Agile Turkey Summit 2017, and such controversial "internationalism" of the event

Considering that winter in Ufa is approaching with decisive forced marches, why not go to the conference at the end of October, somewhere, where is +20, and at least a little, before last winter, see the sun? Said and done: I looked at the conferences, compared the speakers, looked where else there are early-bird access prices - and booked.

This year, my colleague and I were divided, and went to Agile Greece and Agile Turkey, in order to compare the events, well, to tell what was interesting at each of them. Indisputable, plus Agile Turkey this year was the opening talk from Dave Snowden (the creator of the cynefin framework, which was casually written on Habré ). Usually at such conferences after the presentations, those interested are stuck around the speakers, and it’s impossible to ask and discuss their questions, which was my fear, since I had to ask a lot.

Conference and organization

Agile Turkey Summit has been held for more than a year, at the Wyndham Grand Levent Hotel in Istanbul (in the actively developing Maslak skyscraper business district). The event lasts only 1 day (which fell on October 19 this year), although master classes and workshops took place on the 18th day. The 4th conference floor of the hotel is clearly incapable of receiving ~ 800 visitors, which is especially obvious when they are trying to feed everyone.

The reports themselves, besides the main ones, actually turned out to be in Turkish (which none of the English speakers clearly expected). According to our calculations, 2/3 of all the speakers were broadcast in Turkish, despite the indignation on Twitter. The downside of Turkish domination was that all those who did not understand communicated with each other, and no one interfered with us.

The gifts at the event are of very low quality: a bag of Shi (f) t happens to be agile, a notebook with a pen, and a ton of promotional paper. As some have noted, similar merchism is distributed at conferences in India, in some Bangalore. To be honest, even in the native UfaDevConf everything is more civilized.

Report by Dave Snowden

To begin with, I must say that Snowden is one of the very few in this whole IT Management party associated with flexible methodologies who have common sense in their heads. He is agnostic in terms of methodologies and project management frameworks, since there are no universally working ones among them; the end goal is simply to make the work more efficient, and to take into account anthropological aspects, linking them with IT - and this set of statements is what I respect this man-steamer for.

Keynout was called "Complexity, Culture, and Entanglement . " Snowden briefly outlined the cynefin model and how it works with various systems during design work (it is worth noting that after reading about the model itself, we worked on various projects in SkuVault with cyberfin to almost everything, and cause-and-effect relationships made it possible to categorize and analyze the course of the project quite clearly, which is why I consider cynefin to be such a good model based on sense-making (or, to put it bluntly, systematizing empirical data). thief with customers and users, and establish the company's image in the minds of users, without ignoring their criticism.

The main theses of the report:

• The image of the company in the minds of users is more important than the “flexible” mindset of the company's employees: Thinking does not become “flexible”, after suddenly the team / leader / management announces that they are now 'Agile'. It is necessary to start slowly, improving processes, communication and transparency - so, over time, teamwork becomes smoother, more transparent, more efficient, and approaches “flexibility”.
• From this it follows that as soon as the company announces that it is now 'Agile' - it instantly loses all the flexibility and becomes rather the opposite of this flexibility.
• There is a very fine line between simple and chaotic systems in cynefin. Often, being in chaos, it will seem from your side that you are in the simple quadrant, and only during the fakapa you will come to understand that everything is ashen.
• It is necessary to constantly work on the image of the company among its users. All the negative is remembered, in contrast to the positive aspects. Communicate with users and customers, asking "what can we do so that next time we will not be criticized in this way", instead of rationalizing and justifying the current state.
• Company culture is inherited, and you need to constantly remember the communication channels between the company's founders and new employees, so that everyone shares their good and bad experiences from the life of the company. Then everyone will have an understanding of the company and its decisions in historical retrospectives, and it is precisely this that characterizes the very same cynefin model (as it translates, if roughly, then "the habitat with its entire cultural and historical layer").
• SAFe / NEXUS (scrum mastabilizing frameworks) cease to be dynamic when they masturbate. And isn't this the very opposition of the original idea of ​​Agile? (yes, this is an opposition, but I want to eat scrum.org / scrumalliance!).
• Waterfall is not bad, enough to demonize it, it is great for projects where there are no difficulties and uncertainties (and we have their lion’s share in the work).

Report by Kurt Bittner (Scrum.org)

Bittner rides around the globe with one talk "5 steps to scale the adoption of Agile".
The main five theses that help, in the opinion of scrum.org, to love and understand the usefulness of agile are:

• Manage projects taking into account the possibilities that they give after implementation (and not the fact of rolling out for sale);
• Help teams and stakeholders organize themselves;
• Maintain and protect Agile values ​​by setting an example of being a strong leader;
• Systematically get rid of extra layers in communication and approval stages to speed up processes and increase transparency and efficiency;
• Measure and improve the value of released features with frequent customer feedback (Agile principles: Inspect and Adapt).

Q: After the report, I decided to ask him head on, how well is the scrum suitable in situations with a language barrier, a difference in time zones of 9-10 hours, and geographical separation of the team? The same cynefin stretches and allows you to work with those methodologies and frameworks that are better suited, while formally, the scrum has a more rigorous approach and set of requirements.

A: They decided that scrum works, but efficiency greatly depends on how convenient the whole team is to work on scrum, because everyone has a more convenient approach, and the main thing here is not to interfere with each other to do a good job. Well, depending on the limitations that are unique to each organization, each empirically decides how convenient.

Q: Recently, we migrated our monolithic .net project to a more lightweight solution (well, we prepared for microservices + Go), in the light of all the bumps stuffed during the work (chaos, completely new architecture, folbek curves, flying counters and departing clients), it was interesting how well scrum would fit into this

A: We discussed and came to the conclusion that, given that there was no prediction other than the basic plan, exactly how and when everything ended, everything was too unpredictable, you could try using micro sprints on day 1, and without artifacts in some cases, it makes NASA, although it is very modified), but it was better not to complicate it, since it does not work at all. It turned out such a hardcore R & D project, which without manual control does not take off, if done for the first time.

Q: Estimates, and what is their role in scrum (because in the latest edition of Scrum from the Trenches, the idea of ​​assimilation, planning of poker and story points were revived).

A: In general, now in scrum.org there are no big fans of estimeytov for the sake of estimeytov and focus factors. It’s good time to estimate if it is necessary to give a medium-term perspective to complete the module, but most of the products are still developed taking into account the deadline, and the estimate will simply perform the application function of the guide when approaching the project phase.

Q: Does scrum.org consider that there is a problem of recertification (a lot of people own the CSM nameplate, but they don’t understand the framework and the management as a whole, but they like to wave it in front of everyone)? And is there an understanding that the number of certified but weak specialists lowers the value of CSM (at this moment I could not hide a malicious smile, how fun to ask such questions to a representative of scrum.org)?

A: In general, obtaining a CSM certificate means that a person is familiar with basic concepts. He does not in any way indicate that a certified specialist has at least some combat experience. Introduce a scrum such a specialist can, but it is better under the watch, so as not to break the wood.

In general, it cannot be said that the conference is frankly bad, since it gives the opportunity to interrogate eminent experts in a relaxed atmosphere. But in a good way, it is necessary to put a label that the report may be in Turkish, in order to previously avoid incidents among non-locals. In any case, Istanbul itself will never disappoint, and it is always good to go somewhere else, at least for a couple of days, where it is noticeably warmer than at home.