you would have had an absolutely indescribably fantastic time!  And that’s just for starters.  To be honest, the phrase “that was so much fun it must have been a sin” comes to mind.  I had fun every minute I was there.  Here’s a short VERY LONG recap of what I can recall now (a week after I arrived in Orlando):

Saturday, very late at night I was on a shuttle from Orlando International Airport to the Gaylord Palms Resort and Conference Center.  I was blown away when I saw the Gaylord Palms.  It was a sight to behold.  On the Mears shuttle were about 10 people and I didn’t know any of them.  I was tired and just looking forward to getting to bed.  While waiting for my luggage to be taken off the shuttle someone in the group said “You’re Bob, right?”  Freaky, right?  Well, I was at the hotel hosting the Scrum Gathering, but I was not expecting someone on my airport shuttle to know me!  Turns out it was Bent Myllerup and his wife Kirsten from Denmark.  He recognized me from various pictures.  By the way, Bent is a fellow Certified Scrum Coach.  I got to hear about how they had to fly through Detroit to get to Orlando and they were afraid the luggage was lost, but then it caught up with them.  I felt tired, but they looked pretty wiped out after a REALLY long day of flying.  Little did I know how many more surprises were in store for me!

The second surprise came when I went to check-in to the resort..  The person at the check-in desk ran my credit card for the room and then left to go to another room.  I was concerned about what had happened because the card had plenty of available credit, it was not stolen or lost, etc.  Maybe they lost my reservation?  No, none of the above.  They were out of normal rooms with king-sized beds so he upgraded me to a junior executive suite.  It sounded nice and they weren’t going to charge me extra, so what the heck.  Well, it turns out the room had a decent sized living room area with couch, large chair and coffee table.  It also had a dining area with a nice sized round table and 4 chairs.  I nice den area with an office desk and chair.  A very large bedroom area with a very big looking king-sized bed.  A bathroom with doors to both the entry hallway and the bedroom.  A large walk-in shower.  Let’s just say I was blown away.  The whole suite had to be 450 square feet or maybe even larger.  I felt like I wasn’t worthy, but I wasn’t going to say no.  It was great.  I actually was kind of pumped up when I saw it so I got settled in and did some work.  Next thing I knew it was 2:30am and I had to get up at 7:15!

On Sunday I was fortunate enough to be able to go to the Scrum Trainers and Coaches Retreat.  Wow, what a day!  The day was sponsored by the Scrum Alliance, which was extremely nice of them.  Mike Vizdos volunteered to run things for the day and Jean Tabaka got roped in to help him out at the last minute.  These are two people I really respect.  Mike in particular made it clear the entire day would be about positive energy.  I later learned that this particular event in the past had degraded into something very negative and left everyone with bad feelings.  I’m glad I didn’t attend those other retreats because this one was nothing like that at all.

I spent the day having conversations with amazing people.  Serge Beaumont, Peter Stevens, Jim Cundiff, Roger Brown, Jeff McKenna, Tobias Mayer, Howard Sublett, Lyssa Adkins, Peter Borsella, Alan Cyment and so many others that I can’t remember them all now!  I learned new techniques for using case studies as exercises in class.  I learned a lot about the inner workings of the Scrum Alliance and how things are being turned around.  I learned a lot about facilitation.  I saw various Certified Scrum Master course slide decks and the great ideas they contain.  I interacted with others on a Scrum Alliance Improvement Committee on how best to move our group forward.  I had an amazing lunch with Peter Stevens where we spoke about so many things I can’t remember them all, but he ended up creating a blog entry about part of our conversation involving a quote from Randy Pausch (of the Last Lecture fame).  I remember my head swimming when the day ended just after 4:30.  Then going to the reception later in the evening and having my head spin again as I spoke to even more people who I have long admired but never been able to meet in person.  The night (for me at least) ended around midnight when I left the bar after having spent several hours with Mike Vizdos, Howard Sublett and Andreas Schliep.  Very interesting conversation.  Very open and honest people.  I remember thinking for the first time in a couple of years I really had a good feeling about where the Scrum Alliance was headed.  I had a smile on my face all day and I’m pretty sure I fell asleep that way too!

