Deadline for submission:  20th of June 2013

What’s Agile Tour Brussels?

It’s the 2nd edition of the conference Agile Tour Brussels. Last year we gathered attendees and speakers from Belgium, France, the Netherlands and Switzerland to share our passion for Agile. The purpose of this conference is to gather in one place Agile practitioners and people wanting to know more about Agile.

At Agile Tour Brussels you will speak to a mix of attendees who are either completely new to Agile, experienced or experts.

We are looking for any kind of sessions (Lecture, interactive talk, workshop, technical,…) on any topics like Scrum, XP, KanBan, Lean, Devops, Leadership, Lean Startup, Coaching, System thinking, Product Aspect, Agile Games,…

We are looking for different levels of sessions, sessions for beginner, advanced and expert. We are also looking for new and experienced speakers.

How to submit a session?

To submit a session, fill in the form located here: http://at2013.agiletour.org/fr/callForSpeaker.html

If you never registered to the website agiletour.org, you will be asked to create an account.

Tips for a successful submission:

• Don’t forget to specify that you are applying for Agile Tour Belgium – Brussels
• Specify the size of the audience you’d like to have for your session (e.g < 100 persons)
• Sessions must be in English
• We would prefer to have session of 1 hour maximum

All information about the event and previous edition can be found on www.atbru.be

If you have any questions, feel free to drop an email at bruno@atbru.be

Thanks in advance for your support!

The Agile Tour Brussels Organization Team.

Marc explained previously how the UCL computer science department runs their student project as an agile project: teams of 4 students develop an Android application of their own choosing. Professor Yves Deville acted as the customer of the team, Marc Lainez provided agile coaching and the teaching assistants acted as onsite coaches.

Shortly before the final release of the projects, the university invited Agile Belgium to attend the Show & Tell of the teams.

The project

Professor Deville explained the context, objectives and challenges of the project: this is a one semester project for 60 students in 15 4-person teams. The students are expected to apply cross-disciplinary skills required to design, build and deliver an application. The project is a practical introduction to both mobile computing and agile, which are new to most of the students. Agile is new for the teaching staff too, they’ve only had a few introductory sessions about agile.

The coaches

Marc Lainez, who had presented agile sessions before at the university, and Agilar helped the teaching team to devise a simple agile process. Every team used the same process and constraints. Octo Technology provided their Appaloosa private app store so that students could publish application updates for their customer, coaches and beta users.

Running this project in the university with little agile experience entailed accepting some compromises:

• Automated testing was recommended but not mandatory. Very few teams had any automated tests, which could pose a problem when the applications are developed further
• Pair programming was recommended, not mandatory. In their retrospectives the students gave feedback on when they would and wouldn’t use pair programming
• Because the project didn’t have a dedicated room for kanban boards and other information radiators, the teams used an online tool to track progress and collaborate
• Although the students came up with the ideas for the products, the professor acted as their customer.
• Because neither students nor teaching staff worked on the products full time, coaching and retrospective time was limited. For example, there were only 30 minutes per team to perform an iteration retrospective and getting ready for the next iteration.

The teams and their product

The first team presented CheckMyBeer, a beer guide and rating application. They liked pair programming and Trello for collaboration and communication and were very motivated as they worked on an application they had chosen. The regular sprints helped them to deliver and avoid “student syndrome”

The second team developed the “Bouboule” game. They also found the project very motivating and liked the prioritisation, estimation techniques and opportunities to change course that agile gave them.

A third team developed “LLNCampus” a friendlier and more integrated view on the existing data on the campus website.   This has the potential to become the premier way that students get information about courses, lecture rooms and facilities on the campus.

The next team developed “Safe Area“, a tool that provides different techniques to keep confidential information on the phone (like keys, codes and passwords) safe. Special mention to the value of regular and fast feedback from your clients and users.

The final team presented “Treasure Hunt”, an application that allows you to script small “adventures” so that you can create treasure hunts, touristic information or travelogues. Again, the value of rapid customer feedback allowed them to refine their original idea and take their product into unexpected directions. We often discover what an application is (also) useful for by using it. You may discover a whole new market and then “pivot“, as the cool kids say nowadays.

All the teams have been able to develop and publish an application, using a new methodology and new technology while having only a limited amount of time. There’s never enough time, you discover what your customer needs as you go along, there’s technology churn, tools don’t work as expected, there are team issues… It’s just like real life.

You can find all the applications on the UCL/INGI developer page.

