Register now and get the early bird special price of $300.

We have a fantastic program lined up and a uniquely collaborative conference format.

Speakers include: Lisa Haneberg, Luke Hohmann, David Anderson, Mitch Lacey and Mike Griffiths

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Well actually, it's in McLean, Virginia ;-) but from where I sit in the chilly Northwest, that is close enough to the nation's capital.

I'm going to be giving the key note at the first of a series of seminars sponsored by Valtech - Agile Edge - at the Hilton Hotel McLean - Tyson's Corner on May 22nd.

I'll be delivering a revised version of the key note I gave at Lean and Agile Sweden back in February where I examine the underlying paradigms behind agile and Lean identify the overlap. I help to set a healthier definition around what it truly means to be agile or not. It's not about examining what practices are present. It is about evaluating whether or not a chosen practice in a specific situation delivers on the underlying paradigms of agile, or continues to reinforce the old paradigms that got us in to the mess in the first place. Hopefully, I can stimulate a healthier relationship with our past and a healthier less divisive community around agile for the future.

Check out the flyer for the event [in PDF] and the entire agenda [also in PDF]

Register now!

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Register now, using code 'd400', to see me present kanban in San Francisco May 5th 2008 before March 19th and get a $400 discount.

I've never spoken about Agile Management in the San Francisco Bay Area with the exception of my visit to Yahoo! to talk about kanban last year. So, I'm really excited to have the chance to do so in San Francisco this year. It's been so long since I've spent any time in city of San Francisco - one of my top 5 favorite places in North America. I believe it was 5 years ago that I last attended JavaOne as a Motorola employee.

If you live in the Bay Area and would like to learn more about kanban and have a chance to meet me and talk directly about agile and lean ideas for managing software engineering teams, then come along to the JAOO event on May 5th. Accelinnova and TriFork are jointly presenting an Agile Leadership Summit. The line-up is basically the same folks who turned out for the APLN Leadership Summit in Dallas. However, the San Francisco event is commercial and does not benefit the APLN.

Register to see me present kanban in San Francisco May 5th 2008 before March 19th and get a discount.

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[This article first appeared in the Cutter IT Journal Volume 20, no.8, August 2007]

Stop Negotiating! No really! Cut it out! Banish it from your thoughts, your actions and your organization. Refuse to negotiate. When you need to work with another department, group or team inside your organization, and you find yourself in negotiations to get what you need, just say “Enough!” And refuse to negotiate.

[Download in PDF]

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Co-authored with Merwan Mehta and David Raffo

Providing value to customers in software development through lean principles

Abstract

Lean thinking has created substantial benefits for a variety of industries. Although it is not easily apparent, the same principles can be utilized in reducing lead times for software development. Fundamentally, lean principles leverage the benefits of software engineering best practices to improve the work flow and the tactical management of the project. By managing the project more efficiently and reducing waste, tremendous performance benefits can be achieved.

This article seeks to present and articulate a number of key lean principles in the context of software development. The goal is to provide insight into practical strategies for making trade-offs between the core lean principles of providing the highest possible customer value, maximizing work flow, and eliminating waste in the context of specific real world software development situations. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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While I haven't been blogging much over the winter, I wasn't entirely idle. I co-authored two important papers. The second of which is the forthcoming Technical Note from the SEI entitled "CMMI and Agile: Why not embrace both?" with Mike Konrad, Hillel Glazer and Jeff Dalton [More on this when the SEI publishes it.] The first is an academic paper that appeared in the Journal of Software Process: Improvement and Practice, co-authored with Merwan Mehta and David Raffo "Providing Value to Customers in Software Development Through Lean Principles." [Unfortunately, this paper though available online is a download from Wiley, both the journal subscription and the paper re-print are very expensive. If you have an interest in this paper, send me an email.]

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The next APLN (Agile Project Leadership Network) Seattle meeting is on Monday, April 7.

Who:      Mitch Lacey with Ascentium Corporation in Bellevue, WA
What:     When Working Software is Not Enough: A Story of Project Failure
When:    Monday April 7, 5:30pm - 7:30pm
Where:   Avanade Inc. ( 2211 Elliott Avenue, Seattle, WA)

Please RSVP to Dragos Dumitriu (dragosd at avanade dot com).  If the door is locked call Dragos (425.260.9283) or David Socha (206.418.8201).  Food will be available at 5:30pm.  Talk will start at 6pm.

More information is at http://apln-seattle.pbwiki.com/.

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I'll be in London presenting at QCon on March 11th and 12th. I'm giving a 1 day Zen of Agile Management workshop on the 11th. This is the class that normally costs $750 per participant if you have Modus Cooperandi deliver it. So it's a great opportunity to get some really useful, different and fun agile management training for a super discounted price. On Wednesday 12th, I'm presenting my kanban material in the main conference.

Update: Some blog comments from an Italian attendee at my 1 day tutorial... QCon (parte 1)
Update: Adam Shimali votes me Best Talk of QCon London 2008
Update: QCon Summary on InfoQ Takeaway Points and Lessons Learned

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David Anderson, thought leader on managing highly effective software engineering teams, author of Agile Management for Software Engineering, and former Senior Director for Software Engineering at Corbis, today announces the launch of Modus Cooperandi, a consulting firm dedicated to new collaborative methods of leadership and management for 21st Century knowledge worker industries. David has teamed up with Jim Benson, Corey Ladas and Daniel Vacanti to create a team of experienced thinkers and innovators in management and leadership that will offer their coaching and training throughout the World.

