Post XP Day BeNeLux 2009

As we say in french "mieux vaut tard que jamais", here is my post about XP Day BeNeLux 2009.

In November I went to XP Day BeNeLux as expected. First time in Benelux, second time this year (after XP Day France 2009) and the fourth time in total.

The thing that I have seen already in France is the shift to Lean and in fact at XP Day Benelux, there was no sessions about eXtreme Programming!

If you read this blog quite often you know that I don't really like goodies, and XP Day Benelux is now a reference to me. When you get there they give you a small time table with all the sessions and some cards to take notes. That's all I need when going to a conference, nothing more, nothing less. But in fact there was also a amazingly wonderful gift ;-), a small white board with a pen to write on it (and since it took me several months to get real white board at work, I used the one given at XP Day in the meantime).

A space for programmers' training: lessons from the coding dōjō experiment

Emmanuel did a quick history on how the coding dōjō idea came to life, what is the purpose of it, rules to respect, etc.

What I remember from that session:

• It's like kata in martial arts, a way to learn how to resolve automatically and elegantly a problem by doing it over and over again. So when you face a similar problem in real life you can tackle it right away with a proper solution instead of doing a quick and dirty hack.
• It matters that things are done the right way, and coding dōjō help learning to recognize and understand why something is beautiful or not. I think, unlike what people usually say, that beauty is not subjective only (see this post on theory of centers for instance).
• Lots of ideas on how to organize and maintain a coding dōjō.

You can find if there is a coding dōjō near you on the coding dōjō website.

I never went to a coding dōjō but it's really something I would like. I spent 3 years in Paris knowing there was a coding dōjō and never went to any session, and now I'm in Brussels and there is no coding dōjō (I also still have to visit the Eiffel Tower and the catacombs). I think Emmanuel did one on Monday evening but I had to leave quite early so I was not able to attend it.

The Toyota way management principles for sustained lean and agile

All the information shown in this session are available.

I already went to a presentation of the Toyota way by Pascal but this session was more dense, so I can't say that I remember something in particular. The first time I didn't get that all the practices/values/etc. were linked together so Lean works better as a whole (see the first page of the Toyota Way handout).

What I learned from burning down my house

This session was about how a crisis can be a good thing and help moving to a more agile/lean way of working. What I learned from it: I need a crisis at work! 😉

User stories and estimating for enterprise agile

Not really what I was expecting, a bit of it was a presentation of their product. Anyway, there was still some interesting stuff to listen to.

Agile politics

This one was a game showing that we all are playing politics in a way or an other. Helps understanding why and when politics are happening.

Solve conflicts without compromise

In that session I learn (and already forgot 😟) a "tool" to help solving conflicts by asking simple questions in a specific way. Very interesting and it surely requires a lot of practice (the "coaches" were amazingly better than me at asking the good questions the right way).

The yellow brick road - agile adoption through peer coaching

This one was an agile fairy tale by Portia. This game simply reveals to yourself that you already know how to solve the problems you encounter and it's very powerful.

Misc

• good
  • Lots of interesting things to learn.
  • New ideas to think about.
  • Saw amazing people.
  • Beer.
• not so good
  • There was some Aikido sessions but I didn't attend any of them.
  • I was not able to stay after the dinner.
  • It was raining.
  • I did not spoke/share with a lot of people.
  • Some sessions were not that good.