Looking back

Overall, teachers and students seemed happy with the agile approach:

• Regular customer feedback made it possible to focus on those few features that really add value, instead of trying to force in all the features you’d imagined needing at the start of the project
• The customer and coach roles took a lot of time from the teaching staff, but that investment provided value in steering the project and resolving issues. Having a bit more time for retrospectives and sprint preparation would have been useful. One customer, two onsite coaches and one meta-coach all working part-time on the project is not a lot to follow up 15 product teams.
• Despite the effort required by the process, the structure in two-week sprints clearly helped to focus teams and even out the workload. No more last minute late night hacking sessions. Well… a lot less than usual
• Teams experimented with agile practices. Some teams fully applied pair programming, others only used it in some circumstances. Some teams liked standup meetings, others didn’t need them as they paired and collaborated so much already. The important thing is to know what the techniques are, how they work and why you would use them so that you can decide what to use in your context
• The teams managed to get a product from scratch into the Android marketplace in a few weeks of part-time work. Impressive.

This is a great initiative by the UCL. I wish more schools and universities allowed their students to experience an agile project. I can only dream of students entering the workplace with a successful agile project under their belt and who think this is the “normal” way of creating products. Professor Deville and Marc Lainez will publish their experiences in a paper so that other universities can learn from the experience. We’ll let you know when the paper is available.

If any other universities or schools want to know more about agile, the Agile Belgium community is here to help. Contact us.

Thank you UCL computer science department, Marc Lainez and Octo Technology for making this project possible. Thank you to the students for their feedback on agile and their warm welcome.

The Mini XP Day Benelux 2013 conference on April 26th in Mechelen re-ran 12 (actually 13) of the favourite sessions of XP Days Benelux 2012.

Ruud Wijnands and Dirk Devriendt kick off the day.

Selling your session (part 1: morning)

At the start of the morning and afternoon sessions the presenters get 30 seconds to pitch their session to the audience. This allows the participants to decide at the latest responsible moment which session they’ll attend. And it allows our presenters to express their creativity.

Presenters getting ready to pitch their session.

Merlijn van Minderhout and Martijn Sanders help troubled testers by explaining how they used SpecFlow to test an embedded device.

Frederieke Ubels and Feike Groen how bol.com does Agile Innovation Planning.

Bruno Sbille used Star Wars characters to illustrate leadership styles. The session hadn’t even started and Darth Vader had already killed one of our participants.

Ron Eringa and Martijn Dehing asked who wanted Agile to spread like an epidemic in their organisation, by reaching the Tipping Point. A lot of people seemed to like the agile virus.

Lunch and warmup sessions

Elewijt Center served an excellent lunch. Olivier Costa and Thien Que Nguyen provided a relaxing Aikido and yoga session to help with digesting all the ideas and food.

How’s the food, Olivier? Mmmmm….

Afternoon sessions, more selling

Erwin van der Koogh invited us to his Storytelling in Business session by telling a story. Due to the 30 second limit he couldn’t finish his story. Only participants to his workshop could hear the ending. Cunning…

Wing Yu Chong and Remi-Armand Collaris make Agile Contracting fun by turning it into a game. You can’t change the rules during the game. Unless your name is Calvin.

Pierluigi Pugliese presents Congruent Leadership. Can we send Darth Vader to this session to teach him that killing participants is not a great leadership technique?

Bruno Sbille and Martin Mahaux presented a perfectly prepared and rehearsed sketch to introduce their session on how to use improvisation techniques to better understand customers and users.

Marc Lainez introduces a game to make the hard choices we face with technical debt explicit.

Closing

All presenters get a bottle of the local Carolus beer as a thank you from the organisers. Every participant could choose a gift that they could use in their work.

Don’t forget the Call for Sessions for XP Days 2013

The Call for Session for XP Days 2013 on 28-29 November 2013 in Mechelen will open at the end of May.

YOU CAN BE A PRESENTER TOO! Even if you’ve never presented a session before, the organisers and other presenters collaborate to get the best out of each session. Remember: the best way to learn at a conference is to present a session.

Invite your colleagues, friends and family to present at XP Days where the agile community meets to collaborate, share, learn and have fun.

Watch the XP Days site for full details about the call for session.

Goodbye! Until next time

At Mini XP Day participants share their stories, ideas and experiences. The discussions continued in the bar.

See you again at XP Days Benelux 2013!

Photos by Thien Que Nguyen and Pascal Van Cauwenberghe

What participants said

• Not all sessions were directly related to Agile/XP
• 4 inspiring talks
• Nice location, good food
• To improve: too much quality content. It’s too difficult to choose between sessions
• Please share the presentations => see the Mini XP Day program page
• Helpful, practical and fun again!!
• I need a session to learn how to sketch => can someone propose a sketching session for XP Days 2013?
• I’ll be back!
• Broad spectrum of tracks and sessions
• Fresh way to give 30 second intros to talks
• To improve: more sessions, shorter breaks => we like to keep breaks relatively long to maintain a sustainable pace, an XP practice we often forget when we’re having fun
• To improve: more international speakers => if you’re international, please consider submitting a session proposal for XP Days 2013. If you’re local, please submit a proposal too.

