hybrid ost at agile software conference (long, fun, wiki)

Tue Aug 6 22:39:46 PDT 2002

here's one for the archives.  traditional conference.  four
days.  300-400 expected when planning began.  330 showed
up.  workshops.  tutorials, which are paid for in advance.
academic papers, juried in advance.  programmers from around
the world.  keynote speakers.  a number of industry gurus.
and 2 days of ost spread over last 3 days of the
conference.  opening after lunch on day 2, the official
opening day of the conference, after morning of 3 keynote
speakers in darkened room and powerpoint slides FULL of
text, graphs, numbers.  "birds of a feather" self-organizing
special interest groups held during lunches at one end of
the dining room.  open space 'closing' scheduled on 4th
afternoon AFTER the 'farewell' series of keynotes.  carpeted
walls that resisted long-term sticking even by 4-inch heavy
duty duct tape.  no invitation written, except for posting
of 4 principles and one law on teh conference website.
minimal upfront discussion with conference planners
responsible for ost 'track'.  no conversation with rest of
program committee.  have i said anything that gives you any
hope that this has been a fantastic couple of days, with one
day left tomorrow???? <grin>

the group is agile software alliance and extreme programming
universe.  the conference theme is 'a conference for sharing
and learning about agile software development processes --
HOW LITTLE CAN WE DO AND STILL BUILD GREAT SOFTWARE?'
...getting a little brighter, now, eh?  they are a group of
consortia and developer companies and individual programmers
who work by this manifesto...

Manifesto for Agile Software Development

We are uncovering better ways of developing software by
doing it and helping others do it.
Through this work we have come to value:

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan

That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we
value the items on the left more.

in short, these folks are working in open space, or nearly
so, everyday.  they have things called 'standup meetings'
every morning.  what we would call morning news.  they work
in 'iterative cycles.'  each cycle starts with pairs of
programmers each selecting a 'story card' that is a
programming task and spending a set time (hours or days)
working on that task together, then reconvening as a team to
report results at the end of the session.  then picking new
cards, reshuffling pairs as needed,where roadblocks
prevented completion.  they rewrite their overall project
plans every three to five work days.  they talk a lot about
how to get planning-driven IT groups to be more agile.  they
know what they're doing.  they talk about moving at the
speed of change.  heartening stuff, no?

anyway, this is what we're up to.

day one - workshops, tutorials, academic papers  all day

day two -
morning of keynotes, 10-15 mins of open space intro to whole
group, then 1.5 hours for lunch.
more workshops, tutorials and papers, AND... the opening
circle for about one third of people, 110 people
two open space breakout sessions that afternoon, seven
topics, no evening news scheduled
major keynote evening

day three -
more workshops, papers, tutorials AND four open space
sessions (75 and 90 minute sessions) adn 15 minutes for
morning news/review of opening for those who missed it
half hour breaks between sessions, as with rest of
conference.  1.5 hours lunch.  no evening news scheduled.
big reception in evening

day four - (still to happen)
workshops, tutorials, papers in morning
AND morning news, one breakout, 30min break and last 90min
of morn for closing circle with whoever comes, reopening of
space for any special projects that might want to be
initiated based on proceedings of conference, and also time
to discuss links between agile and open space (blatant
crossing of facilitator boundaries, of course).
lunch and farewell keynotes, then 2 more hours available to
work in open space on any special projects identified in teh
morning and offered to whole group during farewell comments.

other observations -
-no way to know how many participants have taken part in ost

-20-25 people POPPED out of chairs immediately at opening
-perhaps 35 sessions convened total
-at least one formal 'guru panel discussion' abandoned the
formal structure and met in a circle
-some papers rejected by committee showed up in ost

-all proceedings captured in a wiki --- the open space
equivalent in webbbased software -- see http://www.c2.com or
http://www.globalchicago.net/wiki for more about this
AMAZING stuff.  the proceedings are being entered, read,
edited, and other non-ost proceedings like birds of feather
groups being posted in webbased format, very simple, then
the whole thing will be moved to web so it can just continue
on, seamlessly.   must be the future of something, these
wiki things!

-many many ost tutorials and coaching sessions springing up
around the facilitator, who will add ost info to proceedings
documentation in wiki.  facilitator also soaking up local
wiki experience from real experts.  taking notes for OSONOS
(you are coming to australia aren't you????)

WHAT ELSE CAN I SAY?  HAVE I BROKEN EVERY RULE IN THE BOOK?

-stayed up almost all night last night installing my own
wikiwikiweb software on my website.  went in for day two on
just two hours sleep.

-staying at home, 35 miles away, so no room to go nap in...
this must be just about all the rules broken.

-session topics start falling down from carpeted walls
middle of first session.  we use huge strips of wide duct
tape to tape them back up.  overnight, all posters fall down
and 10-foot long strips of 4" duct tape gets nearly
hopelessly stuck to itself in apparent attempt to eat all of
the session topics.

some things that have made a difference...

-first, of course, is that many (but not all) of these folks
have open space in their bones AND STILL...
-the opening introduction before lunch gave folks a chance
to get ready for opening after
-we announced the a bit of the opening at the intro,
principles, law, history of ost so to orient those missing
opening
-also announced that anyone in the room would be able to
answer questions... assume 'everybody knows' and just ask
-didn't try to compete with main conference with evening
news sessions
-did four of nine breakouts spaces in main room, with
computers and 5 others on other side of formal session
meeting rooms, at birdfeather locations, which were only
birdfeather groups during lunches.  this let open space
'embrace/hold' rest of confreance.  some complained about
the stretch for bees/flies, but others stopped into formal
sessions and bumped into people along the way.

-described the format to ourselves as follows, to avoid any
competition... 'birds of a feather' groups (whose organizer
refused to roll them into open space) came to be understood
as special interest groups for issues that were already very
well known to many participants.  papers, tutorials,
workshops formal stuff were issues well known to a few, who
were now informing the many.  open space was for those
issues and opps that nobody yet knew how they might be
resolved or where they might lead.  the growing edge of the
agile world.

the one rule we didn't break is that we did have a theme:
the future of software.  agile, development, sales, careers,
companies, customers and the rest of the industry was
explicitly named as fair game for discussion.

much talk in opening keynotes about the challenges, needs,
etc for connecting planning-driven hierarchical slow
developoment with agile development groups.  in the end,
they've had first hand experience with this marriage of
pre-planned formal conf and ost conference.  many want to
see more open space at future conferences and i'm all for
it.  <grin>  m

--

Michael Herman
300 West North Avenue #1105
Chicago IL 60610
312-280-7838 voice
312-280-7837 fax

http://www.michaelherman.com
...an invitation.

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