Modus Cooperandi will be working with a network of global partners to deliver training and consulting services aimed initially at making software engineering teams more effective, productive and efficient.

Learn more... ModusCooperandi.com

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The next APLN (Agile Project Leadership Network) Seattle meeting is this coming Monday, February 4. Arlo Belshee from Portland will be presenting a talk on the fascinating work he is doing. A full description is below.  If you attend, you probably will leave with a few more questions about how software projects could be done...

Who:      Arlo Belshee
What:     Naked Planning – Taking the Open Kimono Principle to one Extreme
When:    Monday February 4, 5:30pm - 7:30pm
Where:   Avanade Inc. ( 2211 Elliott Avenue, Seattle, WA)

Please RSVP to Dragos Dumitriu (dragosd at avanade dot com).  If the door is locked call Dragos (425.260.9283) or David Socha (206.418.8201).

More information is at http://apln-seattle.pbwiki.com/.

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Have you been wondering about how a Kanban board really works for software development?  Come to the next Seattle APLN meeting in three weeks and find out.

Who:      Darren Davis, Manager at Corbis
What:     Kanban workshop
When:    Monday December 3, 5:30pm - 7:30pm
Where:   Avanade Inc. ( 2211 Elliott Avenue, Seattle, WA)
Why:      Learn the advantages of a true single-piece flow pull system and how to implement it in your organization

From Darren:

The software engineering team at Corbis has spent the last year creating and running a development process based on the principals of Lean Manufacturing.  Using this process, we have released over 190 change requests and bug fixes at regular two week intervals with very high quality and minimal management overhead.  Critical to the success of this process has been the use of a Kanban board.  Using such high-tech implements as post-it notes and Sharpies, we have created an information-rich way of controlling the amount of work in progress, minimizing inefficient multitasking, identifying and addressing blocking issues and exposing untracked work.

This presentation, in workshop format, will define a software development workflow and create a Kanban board to track work through it.  We will demonstrate the use of post-it notes and other visual clues to provide transparency into the development process in a way that technical and non-technical people can easily understand.  We'll finish up by running a standup, at the board, to illustrate how the board is used day-to-day to organize and manage development work.

My earlier blog post Kanban in Action discusses this process and shows Darren at the Kanban board.

Please RSVP to Dragos Dumitriu (dragosd at avanade dot com).  If the door is locked call Dragos (425.260.9283) or David Socha (206.418.8201).

To receive all Seattle APLN emails, subscribe to our Yahoo! Group.

More information is at the Seattle APLN wiki.

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The APLN Seattle Chapter meets every first Monday of the month at Avanade, 2211 Elliott Ave, Seattle WA 98121.

Learn more about what is happening at each meeting from the APLN Seattle wiki.

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Here are the full abstracts for my two official Javapolis conference sessions...

UNI: (Monday 10 December) The Zen of Agile Management

What is the essence of agile management? How do you create a culture of continuous improvement? With light touch, empowerment, delegation, high levels of trust, and focus on the correct leverage point to drive maximum advantage. Learn the Zen of agile management! A set of techniques developed by David J. Anderson over the last 8 years through his experience managing teams at Fortune 100 companies such as Motorola and Sprint using Feature Driven Development, Microsoft Solutions Framework (and Team Foundation Server) and his latest work at Corbis using Lean ideas such as kanban. This half-day workshop dives into the heart of how to manage with queues using kanban boards, cumulative flow diagrams and application of wider ideas in management science, to software development process. Through David’s experience as senior director of the software engineering function at Bill Gates’ private company, Corbis, you will learn how to scale Agile and Lean techniques enterprise-wide.

CONF: (Friday 14 December) A Kanban System for Software Engineering

Ideas from Lean Thinking have been growing in popularity with the Agile software development community. Over the past year, the use of kanban (literally signal cards) popular in manufacturing has been seen as the significant innovation in managing agile work and is growing in adoption at firms such as Yahoo! David Anderson introduced the first electronic kanban system at Microsoft in 2004 and has since extended the technique through his work at Corbis. Kanban acts to limit work-in-progress and focus the team on achieving a continuous flow of value to the customer. Kanban innovates on accepted agile management practice by providing an iteration-less process with a regular release cadence. It helps achieve a balance of demand against capacity on the team and eliminate multi-tasking. David will present a brief history of the technique through case study reports from teams at Microsoft and Corbis. The kanban system enables David to deliver on his Recipe for Success: focus on quality; reduce work-in-progress; balance demand against throughput; and prioritize.

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On the first day of Javapolis, I'll be giving a BOF session in the evening for the XP Users Group in Belgium. The session is scheduled from 19:00 to 22:00 so hopefully I'll still be awake as the jetlag should surely be kicking in by then. Perhaps the XPUG guys can bring some Red Bull? ;-) As we're using a BOF room at the conference, anyone attending Javapolis will be welcome. I'm deliberately presenting different material than the main conference. So for the first time, I'll be publicly talking about trust and collaboration and how to build it in your organization. I've been researching this for the past couple of years. And I hope to put my thoughts in to a coherent presentation and test it with the audience in Belgium. Hope to see some of you there... [Register for the event]

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