It turned out I was too jazzed up on Sunday night to fall asleep, so once again I didn’t go to bed until about 2:30.  This time I slept through the alarm and missed the opening keynote sessions.  I normally don’t make it to those anyway, so this conference was no exception.  I did make sure I was at Luke Hohmann‘s “Innovation Games^® in Scrum” deep-dive session.  I have been interested in Innovation Games for quite a while and this was going to be my chance to see the master at work.  I am hosting an Advanced Product Owner course for some clients at the end of this month and I want to use some of these games so this session was important for me.  Luke did not disappoint.  I think we ended up playing 6 of the 12 Innovation Games including doing a couple of them online.  People kept filing out of this session, but I think it was because they didn’t know what they were getting into.  For me it was pure heaven.  I learned a LOT.  I also confirmed my understanding of some key points I intend to use later this month.

Monday night was a reception sponsored by VersionOne.  It too was great.  Again, meeting great people, making great new friends.  During the day I met Darian Rashid who is so close to me in lean/agile/Scrum beliefs that it is truly scary.  We spoke a bit more during the evening and both were going to try to make it to each other’s sessions on Tuesday (didn’t happen for either of us!).  As the bar was closing I remember them giving Howard Sublett a full glass of bourbon for the road.  Nice parting gift!  I don’t even remember where I ended up after the reception, but I’m sure it was a fun place.  I’m sure it had fun people.  I’m sure I had interesting conversations.  Right now I can’t recall any of them, and no, it isn’t because I was drunk.  It is simply because a week later all of those great conversations are starting to run together!

Tuesday was a big day.  My presentation “Doing Scrum Isn’t the Same as LIVING Scrum” was at 9:45.  I slept late (and missed Darian’s first session) so that I could be fresh for my session.  My session went very well.  I knew the material was great because I gave earlier versions of the same presentation to the XP NYC Meetup and the Phoenix Scrum User’s Group back in January.  I updated the material for Scrum rather than Agile and changed a few slides based on new ideas I had.  It was a total success.  Lots of good ideas, good questions, and a great group of people.  Some standing and some sitting on the floor since we ran out of chairs.  It was awesome.  I had so much fun giving the presentation.

After the presentation was over it was time to simply mingle.  I should have gone to other presentations, but I didn’t.  There were too many interesting conversations to have in the hallways!  I even ended up playing Doctor    Lunch was quite interesting as Harrison Owen spoke about the creation of the open space concept.  My favorite quote in regard to running an open space event was “Sit in a circle. Create a bulletin board. Open a marketplace. You all go do work while I take a nap.”  He was hilarious, yet always making the point that open space can be used to solve very serious problems.  Late in the afternoon the CSC’s met with Howard Sublett in my room (since I had so much space) and had great discussion around a bunch of topics.  Howard is an interesting character and the more I got to know him, the more I liked him.  After the CSC group broke up I spent time that evening getting dinner with a great group including Jean Tabaka, Bent Myllerup and his wife, and several others I can’t remember right now.  When I went to bed on Tuesday night I remember thinking “I don’t know if I have any more energy or brain cells to handle another day!”

Well, turns out I did.  I missed the opening remarks for open space on Wednesday, but I got there in time to go to some sessions.  I spent time with Roger Brown talking to a group of people interested in applying to become CSCs in the future.  That was fun because I got to see the process through their eyes.  It is rather intimidating and being able to help some people understand it was nice.  We can’t give them answers to everything, but we can give them some guidance, which we did.  I felt like I was repaying the guidance and support Richard Lawrence gave me when I applied.  I spent lunch talking more with Darian Rashid.  I still can’t get over how much he reminds me of me in the way he thinks about things.  We are supposed to get together later this month when I’m near Philadelphia.  I’m really looking forward to it.

Unfortunately, the Scrum Gathering did have to come to a close for me.  I left at around 3pm to head to the airport.  Once there I tweeted about sitting at Wendys and 5 minute later James Love who I met in my session at the Scrum Gathering was joining me.  Turns out he has some needs in his organization people I know may be able to help with.  Who knew???  A perfect end to a perfect few days.

Until next time I’ll be Making Agile a Reality^® by keeping up my relationship with the incredibly smart people I met at the Orlando Scrum Gathering.

Oh, and thanks to Derek Wade because I blatantly stole the idea and title of this blog post from his blog post!