InfoQ was at XP Days 2012

Ben Linders from InfoQ wrote articles about sessions and interviewed presenters at XP Days 2012. You can find these on the InfoQ site:

• The first day of the conference
• The second day of the conference
• Bridging the Management Gap by Tiago Garcez
• Self-organizing organisation for real by Emmanuel Gaillot
• Interview with Bruno Sbille on leadership styles and agile coaching
• Interview with Yves Hanoulle on the Agile and Lean Mindset

That’s why we are happy to announce DARE 2013.  It is a conference for those brave souls who want to change the ordinary and take changes.  A mix of inspiring talks and workshops will help you to get fresh ideas how to turn your business into a success.

Major topics are Lean thinking, Kanban, innovation, Agility, Visualization, Leadership and Teamwork.

We have selected a unique set of international and local speakers, all experts in their field.

As keynote speakers, we are proud to announce:

Jim Benson – Creator of Personal Kanban and a pioneer in the field of Lean Management.

Dean Leffingwell – Author and expert on scaling agility in the organization.

Stefan Haas -  Expert in using a hacker’s attitude for business culture changing.

You have the chance to learn about some unique case studies, for example how Spotify managed to scale rapidly but still remain agile.

The conference will take place at the Stuurboord Hangar, a beautifully renovated warehouse at the shore of the river Scheldt.

More information and tickets can be found on the website.

Join us for 2 days of inspiration and learn about the latest trends in modern management.

Let’s play Agile Games

As you may know, every month, the Agile Belgium Community organizes Drinkups, See here for more details. During the drinkups of February, several participants told us they would like to have an evening with an agenda, preferably on the topic of Agile Games.

In March we decided to relaunch the Agile Belgium User Groups by organizing a first Agile Games Night @ Touring Insurance. You can have a look at this past event here.

We are happy to announce you that we will organize a second User Group on the same theme: The Agile Games Night II on 06/06/2013.

Practical Informations:

What’s that event concretely ?

An Agile user group is a group of people who enjoy using Agile methods (Scrum, XP, KanBan,…) who meet regularly to discuss the use of those methods, share knowledge and experience, hear from peers and hold other related activities. They may host special interest workgroups, often focusing on one particular aspect of Agile. This User group will be focussed on Agile Games, we will also briefly discuss the Agile Belgium Community’s events.

What are Agile Games about ?

Agile Games are…games we usually use to teach about Agile. They can be very general e.g. experience what is Scrum through a game. Or they can be focussed on one topic e.g. planning. It’s a fun and powerful way of learning.

If you want to know more about Agile Games you can check the links at the end of the post.

When is this user group ?

Agile Games Night I

6 of June 2013, Welcome begin at 17.30 and we finish at 21.00.

Food and drinks will be provided by our host.

How much does it cost?

It’s free, but for security and organizational reasons it’s mandatory to register in advance!

How do I register?

Follow this link. You will have to register to www.meetup.com, it’s easy and quick.

Where is it?

The host of our User Group will be the Company Ogone.

Address:

Woluwedal/Boulevard de la Woluwe 102
B-1200 Brussel/Bruxelles Belgium.

You have free parking facilities between Ogone and the China embassy. It’s a 10′ walk from the metro station Rodebeek.

Do we have an agenda ? Which games will we play ?

Agenda will be published later, for those of you that were present at Touring, we will play different games and set the agenda based on games you asked.

May I facilitate a Game ?

For some games, we often use Lego bricks

You know a great Game and you would like to facilitate it during the Agile Games night II ? No problem! Send me an email: bruno.sbille@gmail.com

Please note that we will be dependant on the number of attendees.

You are a company and you would like to welcome one of our next User Groups ?

Thanks for your support! Send me an email: bruno.sbille@gmail.com and we will discuss practical matters.

You want to support the Agile Community ?

Please like our Facebook Page, speak about our events and retweet us.

You want to be aware on what’s happening in the Agile Community ?

Check our Facebook Page, our Meetup Page or our Blog.

You can find more games and simulations at the following excellent sites:

• Tasty Cupcakes
• Agile Coach
• Agile Fairytales
• Innovation Games
• Lego Serious Play
• Agile Games Google group

Thanks in advance for your presence, hope to see you at the Agile Games Night II.

For the Agile Belgium Community,

Bruno.

Pictures: Conference Play4Agile 2013, Agile Games Night I

Some participants at the Agile Belgium Drinkup wanted to try out some Agile Games they had been talking about. As a pub is not the best place to play most of the games, Touring Assurances gracefully offered the use of their remarkable office in Brussels.

