There is no shortage of Agile topics to write about this month! The Agile 2007 conference was a whirlwind of activity: speakers, vendors, discussion groups, and lots of networking. Participants, many of whom are professional developers, shared new ideas and best practices and were even willing to talk about some failures. The many vendors and consultants talked about customer successes as they vied for new customers. There were also some noticeable gaps in the program, including a lack of depth in large-scale and global projects and a disproportionate number of ISVs versus IT shops sharing their stories. Overall, though, I found the conference to be rich with ideas and enthusiasm; an acknowledgement of a quickly maturing market.
Some Interesting Observations
Attendees all have their own takeaways, depending on what is on their plate and where their interests lie. I certainly have my biases as to where I think the Agile 2007 conference should be focused. [I won't get into specific commentary about navigating the agenda, logistics, exhibitions, etc. There are plenty of blog entries to read about those gripes.] There are some tremendously successful Agile projects out there, and many team members were willing to share their advice. In this article I will highlight some overall perspectives as well as some "new" things that companies can consider.
It's still an insular, fairly technical community.
The good
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news: The techhies have proven themselves right. Stories of improved quality through early and automated testing, faster time to market through automated build/release, and even increased customer satisfaction through frequent and flexible releases flowed from developers.
The bad news: As I remarked to many people, Agile 2007 still feels to me like the OOPSLA conferences of the late 1980s: really smart people generally in violent agreement, but evangelizing subtly different approaches to the same overall concepts. The landscape of Agile methods is crowded. The OO community finally converged on a small set of simple(r) notations. I don't see this level of convergence on the Agile horizon.
It was also disappointing that the conference was dominated by ISV experiences. Of course, these folks build software for a living, so we'd expect their processes to be the most mature. Is it that corporate IT shops are unwilling or unable to share their experiences? Or just that their experiences are not rich enough to merit sharing in this type of forum? In addition, while people talked about the need to scale their projects or run them globally, most of the discussions were quite technical and too few of them tackled the tough management issues associated with global initiatives.
The people issues dominate.
The good news: Numerous sessions shared experiences in how to staff projects, collaborate among team members, obtain adequate customer/product owner participation, and measure and communicate results. Many of these stories centered on seemingly simple, yet important practices: maintaining a relentless focus on removing obstacles on a daily basis, strictly managing the backlog size and priorities, focusing on team versus individual productivity, and insisting that the entire team be accountable for quality. In addition, the importance of expert training came up again and again - and not by those selling training services!
The bad news: There isn't too much in this area, other than the fact that there's a real shortage of experienced Agile developers and managers in most organizations. Training has become a top priority.
The commercial tools market isn't sufficient.
The good news: Even with the predominant focus on human factors, no one really disputed the need for tools for Agile projects.
The bad news: Companies don't have the necessary Agile tools at hand. Few organizations cited the use of traditional (i.e., legacy) lifecycle management tools for their Agile projects. Experience reports, such as those from Salesforce.com, Weyerhaeuser, DTE Energy, and the British Broadcasting Company (BBC), noted the need for teams to obtain additional and/or enhanced tools. Some invested in custom tools for Scrum iteration management, metrics and management reporting, and collaboration wikis. Others turned to open source tools such as JUnit, FitNesse, and CruiseControl for specific Agile development tools.
The good news: Agile project management is the hot space, reflecting the necessity to communicate projects' status outside of the team and also fit within corporate governance programs. A few shops (but not many, given the self-selecting participants at the conference) started by using their existing project management and collaboration tools for Agile projects. More often, teams turned to open source tools such as XPlanner that address specific Agile metrics. From the commercial perspective, Rally and VersionOne have enjoyed their leadership as early entrants in this emerging market, but their honeymoon is about to end. Two of the leading Agile consulting firms have actually gone into the product business - having used their toolsets to help manage large Agile engagements, they now want to leverage their investments. Two new offerings, ThoughtWorks Studios Mingle and Sapient ResultSpace, were demonstrated at the show (Mingle is available now, ResultSpace is in beta and due out soon). Stay tuned: these tools have been through the large-scale project tests, but it remains to be seen how these consulting firms will succeed in the always volatile tools business. And, all of these tools must be integrated with the broader portfolio management environment.
