Agile 2007 Recap

A bit later than I had hoped, but I wanted to take a moment to reflect on Agile 2007 in Washington, D.C. last week.

I arrived at Agile 2007 on Wednesday, midway through the conference. After a few conversations with attendees , I’m certain I’ve captured the essence of the conference. Immediately upon arrival, I jumped right into the second half of a panel discussion focused on Agile Portfolio Management. Then last night, I was invited to an Agile Roundtable discussion hosted by the fine folks at Stelligent, where a significant portion of the conversation centered around agile adoption and transition. You can obtain an overview of the discussion in this eWeek article. Thursday, I attended two different sessions. The first discussed The Enterprise and Scrum, and the second focused on Agile in the Waterfall Enterprise.

Therein lies a major theme of Agile 2007 - agile transformation and agile adoption within the enterprise. It seems that the majority of speakers and attendees I’ve spoken with who have agile experience are Scrum masters, agile coaches, or agile mentors looking for better ways to bring agile to the enterprise. For instance, conversations that emphasize vendor integration and COTS software packages typically turned toward contract and vendor relationship management. But as a developer, my area of interest lies more with strategies related to testing an application that integrates with a COTS package, and the infrastructure required to support frequent deployment of a COTS package. Not that we need another session on testing… But seriously, we cannot forget the developer within the agile enterprise. Some ideas for great developer sessions that come to mind include choosing an agile technology stack, principles for increased architectural agility, and tools for an agile infrastructure. Maybe next year.

Of course, with that said, Agile 2007 appears to have been a smashing success. It was sold out well in advance, and the enthusiasm of the crowd was tremendous. The conference felt small and personal, which allowed for a high degree of interaction between the speakers, vendors, and attendees. Hallway discussions were frequent and intense. But after spending some time speaking to the folks in the trenches, I share their opinion…more content discussing agile development techniques would have made the conference even greater. After all, the developer produces the one [and only] artifact that truly matters..the source code (pssst…don’t forget that).

Now, onto SD Best Practices in Boston.

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