We started the evening by listing agile games we knew and dot voting to see which games interested participants most. Unfortunately, we couldn’t play many of the favourite games because they take too long or require props that we didn’t have available.

Play!

The best way to learn about Agile Games is to play them and debrief afterwards. This evening we played three games:

• Alan Cyment’s Multitasking Game to show the detrimental effects of task switching (facilitated by Yves)
• A version of the Matchstick Game (with pennies instead of matches because no one smokes any more) to illustrate the idea of bottlenecks and dependencies (facilitated by Pascal)
• Non-musical chairs to show team-organisation and improvement with retrospectives (facilitated by Bruno)

Participants were very serious and committed to play the Multitasking Game but soon broke down in laughter.

Looking back. Looking Forward.

The evening ended with a short retrospective to gather “What did you like?” and “What can we improve?”

There will certainly be a followup session where we can play some of the larger games. Watch this space, the Meetup group  or subscribe to the mailing list.

Want to know more?

Yves Hanoulle has also written a report about the event.

You can find more games and simulations at the following excellent sites:

• Tasty Cupcakes
• Agile Coach
• Agile Fairytales
• Innovation Games
• Lego Serious Play
• Agile Games Google group

Thanks to all participants. Hope to see you at the next Games Night.

Please, try this at home!

Register here if you want to attend, because the event is limited to 20 participants.

This semester, something changed. One of the professors from the computer science departement (INGI), Prof. Yves Deville, contacted me to help them bootstrap their very first Agile project. The context is quite simple: 60 students will form teams of 4 and work on an android application of their choice. They will have to come up with an original idea and implement it following an Agile approach.

We had a few meetings to identify the different challenges and the constrains we had:
- No room dedicated for each team, just a big room for all 15 teams.
- Students with few to no testing experience.
- No “Agile” knowledge.
- Precise project educational objectives.
- Same process for all teams (to avoid group discrimination).

We had to take a pragmatic approach to those constraints and we came to the conclusion there were so many things we could cover and teach students that we needed to focus on a few of them in order to not overwhelm them with too much information.

After different discussions with the Agilar folks, Prof. Yves Deville and his assistants, we came up with a lightweight process:
- Each group receives and Android tablet.
- Students are asked to come up with three application ideas using a “poster” format.
- Prof. Yves Deville and his assistants will vote for the best idea.
- Students work in two weeks iterations.
- Planning is done using Planning Poker and post-its.
- Pair Programming is strongly recommended.
- Students use Trello to visualise their work in progress.
- A Jenkins automated build gives them insights about coding and android guidelines.
- Another Jenkins build packages their application and sends it to Appaloosa, a private store from Octo Technology.
- The private store is available to every group, meaning that every group can test any other groups application.
- After each sprint, each team makes a demo of the finished work to Prof. Yves Deville playing the customer.
- After the demo, each team participates in a retrospective to see if they can improve the way they work.

In order to make sure the assistants really understood this lightweight process and the philosophy behind it, we gathered them to build, in three days, a small app following the previous points. We had 5 iterations of 4 hours and they managed to deliver something at the end of each iteration. They were introduced to the different tools and concepts the students are using at the moment. Here’s a couple of pictures showing the assistants under great pressure:

So far, the students have finished their second iteration, and some already delivered features two weeks ago! They received feedback and have adapted their product already. Here are a couple of posters they came up with and that have been selected for implementation:

We plan to organize an Agile Belgium user group meeting in April in Louvain-la-Neuve so that the most advanced groups can show you their progress if you are interested. The date is still to be determined but expect something right before or after the easter holidays. Stay tuned.

We’d like to thank Agilar for their great advices and Planning Poker cards and Octo Technology for giving the university unlimited access to their private store platform.

If you have any ideas on how to bring more Agility in universities or simply want to share what’s happening in your area, feel free to comment, contact me or make sure you free up the end of April in your agenda to be there for the special UCL user group

I’ll keep you posted on their progress if anything happens.

Cheers,

• Brussels
• Looking for hosts in other cities in Belgium. Contact us.

Mini XP Day reruns 12 of the best sessions from last year’s program in 3 parallel tracks. The conference takes place in Mechelen in Belgium (between Brussels and Antwerp).

There’s room for 90 participants and the conference usually sells out. So register now to ensure you don’t miss out on this great event.

The conference will be held on November 28th from 9:00 until 17:00 and will offer 3 parallel tracks for between 100 and 150 participants.

The call for sessions is open until September 10th. Sessions are ideally presented in French and are maximum one hour long, but contact the organisers if you have a better idea.

See you there!

Our next Agile Belgium Drinkup (#15) will take place the 8th of August.

Feel free to book your participation here (it’s free).

What’s an Agile Drinkup ?

