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For the anniversary of AgileManifesto - materials from AgileDays-2011

Using the anniversary - just in August, 10 years ago was published [1] The Agile Manifesto once again, now in the summer lull, I propose to load myself with a little Agile for the future (when the deadlines go, there will be no time for that).

Namely, see and read the reports from the AgileDays-2011 conference held in Moscow. Further, there will be a small explanation of why these materials are interesting, watchable and readable, as well as an annotated thematic classification of reports, with links to materials - videos, slides, reviews, etc.

1 Why is this interesting?

Although the topic is no longer new, now you can just celebrate the anniversary - Agile Manifesto hit a dozen, “promotion to the masses” is still ongoing. And if earlier the struggle was on the front of corporate development, in the style of “Agile vs. Some Waterfall Unified Process "and there he carried more likely to get rid of unnecessary regulations and senseless labor, now he has reached the widest masses (website development, start-ups).
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And here, competing with the “methodologies” of “Bardak and Chaos”, “Code & Fix (?)”, And instead of deliverance brings some strange rituals, very similar to the management cargo cult, which meets, let's say, a very skeptical reception from developers . Here and children's teasers , and even "anti-manifesto" ( [1] , [2] ). It is fashionable to even accuse Agile of an epic Nokia Fail.

Personally, I think that in development, development is constantly going on (see, for example, “ Cultures of software projects ”), user needs are growing in a race with the technical capabilities of developers, inside development, especially depending on the type of project, the importance of roles and specializations is changing: “developers”, “Managers”, “testers”, “analysts”, “usability” and “sales”. And we must understand how to balance all this. And I already got an old rhetorical button accordion, that “there is no silver bullet” among the development methodologies. Of course not! There are a lot of interesting, effective practices in the development, analysis and organization, there is reflection, when, where and how it works. And all this happens under the label “Agile”, probably because it is easier to unite under the obvious values ​​of the Agile Manifesto , than under the certification of some Process Management Institute .

And precisely because everything is dynamic and heterogeneous, the “cabinet path” - “reading N books”, is not very effective. It is easier to learn very simple rules and terminology of the most common Agile processes - SCRUM and Kanban, it will take a few hours, and then look at what real, non-inventive problems other developers have and how they solve them. And instead of reading a book that a “combat” developer or PM is unlikely to write (most likely it will be a western coach in a belated and curved translation), watch and listen to the fresh experience of teams of different types, understand that “it’s not for us to work will be ", and" it is necessary here and now, otherwise these fellow competitors will tear us ".

At Moscow AgileDays-2011 gathered real, practicing managers and developers. And the reports were both on the “humanitarian” topic of management and other process organization, and on the technical topics of effective design, development and testing.

Of course, it is also useful to communicate personally, but now the summer lull after the past AgileCamp , Agile Base Camp , and you can slowly, combining with a passive rest to watch and reflect on the video from the reports.

Next, I will say a few words why our video is worthy of viewing, and then I will offer a thematic classification.

2 Why is this video necessary or at least you can watch?

It’s no secret that three years ago they waited for video recordings from any IT conference, hoping to “visit remotely” while watching the video. Recently, however, conference videos are often showered with tomatoes (here's an example ).

Indeed, a muddy picture laid out on the web (on some low-resolution video hosting service) is in no way capable of transmitting the video part of a speech, unless it consists of monosyllabic two-color slogans. The latter is often OK for “humanitarian” reports (“management”, “motivation”, “communication”), but something non-trivial — code, schemes, models, screencasts and videos — cannot be transmitted.

And in general, the idea that the operator controls your attention on videotapes is deeply flawed, came from cinema-television, where they learn to constantly change plans with a popcorn audience: “speaker's close-up,” “speaker from afar”, “stage interior”, “Close-up hall”, “girl operator”, and sometimes, occasionally, deign to remove the screen.

But then it’s not a series, not a relaxer - on the contrary, you need an active perception, only the viewer himself decides whether he needs to “eat” the scheme on the screen, listening to the speaker, or everything is clear on the scheme, and it’s time to follow for the gesticulation of the author explaining nontrivial moments. Of course, sometimes it is advised to find slides and try to flip through them in parallel, but this is stressful and there are a lot of things unimaginable through slides - live demos, live coding.