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Have you ever had a computer meltdown?  OK, so myIT infrastructure meltdown wasn’t as total as the picture to the left, but it still was pretty bad.  In the span of a couple of days I had my main desktop and my main laptop both die.  This happened just before I had several straight weeks of travel and as a result I was left working off of my MSI Wind U100 netbook for a few weeks.  Let me tell you a bit about it and what I learned from it because anyone making a living on the road needs to know this stuff!

First off, let me just say super-redundant backup is a good thing.  In fact, it is a VERY good thing.  Because I had backups available in several different ways the outage didn’t cause me to lose any work.  Groove had always worked in the background to sync my files so the netbook was ready to go.  I use an Exchange server so again the netbook was fine since it could sync just as easily as the other computers.  In fact, most of what I mention in my blog post about a highly mobile team of 1 turned out to be necessary!

The big wins for me were:

1. Having all of the files already sync’d from Groove.
2. Having everything in Exchange so I just pointed the netbook to it and let everything stream onto the netbook.
3. Having a netbook which is very capable of running all the Office applications and still be usable.
4. Having enough computer savvy to recognize things were failing and stopping them before they damaged other parts of my IT infrastructure.
5. As usual, Dell came through and delivered my new kick-butt Dell Precision M6500 laptop very quickly.
6. Bringing up the new laptop worked just as my emergency plan said it should!  Install Office, sync w/Groove, sync to Exchange, copy Favorites, etc.  After all the headaches I had, this part of the process was rather nice.

Things that didn’t go so well:

1. The desktop computer was (and is) completely dead.  It powers on and then nothing happens at all.  This really stunk because it had all my personal and family stuff on it.  All of that was backed up, but it still was a pain because I had been very good about separating personal and business items.
2. The laptop would mostly boot, but not quite.  I spent a long time (30+ hours) trying to fix the problem.  Microsoft Windows let me get so close to fixing it, then would make it impossible at the last second.  I wanted to upgrade the Windows on the machine to Windows 7 – no luck because you have to boot from the hard drive for an upgrade to work.  I finally got around that by booting from a USB thumb drive and Windows 7 decided it didn’t know how to talk to the regular hard drive.  Frustrating!
3. My netbook had several Windows Updates, a Java update and an Adobe update to install, but I couldn’t take the chance of installing them.  If the machine crashed I was going to be in big trouble for my upcoming courses.
4. The HP printer drivers once again proved incredibly frustrating for me.  I have NEVER been able to install HP printer drivers and have them work first time.  In this case I installed, uninstalled and reinstalled several times and finally gave up on getting it all working.  I still can’t scan through the network like I could before.  I don’t know why, but the printer is near the laptop so I just plugged in a USB cable and called it good enough.

Things that surprised me:

1. Because I made the decision to just have one main machine (the M6500 laptop) instead of two, I had to put all of my personal information on the laptop as well.  I expected this to be straightforward – copy over old data files, install software and you are up and running.  Wrong.  Quickbooks only allowed a certain number of activations and my backup machines had used those up.  I ended up having to upgrade, which was good, but unexpected.
2. I used Laplink PC Mover to copy data from a semi-working laptop to the new laptop.  I had high hopes for this software, but as it turned out I had to reinstall several items anyway.  If I had known that would be the case I would have just started that way instead of being led astray by the high hopes I had for an easy transition.
3. Windows 7 is really very easy to use and quite nice.  I thought all the advertising was going to turn out to be just hype, but I definitely like Windows 7 - a lot!  Microsoft has made some nice changes.
4. I got a fingerprint scanner on the laptop because it wasn’t expensive and seemed cool.  It is actually very cool.  I can use it to log into the computer but it also came with a program which can store security data for websites.  This can include login information, credit card info, etc.  The difference between this and doing it in a browser is the security involved.  I login using my fingerprint.  It can take a password, but I deliberately made that something even I don’t remember and just stored it in my safe deposit box if I ever need it.
5. I had to put passwords on all of my financial files (Quicken and Quickbooks).  I decided to share these through Groove with the netbook.  I did this because I’m spending more time on the road than I thought I would and I need to keep these things up to date.  Once I did this I realized I needed to protect the data or someone stealing my laptop or netbook would have keys to my financial kingdom.

