Agile Alliance

Related Links

http://www.agilealliance.org

I am hoping I will have a quieter six months in order to focus on a few projects such as finishing my Agile Forest Book, finishing a Visual Management book I am co-authoring with Craig Smith and getting a production quality Agile Bootstrap kit together which has Agile posters, cards for the usual ceremonies and cards for a training wall. If you are interested in being involved in any of these projects (ie reviewing or just want to know when they are done) then feel free to contact me at: renee@unbounddna.com.

Anyway, this blog post is to endeavoring to talk about my high level observations of attending the Agile Alliance 2015 in Washington, so lets kick it off:

• It was my first foray to this conference. Comparing it in size to Agile Australia which has over 1000 attendees, Washington has near the 2500 attendee mark. Despite this, it didn’t feel like an impersonal event. With sit down lunches, dinners and breakfasts, round tables and activity filled sessions galore and lots of open space to have conversations, I felt that there were plenty of opportunities to get to know people that I have connected with on twitter, but also new people that I have never met before.
• Conference venue was great, I loved the natural light in the corridors. Hotel and hotel staff were great. Food was considerably below standard of Agile Australia but that could be my expectations on freshness and I do appreciate that all meals were provided with no requirement for me to source food elsewhere.
• The cost of the conference is quite extreme when coming from Australia, especially when you consider lost contract time and the two day travel time. I have submitted for three years in the hopes to have my ticket and accommodation covered before I finally got accepted. Without these perks I am not sure if I would make the trip. That said, I do believe attending the conference in the US  is something every enterprise agile coach in Australia should do sometime in their life – the experience is definitely worth it.
• I had for a while thought that with the US crossing the chasm before Australia that the level of knowledge, expertise and experience would be significantly noticeable. The reality was it was very similar. Partly this could be because 40% of participants are new to the conference, but for the most part the problems and potential solutions we are dealing with in Australia is very similar to the US. In some ways it is reassuring that the divide is not so significant.
• Some of the key themes coming out of the conference include:
  1) lots on scaling. It seemed like every second person had their own scaling method. What I appreciate about this is that the creation of such frameworks and methods suggests we still have problems that need solving so I don’t expect to see this explosion of frameworks slowing down. That said, the attempt to make money through certifications is a concern for me. I am supportive of open source frameworks, but the personal expense of having to be certified in so many methods is ridiculous.
  2) lots on collaborative learning – there are many people other than myself experimenting with different approaches to a few days of training in order to get better outcomes for organisations.
  3) lots on improv – safe, quick games to get learning outcomes of value
  4) lots on leadership and enterprise agility (as you would expect) with quite a few references to Fredrick Laloux’s work on reinventing organisations
• I liked the longer sessions at the US conference but think the split would be better if it was 60 mins for a talk and 90 mins for an interactive session. I did really enjoy the number of interactive sessions, but on the downside, I went to a few where the learnings coming out of them were inhibited by the low knowledge and capability level of people at the table I was sitting at. I feel if you go to a session with someone who is an expert in that domain it would be worthwhile to actually hear what their solutions are to problem rather than hearing guesses of potential solutions from participants.
• I was surprised by the number of organisations in the US doing Agile ‘in the dark’. Their committment to growing an Agile organisation was to send it’s people to the conference (which don’t get me wrong, is great), but that is where it stopped. They wouldn’t pay for coaches, nor even pay for training, so basically it is like doing Agile when blind. I’m not saying this won’t work, however I believe that it will take longer and the road will be much bumpier. If they make these choices knowingly then so be it (but I suspect they don’t understand the impact and risk of their decisions).
• I understand there was a coach open space on the weekend before. I would have preferred a 4 day conference with the fifth day for coach open space.
• I am not quite sure about the 13 streams in a row format – sessions seemed to be very unbalanced with a handful of people to full. I can appreciate that sizing rooms in advance is tricky if not impossible. I guess it gave enough flexibility to have a few choices in case your first preference was full or didn’t meet what you were looking for. Part of the problem was with sessions being so long it often took quite a  while to see if the session was going where you would hope it would. Maybe my lesson learnt out of this is to do some pre-reading of the presentations beforehand and picking from a shortlist of three based on that.

So if you attended Agile 2015 and feel like I have missed the point or you simply want to comment then feel free to reply in the comments below.