Speaking at PMI DC Career Day

I'll be speaking at the PMI Washington DC's Career Day on October 16, 2009. Topic is the Agile PMO: Scaling Agile through Adaptive Governance. Hope those interested in the subject will be able to make it to the session.

Israel Gat on Agile Adoption

Via the HereTech, Israel Gat on agile adoption. Israel Gat, best known for pioneering agile methods at BMC Software speaks with Forrester Analyst Tom Grant in this podcast.

Among other nuggets of real life experience, Israel shares how he expected the agile adoption to be equally drive 50:50 top-down and bottom-up. Instead, he found that he only needed to provide about 20% of top-down leadership, and the groundswell of grass roots momentum carried the adoption forward quickly. He also warns of the danger of agile being considered a silver bullet, and recommends demanding specificity of the problem at hand before adopting agile.

Some great insights from an executive who has been through the crucible of real life agile adoption.

Flexibility and Rhythm - Top 10 Characteristics of an Agile Organization

Excellent video from Ryan Martens of Rally Development on maintaining a rhythm in organizations. See also the comment from a reader on "Battle Rhythm, a mechanism for both maintaining and managing synchronized activity."

The post is part of a 10 part series on the characteristics of an agile organization.

The PMI Agile Community of Practice Launches to the PMI Members

From the Project Management Institute (PMI):

This week, the PMI Agile Community of Practice (CoP) launched to the PMI membership. To celebrate the launch, the PMI Agile community is planning a kick-off event at the upcoming Agile 2009 Conference in Chicago, Illinois, USA, on 22-24 August.

The PMI Agile Community of Practice will launch their community at a special event:

Date: 25 August 2009 (Tuesday)

Time: 7:00 - 10:00 p.m. (Central Daylight Time)

Location: ThoughtWorks, Inc

(Aon Center - 25th floor) 200 East Randolph Street Chicago, Il 60601

This group of PMI Agilists is sending speakers to present, hand out marketing materials and facilitate open space sessions.

This community of practice is PMI's first newly formed community in recent years, and is dedicated to raising awareness of Agile practices and techniques among PMI's members.

“Our mission is to use Agile Project Management to change the face of business as we know it,” says Jesse Fewell, Community Manager for the Agile CoP.,

The PMI Agile community is focusing on building an emerging knowledge base using wikis, blogs and discussion threads. Additional resources include articles, tools and techniques, links to Agile project management literature and more.

In order to become a member of the PMI Agile community, you must first be a member of PMI. As you register for membership, you will then have the option to choose the PMI Agile CoP at no fee. Just click on the Agile community and add to your cart at no cost. For more information regarding the Agile Community launch event, please contact Jesse Fewell.

Agile PMO Webinar

I got some excellent feedback from the Agile PMO webinar I did yesterday. If you missed it, check it out here. Some questions participants raised:

1. Which agile leaders support the idea of an Agile PMO?

2. How do you track flow of value across the portfolio?

3. How do handle cross-team estimation?

Answers to these questions to follow in the next Blog. :)

4th Annual "State of Agile Development" Survey

Version One's 4th Annual State of Agile Development Survey is now open. Make sure you contribute! Last year's survey had some great information.