So in the end I’ve recovered nicely.  I upgraded my laptop and refurbed the old one (a Dell Vostro 1700 I really liked) and gave it to my wife to use.  I now have access to ALL of my vital information on both of my computers.  I still have redundant backup and now I know it works!

I did miss a month of blogging and keeping up with the world though.  For that I’m sorry.  As of today I’m back on the bandwagon and I should start generating more blog entries fairly soon.

Until next time I’ll be Making Agile a Reality^® by continuously improving my IT infrastructure and the processes I use to support it.

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The new year starts tonight.  I’m extremely excited because I have HUGE plans for this blog during 2010.  I don’t know if I can live up to all of the things I want to do so I decided to make my goals public.  I find when I make my goals public I am more likely to reach them.  I’m hoping so anyway!

My blog commitments for 2010:

• Mondays: I intend to write a regular series of articles which I hope will hit home with many people.  I’m not going to expose the name quite yet, so come back on January 4, 2010 to see the answer.  My goal is to publish an article in the series every Monday.  If I run out of good articles I’ll start another series.  Each and every Monday (except for certain holidays) I will have another article in an ongoing series.
• Tuesdays: The goal is to do monthly contests, surveys and other items of that type on Tuesdays.  In particular I will be continuing the question of the month and will continue to give the winner a $25 Amazon gift certificate.  The question of the month will be posted the second Tuesday of each month.  If you are interested, the December question of the month is still accepting entries until midnight MST tonight.  Get your entry in and have a chance to win the prize.
• Wednesdays: Articles which are pertinent to the theme for the month.  January’s theme is “Getting a fresh start”, February’s is “Basic practices” and March’s is “Core Meetings.”  I have themes for all of the months of the year but I want to defer commitment on the rest of them.
• Thursdays: The 2nd Thursday of the month will be a book review, while the 4th Thursday of the month will be a review of an agile (or lean or kanban or collaboration) tool.  The other Thursdays will have articles which are related to the theme of the month or which don’t really fit a category but I want to publish.
• 1st of the month: At the beginning of each month I’ll be publishing an entry with the previous month’s best blog posts by others, best online articles and also the most popular blog posts on this site.  I have a LOT of blogs I’ll be trying to keep up with and this will allow those of you who do not wish to read all those entries to get the best of the best in one spot.

Other days I may not post anything.  If the 1st of the month falls between Monday and Thursday that day will likely have 2 blog postings available.

Why am I doing this?

The short answer is I’m not totally sure.  A better answer is because it fits in with the company value of having fun.  Writing blog entries where some are stories, some informational, some educational, some time saving, some reviews and some totally random is fun.  I hope meeting my goal of having fun will make this a place you come to in order to have fun too.  Maybe doing that will help you learn more about agile than you know today.  It would be awesome if this becomes a jumping off or starting point for you whether you are new to agile or an old-timer.

Truth time: When I started this blog a long time ago I did it because it seemed like a way to help get some business.  When I did it for that reason it turned out to be work that I didn’t like.  It certainly wasn’t fun most of the time.  I sometimes would be on the blog entry bandwagon and cranking out content (when it was fun) and then I would go nearly silent for a while (when it wasn’t fun).  Then it took a bad turn and started to look like a death march with no end and I definitely wasn’t enjoying it.  I had to make a choice about continuing the blog or just posting once in a great while when something struck my fancy.

Then one day I was reading a blog posting about increasing blog readership and one of the suggestions was to create an editorial calendar.  An editorial calendar basically lists what you want to write and when.  The concept isn’t revolutionary, but the results were eye-opening!  I have a large backlog of items I’ve saved over time as the start to possible blog entries.  In fact, right now there are about 60 items in that queue.  But looking at that list and picking one to write about was always burdensome.  I thought having a calendar would make this more manageable, but I was way off in its actual value to me.

I thought creating an editorial calendar would really turn me off, but I decided to try it anyway.  Instead of a turn-off it was very inspiring.  I was able to put some structure to something that previously had no structure.  It actually made me excited about the writing I would be doing.  I kept adding things to the calendar until I realized I had most of the days for every month with entries.  Entries I WANT to write rather than entries I feel like I have to write.  In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been more prolific on the blog in the past few weeks.  I bet you can’t guess when I created the calendar?  Yup, a few weeks ago.