This is an informal meetup of the Belgian Agile and Lean community. Come after work and meet people you usually only meet at conferences. Anyone interested in Agile or Lean can join. If you get there but can’t find people call that number +32 474 78 66 33 (Marc)

See you there !

Bruno.

Agile Tour Brussels 2012 – 26-10-2012

Dears,

The Agile Belgium Community is calling for speakers for the Agile Conference : Agile Tour Brussels 2012. (Date 26 October 2012 – Brussels Belgium)

The purpose of this conference is to gather in one place Agile practitioners and people wanting to know more about Agile.

We would like this event to be an Agile Belgium Community Gathering.

To submit a session, we ask you to:

- Create an account on the agile tour website http://agiletour.org

- Fill in the form located here: http://at2012.agiletour.org/en/callForSpeaker.html (don’t forget to specify that you are applying for Agile Tour Belgium – Brussels)

- Specify the size of the audience you’d like to have for your session: we have rooms with a capacity of 20,60 and 80 persons

Additional information:

- Sessions must be in English

- We would prefer to have session of 1 hour maximum

We even have a room that is like the ship of Jabba the Hutt

For the topics, feel free to suggest sessions regarding Agile, Scrum, Technical and Coding sessions, Lean, Management, Product Aspect, Agile Games, KanBan, Testing, Lean Startup, Leadership, Coaching, XP… Or anything you mind find relevant for such a conference.

Deadline for submission is  : 17 August 2012

All information about the event: http://at2012.agiletour.org/en/brussels.html  there is more to come !

If you have problems with the form, you can also send me your session proposition via email: bruno.sbille@gmail.com

Thanks in advance for your support !

Bruno.

Ps: Agile Tour, is a series of non-profit events over several cities all over the world throughout October and December 2012. Check the Website.

As usual, it’s time to gather again for our traditional monthly Agile Belgium Drinkup.

This one will take place at “La Becasse” behind the Bourse/Beurs (rue de Tabora 11, 1000 Bruxelles)

Some suggested that it would be nice to have a place where we could play games or even do a small presentation, and “La Becasse” has a room we can use upstairs for that.

Talking about games, we had a discussion about games that could help teams understand the importance of tests or how taking shortcuts can be a bad idea. I’ll bring a copy of “Hard Choices” with me so we can try it out. If you have other games in mind, please tell us!

We will start at 7:30 pm, a bit later, because that’s when people usually arrive.

As usual, you can register here:
http://abdup.fikket.com

Hope to see some of you there,

Marc

As usual, it’s time for our next Drinkup. It will take place on February 15th at 7 p.m. This time I’ll make sure I’m working from Brussels so I don’t get there late… Sorry again for those who had to wait last time.

It will still take place at the Estaminet du Kelderke on the Grand Place itself number 15.

Here’s a link to the website of the place.

If you want to join, please register here so we can book a suitable table.

See you there,

Now that the holidays are over, it’s time to get back to the good old habits isn’t it?

Last december, we had a retrospective of the 7 previous drinkups, you can find more about it in my last post.

This time, it’s going to be at the “Estaminet du Kelderke” on the Grand Place itself. It should be quieter, we can also eat some belgian cuisine there but the drawback is that beers are going to be more expensive than at the Delirium, I guess we’ll talk more and drink a little less

Here’s a link to the website of the place.

Wednesday 18 at 7pm, next drinkup, and as usual you can already register here.

We’ll pick a few activities in the list we gathered during the retrospective and see how we can make the other initiatives for the community to move forward.

See you on Wednesday!

You probably know that two weeks ago, before the holidays, we had a small retrospective about the drinkups from 2011. I grouped them in categories.

Feedback about the place

- Find a quieter place
- A place we can eat as well

I’m looking around for places like that close to the Grand Place of Brussels that are not too crowded. If you have any suggestion please contact me or post a comment.

We talked about sessions that we could do for some drinkups. The goal is not to do an XP user group meeting, we already have that, and the drinkup should stay different with an informal fashion around it, but we could have some small sessions now and then.

Sessions we could do during the drinkups

- Speed problem dating (I have a problem, how would you solve it? Each person gives a quick answer, no discussion, thank you!, next!)
- a DIY session (something with a construction kit, maybe some lego serious play)
- Have a small 5 minutes skype call with an “Agile star”
- Sharing conference experience
- 300 seconds talk
- Small demo of an agile technique, dev or coaching skill
- Bring/share a book (bring a book you liked, lend it to someone)
- A psychiatrist couch session
- Have some Agile stars that are in Belgium from time to time to join us

Some games we could play

- Explain Agile to the barman
- Speaker wolves

Other things related to the drinkup

- Blog about the drinkups

There were also some things not directly related to the drinkups themselves.