Getting management support is still a big hurdle.
The bad news: Unfortunately, too many presentations and papers discussed teams' struggles to attain management attention, support, funding, and general commitment to their Agile initiatives. These best practices were a hot commodity, especially those that addressed transitioning from legacy environments. This is one area where the Agile conference community could really grow - emphasizing the use of Agile practices at management levels, and not just elaborating in different technical areas. Agile consultants shared techniques for facilitating daily standups, establishing coaching proficiency, and integrating with legacy organizations and PMOs. Still, much remained at the project rather than the portfolio level.
Large-scale Agile implementations are hard to find.
The bad news: Overall, I was frustrated by the discussions of "large-scale" and global Agile projects. Some touched on issues of distributed tools, collaboration among large teams, using Scrums of Scrums to manage large initiatives, and dealing with time-zone disparities. But these are just the tip of the iceberg for teams tackling complex distributed projects.
Global consultants, who typically lead the industry in developing new processes and skills, weren't on the Agile 2007 map. There was essentially no presence from Indian offshore providers, many of whom claim to use Agile processes on some projects. Most disappointing to me was the lack of leadership in this area from large US consultants like Accenture, IBM Global Services, and EDS. I'll be optimistic and think that perhaps they didn't think that the Agile 2007 conference merited their marketing dollars, rather than that they don't have sufficient expertise.
The good news: Experience from boutique Agile consultants is growing. A few Russian and Eastern European consultants, such as Exigen Services and Luxoft, held discussions in their booths. The best leadership came from the large ISVs (e.g., Yahoo, Google, BMC Software) and the boutique consultants (e.g., Valtech) who make their living running worldwide software organizations and who have truly succeeded with Agile practices.
Keep On Learning
The Agile community has become much more sophisticated and continues to grow. With that growth, the plethora of approaches creates confusion and there aren't too many signs of Agile methods coalescing. Product and services companies pour out new offerings and have broadened their sights beyond just the project level. "Lean" is the new buzzword, so now we'll see this term over- and mis-used, as has been the case with all things "Agile."
Beyond Agile 2007, there are a number of other Agile conferences coming up in the next year, including the Agile Business Conference, Agile Development Practices, and SD West 2008. I'd encourage teams to consider submitting papers, particularly those addressing management practices and global development initiatives. This is where we need more thought leadership - hopefully from IT organizations along with the ISV community.
About the author Liz Barnett is the Editor in Chief of the Agile Journal and
Principal Analyst at EZ Insight Inc. Previously Liz spent 10 years as a
Vice President and Research Analyst at Forrester Research, joining
Forrester as a result of its acquisition of Giga Information Group. Liz
held management positions at Accenture, PepsiCo, and Atelier Research.
She also was the Research Director for the advanced software
development and advanced network computing research services at New
Science Associates, prior to its acquisition by Gartner Group. Liz
holds a patent for developing a distributed application
development/CASE tool. Liz earned her B.S. in operations research and
industrial engineering at Cornell University.
Articles 
There is no shortage of Agile topics to write about this month! The Agile 2007 conference was a whirlwind of activity: speakers, vendors, discussion groups, and lots of networking. Participants, many of whom are professional developers, shared new ideas and best practices and were even willing to talk about some failures. The many vendors and consultants talked about customer successes as they vied for new customers. There were also some noticeable gaps in the program, including a lack of depth in large-scale and global projects and a disproportionate number of ISVs versus IT shops sharing their stories. Overall, though, I found the conference to be rich with ideas and enthusiasm; an acknowledgement of a quickly maturing market. 
