Managing Product Development

Last week was the Agile 2009 Conference. It was great. The stage producers and their teams had selected a phenomenal program, Elastic Communications outdid themselves as the event planners, and the volunteers helped everything proceed smoothly. Alistair Cockburn and Jared Spo0l delivered fabulous keynotes. Here’s my personal retrospective:

1. What stood out for me: the sheer quantity of decisions I had to make and the time involved. As is normal with many projects, the decisions I made early on were not always right (:-))) and caused problems later. I also noticed the time involved. I spend most of last September working on the budget, the rest of the fall getting the stage producers and assistants lined up, and preparing for the submission system opening. I spent the winter and into the spring on the hotel issues and putting a marketing plan together. Summer was for more decisions and dealing with the last-minute-Annies, the people who wanted a favor after the deadlines. I spent zero time on my business in August–all my time in August was spent on the conference.
2. What were my reflections? I loved that many of the stage producers worked as pairs. I should have changed the budgeting to give the assistants an honorarium too. However, my budget was in trouble and I didn’t do that. I was frustrated that some stage review teams did not use the submission system for their reviews. I found that working with Ahmed Sidky and Jessica and Yvonne from Elastic and Phil (the AA managing director) was a blast. I was frustrated that it didn’t matter how much time I spent on the conference there was always more to do. I’m delighted that Jean Tabaka facilitated our retrospective. Jim should have plenty of data to work with based on that output.
3. I learned that marketing has to be congruent with what you are marketing. That’s why I sent the emails to the agile2009 list. I learned that if you have a scarce commodity (rooms to have sessions in), you force people to make difficult decisions. That’s why we had a great program. I learned that you can still game a submission system, no matter how hard you try to remove the gaming. I discovered that even when I thought I had managed the risks, they kept popping up, especially where the hotel was concerned. I learned that Elastic was more than capable of managing the speaker interactions. (thank goodness!) I don’t understand why speakers did not read their emails :-) (I’m sure they did, but the information didn’t penetrate.)
4. My decisions: I will take my learnings back to the AA board and to next year’s chair, Jim Newkirk. I will choose people in key positions more carefully–some people did not have the time to devote to the job they volunteered to do (a common problem with volunteers). I thought I’d asked enough questions when I asked for commitment, but I did not. I had too many stages; I’ve already suggested to Jim that he combine stages (if he uses that metaphor). Having fewer simultaneous sessions (over 2008) was a great idea. I wonder if even fewer simultaneous sessions next year is the right idea? I’m glad we gave the speakers checks onsite, and their feedback forms within hours of their sessions. I wish we had explained that more thoroughly.

I learned a lot in my project portfolio session. I had reworked the simulation from the previous week, and had a typo in the handout. The typo created an underfunded set of projects. We all learned the value of “should we do this project at all” when discussing the project portfolio.

I enjoyed my time chairing the conference. I learned a lot and am glad it’s over! (I’ve been sleeping 10 hours a day since I returned, even crashing on the couch at 9pm, and then going upstairs to bed at 11.) To all my colleagues: thank you for your time and passion. You made a difference.

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Agile 2009 starts today. I am so excited. (I know, I’ve been saying that a lot. Well, I am :-)

The event planners, Elastic Communications have been on top of everything and are making the whole conference come together. Open Jam looks great, with small tables and some comfy couches all over. The rooms get set up today (some are already set up and the whole conference will be set up by this afternoon). Muzik Masti opens at 5:30 t0day, and the icebreaker, with the Fresher’s Faire starts at 7pm.

I’ve started to catch up with old friends, and have put some faces to names I already know.

My part is almost done. I have some introductions and welcomes and thank yous at general sessions, but I can go to sessions when I want. What a great feeling.

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I haven’t blogged about Agile 2009 in a while because I’ve been busy managing it. In the meantime, you need to know that the absolute last day to get the conference rate for the hotel is Aug 14, 2009. Do not delay. Once the hotel rooms at the conference rate are gone, they are gone. Some things you might want to know:

• Bob Payne interviewed me about the conference here
• You can learn about the program in a variety of ways: time, persona, stage, personalize with a number of personas
• If you’re having trouble getting your boss to pay, take a look at the justification toolkit
• You can see the emails I’ve written to the people who want news about the conference
• You can follow us on Twitter, @agile2009

Early bird registrations are now sold out. The cheapest way to attend the conference is to register with four other people (we don’t care if you work at the same place, or even know each other!) for a five-pack.