- Organize an Agile Belgium book club
- Organize Agile Belgium lunches with people working in the same area
- Organize an Agile Belgium picnic during the summer

So here’s the raw content of the retrospective, if you weren’t there and you want to add anything more or react to any items, feel free to send an email to the mailing list or comment here.

I can also announce that the next Agile Belgium Drinkup will take place on the 18th of January. I’m still not convinced about the places I found so I’ll keep looking. I’ll post a new event on the website and here as soon as possible.

Again, all the best for 2012, see you at the next Drinkup!

This is an informal meetup of the Belgian Agile and Lean community. Come after work and meet people you usually only meet at conferences. Anyone interested in Agile or Lean can join.

Date:

December 14, 2011 from 19:00 until… you decide to go home.

You can find us at the back of the ground floor, the tap bar. When you are in the bar go as far as you can go at the back, you’ll find us there. It’s quieter there.

The next one is a bit special as it’s the last one of 2011. It might be a good idea to retrospect on the previous editions and take decisions for 2012. So if you want to participate to the retrospective or if you just want to have a beer and talk Agile with some peers then join us!

Add your name to the list to attend.

Location:

Delirium Café
Impasse de la Fidélité 4A
1000 Bruxelles

Near Brussels Central station and the Grand’ Place.

See you there!

The conference is now completely sold out. Hope to see you at the next “Mini XP Day”.

Would you like to get an impression of the conference? Watch the video from XP Days Benelux 2010.

This is an informal meetup of the Belgian Agile and Lean community. Come after work and meet people you usually only meet at conferences. Anyone interested in Agile or Lean can join.

Date:

November 9, 2011 from 19:00 until… you decide to go home.

You can find us at the back of the ground floor, the tap bar. When you are in the bar go as far as you can go at the back, you’ll find us there. It’s quieter there.

Add your name to the list to attend.

Location:

Delirium Café
Impasse de la Fidélité 4A
1000 Bruxelles

Near Brussels Central station and the Grand’ Place.

See you there!

Topic:

This is an informal meetup of the Belgian Agile and Lean community. Come after work and meet people you usually only meet at conferences. Anyone interested in Agile or Lean can join.

Date: October 12th, 2011 from 19:00 until… you decide to go home.

You can find us at the back of the ground floor, the tap bar.

Add your name to the list to attend.

Location:

Delirium Café
Impasse de la Fidélité 4A
1000 Bruxelles

Near Brussels Central station and the Grand’ Place.

See you there!

Last week I went to Berlin for the very first Agile Lean Europe conference.

ALE2011 was one of the many ideas that originated during the World Café session hosted by Jurgen Appelo during XP2011 in Madrid.  As I’m a lazy fellow, I suggest you read the history of ALE2011 in this blogpost from Olaf Lewitz, instead of me writing it down.

I was involved in the organisation of ALE2011 on the community sofa, and I can assure you this was a crazy adventure.  Planning a conference with more than 40 organizers can be quite chaotic!  But thanks to some natural leaders like Olaf & Marcin the chaos evolved into self organisation.  They shared their experience of organizing it during the conference in a session.

On Tuesday evening I flew to Berlin after a day of work at my client’s office.  When I met the other participants in the hotel bar, I could already feel that this conference was going to be special.  There was excitement in the air.  Something new was going to happen!  I also understood the success of eXtreme Tuesday Club, when UK agilists explained me that this was exactly the format of XTC.  Having a good time together in a bar, drinking a beer and sharing stories.  This is why I believe the Agile Belgium Drinkups have a good future ahead of them.

On Wednesday morning, the conference officially started with a warmup session by John Jagger.  He involved the entire audience in his cyber dojo, which was quite an achievement, knowing that there were more than 200 people in the room!

Next was a keynote by Rachel Davies. I really like her style. Very down to earth and honest.  One message she brought was that Enterprise Agility may not be possible at all, a statement that I hear more often popping up in the community.  It was strengthened later in the conference by Brian Marick during his lighting talk, stating that we ‘Europeans’ can choose to quit these big enterprises and start up a business of our own.  Especially since we have a healthcare system

In the afternoon Open Space, I proposed a session about healthy KPI’s, a problem I’ve been struggling with at clients.  Adopting agile is fine, but do we just keep our old KPI’s?  I feel that in most organisations theser are no longer suited and trigger the wrong behaviour.  We experimented a little bit with using trends instead of single point measurements, but without a good feeling.  On the last day, Dave Snowden reassured us during his keynote that KPI’s are not useful and should be left aside.  Maybe that’s a little harsh.  I’d prefer what Bjarte Bogsnes said during his keynote about Beyond Budgeting.  A KPI should start from a goal and be revised constantly.  I will experiment with this in detail to figure this out.

On Thursday evening we had a dinner with strangers. The concept goes as follows:

• The organization reserved places in several restaurants across Berlin.
• You sign up for a restaurant and have dinner with people you haven’t met before.