Adds suffering and unprocessed sound, especially if you have to listen to those who spoke without a microphone. The human ear is very sensitive, and quickly adapts to any volume - from rumble to a whisper, but microphones cannot do this, and when you have to listen, constantly adjusting the volume - so that you can hear the speaker and questions from the floor without a microphone.

In the mind, you need to record and screen, and the speaker (well, or a debating participant from the audience), and sound, and process it all, clear noise (dynamic compression of sound), reduce, and synchronously mount to get truly valuable "canned food".

Such a video, you can be happy to watch, get the effect of presence, and even more!

After all, the beholder has authority over the video:But such an installation is not a trivial, usually manual work, and when professionals take it, they take a lot of it. And that, as a rule, is not very good. So, during AgileDays-2011, we attended to this issue and learned how to do it relatively quickly and efficiently. High-resolution web videos (1280 Ă— 720), where there is always a screen with precision up to a peekel, a presenter or a hall, depending on the activity of the latter, a marker board, if the presenter was still trying to draw something on it.

So, if you are interested in the topic of the report, it is highly likely that you will not have a look at it. The video is also published in the web version, in order to watch the beginning, to get acquainted, and even to watch it to the end (only it is impossible to speed it up :(), and there are links to download original video files to watch actively, with rewind or acceleration.

Of the minuses, it must be admitted that the work of videographers was not always successful - the fact is that we decided to shoot a video shortly before the conference began, and our employees were operators after a half-hour training the day before the conference. It turned out such Agile-cross-functionality, not perfect, but on time and cheap!

And besides the video, additional materials are also published,So you have the opportunity in a minute, looking at the annotation, and reviews from the other side of the barricades, to understand what to expect from the report, and in general, whether to look at it.

And finally - for each author of the report, a link is given to his profile in the IT professional network, i.e. If you are interested, in a couple of clicks you can:

3 Report Topics

Since the conference has already passed, the grid program no longer has any value, and readers are interested in a brief guide, classifying speeches with a very brief review, in order to immediately see if it makes sense to dig further - read the abstract, review, watch or download the video.

Such a somewhat subjective guidebook, I will offer below. Almost [2] All reports are classified, plus brief, in a twitter-style abstract. By the way, I made up my impressions about the reports only by watching the video, because at the conference itself I was so loaded with organizational questions that I was not on almost any report.

3.1 Getting Started

In this block, I collected introductory training reports, however, the level was not quite childish, so even if you heard about Agile / Lean / TOC, it would be quite useful to watch.

3.2 Managerial



3.2.1 Process



3.2.2 Evaluations and Planning
Although in Agile all approaches to planning are made as simple and reliable as possible (as a rule, “greedy algorithms”, prioritization of tasks, etc.), the difficulties remain. After all, you need to plan at different levels (bugs, tasks, story, marketing features, release, etc.) and different consumers (developers, marketers, customers, users). But planning is impossible without assessments, and although not everyone believes in the “You Can't Manage What You Don't Measure” mantra, there are also discussed reliable metrics that can be obtained cheaply and without “side effects” on the object being measured.

3.2.3 Motivation
The work in the “I am the boss, you are a fool” bastard style ”in Agile, where delegation and self-organization is maximized, is impossible, therefore, it is very important: motivation, leadership, and the selection of the right people.

3.2.4 Experience
Positive and negative experience of different companies and projects.Separately, I highlight as many as three reports on SCRUM in Luxoft:

3.3 Technical

Now about the technical reports. In my opinion, they are mainly focused on the so-called "corporate development", with bold databases, rashyasistoy "business logic", driving money, goods, and in general everything that was not hidden, and thousands of molds, which are bound to doomed business users. However, there were reports from the gaming industry and even from embedded applications.

3.3.1 Architecture


3.3.2 Development


3.3.3 Testing


3.4 Blitz reports

I will single out the blitz reports. For those who are used to the shortness of YouTube-videos, 8-10 minute reports, which can be viewed in one breath.







  1. ↑ 2001 , Software Development Magazine
  2. ↑ Video was not preserved from several reports; I could not watch them and therefore did not include them in this classification. But they can be found in the category , see slides or reviews.
  3. ↑ Newly fashioned of course with us. In the world it is already a classic.
  4. ↑ Obviously, only those they push towards the coast tell about “rescuing dolphins”

Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/125949/


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