Please do join us, Aug 24-28, in Chicago.

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I’ve been writing this post forever (for a month), and finally deleted that one and have started over again.

We had over 1500 submissions, so the stage producers and review teams made the difficult decisions when they accepted about 20% for the program. (Difficult is not nearly descriptive enough. Complex, merciless, intricate, knotty are helpful for you to understand what people had to do.)

We were able to avoid some of the gaming this year in the submission system. We allowed comments from everyone. We only took reviews from stage review teams. That avoided the popularity contests some submitters revel in.

If you submitted a session, you should hear soon. We appear to have a defect in the automated email system. Maybe. I can’t quite tell, but the people who can tell are on it.

Our next steps are to start publicizing the program as soon as we can publish it. For that, we have to get the emails out and the acceptances in.

However, assuming you believe me that the program is outstanding, I encourage you to register now. We have a few early bird registrations left. When those are gone (they are quantity-based, not time-based), you will have to register at the regular rate, unless you are attending with 4 other people from work or 4 buddies who are willing to share a 5-pack registration. The 5-pack is our best registration price.

When I can give you more info, I will.

Oh, and if anyone is willing to help me with some web work, please email me. I am looking for help on the web site. Thanks.

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I can’t tell if this is a compliment or not, but David Anderson is already disappointed with the Agile 2009 program. Since we haven’t even opened the submission system yet, never mind chosen the program, I’m surprised. What David is reacting to is my organization of the program committee. (The potential compliment is that David is so invested in the Agile conference that he feels it necessary to criticize our process already.)

Last year, at Agile 2008, we had 19 stages, and 37 simultaneous tracks. That was for a conference of about 1500 people. The program was overwhelming, and many people chose the main stage to hear a talk instead of going to something participatory because they couldn’t make a decision. A number of session leaders had done all the work for a session that no one went to. A number of experience report speakers had almost no one at their sessions. That’s demoralizing for the speaker/leader and doesn’t provide value for conference attendees.

I decided to have fewer stages this year (17) and fewer simultaneous sessions. We will have up to 20 simultaneous sessions, which is still plenty.

Some people requested additional stages, and for now, those stages are stages. Will product management be subsumed into customers and business value? Maybe. What happened with breaking acts? No one volunteered to produce it. I asked people as they volunteered, and no one wanted it.

So what do we do with proposals that don’t seem to fit a stage? Well, submitters have several options:

• Submit a proposal to a stage that seems close
• Email Ahmed Sidky, our program chair, for guidance
• Email me for guidance

Will we know what to do? Yes. Last year, we, as a program committee, realized we needed a stage partway through the submissions, and we created a new stage with a stage producer and an assistant stage producer.

It’s fascinating, being the conference chair. Everyone who works on the conference is a volunteer, except for the Agile Alliance’s managing director. The rest of us receive a small amount of compensation, which is nowhere near the time we put into the conference. This is truly a labor of love on the part of the stage producers, their assistants, and their teams. And, we are all geographically distributed. Talk about a challenge.

David, if you feel so strongly about breaking acts (which I don’t think is the right place for kanban anyway, since it’s no longer a breaking act, but requires leadership and a team), you could volunteer to produce that stage.

Maybe I haven’t shown any leadership. Maybe my team has not produced anything of value in this first iteration. According to David, I am failing. I’ll be asking the team for feedback.

However, I prefer to see the program come together organically. We have some guidance for submitters. We have a sufficiently flexible process so we can find the right place for a proposal. We have a system that allows for feedback from the community (but not ranking this year).

We expect to inspect and adapt as we proceed. David has pointed out areas some of the stages overlap. That’s certainly something we could clarify. But, have failed? Maybe for David. I doubt that we have already failed the rest of our constituents.

I invite you to let me know if I’ve disappointed you. I would rather receive feedback now than in three months from now–or even later.

And, for those of you want to know “When will the submission system be open?” We expect it on or about Dec 15. You will have 2 months to submit a proposal. Don’t wait until the last minute–you won’t get enough feedback to change your proposal into something that wins a space.

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