I went to a Spanish restaurant with 6 other conference attendants and had a great time eating tapas and chatting late in the evening. (watch the sparkle in our eyes!)

This proved to be a great way to meet new people.  It should be part of every conference!

Friday started again with some sessions and an open space.  After lunch we listened to some more lighting talks and did a conference retrospective.  Ken Power did a great job facilitating.  I was quite honored that he used one of the exercises of my blog, called retrospective starfish.

The event was closed by a keynote from Dave Snowden and a thanks to all organizers.

In the evening I flew home with Yves Hanoulle, who made the trip much more enjoyable by being quite the storyteller.

I didn’t get to see much of the city, because I didn’t want to miss a second of the conference.  Here’s a picture of ‘Checkpoint Charlie’, the one place I visited in Berlin.

The ALE conference had a great first edition.  I’m looking forward to next year.  Who knows, maybe it will be held in Brussels!

Second Abdup July 13

Second Agile Belgium Drinkup gathered 7 people from different horizons. Developers and Coaches. We exchanged some of our concerns and experiences on how to bring Agile practices into the day to day life of a freelance developer. We had an interesting discussion about ways to make a customer understand that he won’t necessarily need everything from it’s backlog to launch a project.

Alain Ravet suggested to use belgian comics for that purpose. He uses a story from “Le petit Spirou” or “De kleine Robbe” where his mother asks him to choose some teddy bears he could give away to poor children. Of course he says he wants to keep them all, that they are all important to him. His mother then asks him which one he would grab if the house was on fire and he could only take one with him. And she goes on and on, making him imagining all kinds of situations until there are two piles of teddy bears, the ones he really likes and the ones he doesn’t really need. Here’s a picture of it, in french, if anyone has it in dutch, I guess it’s ok to post it in the comments.

If you want to read the full comic, it’s in album 7 Demande à ton père/Vraag dat aan je papa!

Of course it might be awkward to show that comic strip to customers, but it is a nice starting point if you are looking for inspiration for a small workshop a talk or whatever…

Third Abdup August 17

Another holiday Agile Belgium Drinkup, gathering 4 people this time. We forgot to send an email to the mailing list, which didn’t help. But still, again, interesting things happened.

We raised the tricky question. If you are new in the community or a newly graduated student that would like to apply in a company being Agile, or if you are more experienced and are looking for a job related to Agile, in which company do you actually apply? Should there be someone writing down a list of Agile companies in Belgium? Not really.

So what can we do then? There was a suggestion from Pascal to add some job board to the actual Agile Belgium blog. Companies that really want to find some Agile aware profiles would pay a fair amount to have their offer published on the Agile Belgium job board. Of course this is just an idea, and we need to know if some companies would be interested, and at what price.

So, taking actions! Pascal volunteered to write an email explaining the idea. Email that we would send to companies in Belgium that are related to Agile in any ways. We’ll engage in further development if there are companies interested. If you want to help, we are trying to build a long list of companies that are or might be interested in Agile, if you know such companies, drop us an email.

When is the next Agile Belgium Drinkup?

The fourth Agile Belgium Drinkup will happen on the 14th of September, still at the Delirium Café at 7 p.m. You can already register here http://abdup.fikket.com/ we hope to see you there.

See you next time!

Thanks to that drinkup, we had the opportunity to discover new faces, people we hadn’t seen before, either at conferences or other user group meetings. It didn’t take so many beers for Xavier to put post-its on the bar and facilitate a small improvised retrospective about this first drinkup.
Here are the insights and actions we have generated:

Every participant commits to try bringing someone who wasn’t at the first drinkup

For those who were there, don’t forget to convince a fellow agilist to come with you next time!

Merge the belgian community website domains

It has already been taken care of by Pascal. If you go to http://agilebelgium.org you will be redirected to http://xp.be, which will now be the one and only Agile Belgium community website.

Write a blogpost about the last drinkup

I think this is also being covered…

Find a venue with cheaper beers

The foodsquare was a nice place but the beers were a little expensive. A venue with cheaper beers and still close to major train stations would be appreciated.

Keep doing it in Brussels

Brussels is approximatively 1h or less by train from every major Belgian city, it seems like a good choice for a drinkup.

Organize next drinkup

Well, let’s take care of that right now! We decided to do these drinkups every second Wednesday of the month, it means the next one will be on the 13th of July. We will do it in the back room of the Delirium café near the Grand Place. Again, there is a fikket page so that we get an idea of the number of people that might show up:

http://abdup.fikket.com/

This is where all the drinkup events will be announced from now on.

As you can see we didn’t only drink beers. Following everything that emerged from this first edition of the Agile Belgium drinkup we can consider it to be a success. Next time, we hope you’ll join us!

The Agile Lean Europe (ALE) network is a pan-European open network for people passionate about Agile and Lean practice and thinking.

We’re organising the ALE 2011 unconference which will happen from September 7-9 in Berlin.  And we would love you to come!

Our goal is to create a European melting pot of Agile and Lean practitioners with many diverse perspectives and influences.  It is intended as a cross-border, non-profit collaboration event for mutual learning and continuous improvement. We want you to participate!

We are reaching out to the European Agile & Lean communities to come and join us during these 3 days of learning and cross-pollination.

We break the habit!  Diversity is key!

• We mix a traditional program with open space sessions, lightning talks and keynotes.
• We invite you to bring your families, there will be a spouse and kids program!
• We explicitly invite alien speakers who do not work in the software development domain.
• We want the whole of Europe to join. We already have pre-registrations by people from 28 European countries.

How can you help?

Forward this invitation to your community members and ask if they’re interested to submit a talk and register as a participant.

How does your community benefit from sending representatives to ALE 2011?

• You get a chance to pick up new ideas which you can spread in your community afterwards.
• You get to meet a lot of interesting people which you can invite to your community events.
• Your community gets visibility in the European Agile & Lean network.
• You get a clearer view on the state of Agile & Lean across Europe.

You can find more information about ALE 2011 on our website or by following #ale2011 on Twitter.

In addition to the conference, we’re also starting some ALE Network initiatives.  One is creating a system which allows communities to invite speakers when they happen to visit their region.  You can find out more about other initiatives at the conference or on our ALE Network website.

We’re counting on you to help Europe take a next step in the world of Agile & Lean!

Topic:

This is an informal meetup of the Belgian Agile and Lean community. Come after work and meet people you usually only meet at conferences. Anyone interested in Agile or Lean can join.

Add your name to the list to attend.

Location:

Foodsquare
Rue du Marché aux Herbes 120
1000 Bruxelles

Between Brussels Central station and the Grand’ Place.

See you there!

Mechelen, December 1st – 2nd 2011

XP Day Benelux is an international conference about Agile methods, intended for people from all walks of life who are involved with IT. It provides a good opportunity for exchanging ideas and sharing experiences and is suited for both experienced participants and beginners in Agile methods. The focus of this conference is on practical knowledge, real-world experience, and active participation of everyone.

XP Days Benelux 2011 will have something for everyone. Sessions for people who are new to Agile, sessions for experienced people, a good mix of technical, experience, management and process sessions. We’ll have sessions on Agile in real life, stories of success and horror, hands on workshops, and sessions that will completely surprise you!

You can be a contributor too

We’re looking for enthusiastic people who want to lead these sessions. People who work in any role, business or form. People who are willing to share, and are prepared to learn. Reflective practitioners who are not only interested in quality work but also want to know why things work as they do.

Are you new to presenting? Do you have a nice idea, but you don’t know how to shape it into a session? Don’t worry, we will offer lots of ways to help you:

• We have coaches who can help you create your session.
• Through our session proposal system you will get feedback that will help you shape your session
• We provide opportunities before the conference to try out your session.
• We have a set of personas to give you some idea of the type of participants you’ll meet at XP Days.

Have you presented sessions before? The extensive feedback will give you an opportunity to improve your session further. And you can use your experience to help other presenters to improve their session.

How to propose a session for XP Days

Becoming an XP Days presenter is simple (but not easy):

1. Submit a session idea (until July 9th, 2011)
2. You’ll receive a login to our session improvement tool
3. You complete your proposal and improve it with the feedback you receive (until August 27th, 2011)
4. You give feedback on other proposals to help their presenters to create the best proposal they can
5. Early September, the program committee selects the sessions for the program based on the following criteria:
   • Quality of the session
   • A balance of session subjects and formats
   • Participation of the presenter in the improvement process
   • Votes from everybody who proposed a session

Important dates

• Now to July 9th, 2011: submit session proposals
• Now to August 27th, 2011: improve session proposals
• September 12th, program committee meeting
• September 19th, program decided

Propose a session now to get as much time as possible to get feedback and improve your session.

See you at the conference!

See you on April 1st in Mechelen.

The call for sessions for XP Days Benelux 2011 will be announced at the conference. Start thinking about your great session ideas.

See you on the program of XP Days!

The “XP Game” is a simulation game which allows the customers and developers to experience how product features are estimated, negotiated, planned implemented and tracked in an XP project.

The Business Value Game

The Business Value Game is a fun simulation that allows you to experiment with different ways of managing your project portfolio, estimating business value, prioritising projects and evaluating the ROI of process improvement. Explore the business side of Agile.

More Learning Games

You can find more games at the Agile Coach and Tasty Cupcakes sites.

Join the Agile Games discussion group.