I have more things up my sleeve as well.  Recently I put a SlideShare presentation online.  I plan to do more of that.  I intend to have some video as well.  A podcast or two, and maybe some screencasts as well.  All of these are things which sound fun to me.  I’m looking forward to doing them.  If I don’t get extra business from it I really do not care at all.  I want to have fun, build a bit of a community and have this be a resource that helps people.  I respect a lot of people in the industry and some of them have excellent blogs (see the list in the sidebar on the right for just some of the ones I follow).  Their blogs are what I want this one to be when it grows up   We all have slightly different slants on things and our uniqueness makes each have value.  I want my uniqueness to show through and hopefully help people better understand how to succeed.

Until next time I’ll be writing and writing and writing (happily!) and hoping the writing helps you when you are busy Making Agile a Reality^®.

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Was 2009 a good year or a bad year for you?  I have to admit it was a good year for Agile For All.  We hit almost every goal we set.  We far exceeded some of them.  On a few we came up short, but like a good agile team we made sure those were the ones of lowest overall value.  If during 2010 we have similar performance in relation to our goals then we will be very satisfied.  We were responsive to our clients and we definitely were Making Agile a Reality^® for them.  We met our company mission while living our principles and values every day.  It has been satisfying to see our clients become successful, but it has been even more satisfying seeing them recommend us to other companies and friends.  For those opportunities I want to take a moment and thank all of our clients.  Without you our company value of being sustainable wouldn’t be possible!

2009 Facts

• Over 500 people trained
• Presentations at 9 different conferences, workshops, seminars or user groups
• New high point in charitable giving
• Created the Agile Cooperative
• Used Agile Cooperative member companies to deliver 11 different courses for clients
• Agile Cooperative member companies also delivered over 70 coaching days for clients
• Published more than 75 blog entries
• Over 600 followers on Twitter
• Blog chosen to be on Alltop.com
• 10X increase in website hits over 2008 average
• 3X number of available courses
• 15 scores of 11 out of 10 on course evaluations, 1 score of 12 out of 10
• Average evaluation score above 90% 10 in all areas
• 86% of clients did repeat business for new teams
• 2010 confirmed business already equals over 31% of 2009 total revenue

It was also a good year for me personally.  Those of you who know me well know the joke about my nickname.  I was called Agile Bob during 2008 but I wasn’t very agile at all.  My left hip had degenerative osteoarthritis which was so bad it caused me to have to use a cane to get around late in the year.  On December 9, 2008 I had hip replacement surgery which I wrote about here and here.  It has now been over a year and I can definitely say the surgery was successful beyond my wildest dreams.  I did not do any traveling until March in order to give myself a big buffer for recovery.  Before the surgery I was told I could travel in early February, but I gave myself an extra month.  Then I started traveling – a lot!  I have almost 70,000 miles on United Airlines and with some random flights on other airlines I probably have 75,000 total miles in 2009.  I don’t mind the miles at all.  I really like what I do.  What I like even more is I was able to be on all those flights with no medical issues.  No cane, no pain medicines, no problems at all.  The only issue is the extra few minutes it takes me to get through the airport security checkpoints because the artificial hip triggers the metal detectors.  I am now an old pro at that and it really is no big deal any more. Of course I’m writing this without having flown since the joker tried to blow up a plane on Christmas!  I guess I’ll revisit whether it is a problem or not next week when I travel to Boston!

The new hip also allowed me to play golf reasonably well again.  For years my handicap had been increasing and during the summer of 2009 I was able to get it down to single digits for the first time in 6 years.  I also am able to ride a bicycle without fear of pain or locking up my hip joint.  I’m looking forward to doing much more of both of golf and bicycle riding in 2010.

On the business front I was able to become a Certified Scrum Coach (one of only 22 in the world last time I counted).  Being part of that elite fraternity has been humbling as well as enlightening.

Lastly, the people I met during 2009 were just amazing.  I’ve been very blessed personally during 2009 in ways I never would have imagined.

Until next time (which will be tomorrow) I will not be Making Agile a Reality because I’ll be taking a break for a few days.  Yes, you’ll read a blog entry tomorrow, but it is already written and scheduled to just magically appear online.  The power of automation at work!  I hope all of you have a safe and Happy New Year.  Please don’t drink and drive!  Pay it forward and do something nice for someone so you can both start 2010 feeling great!

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This blog entry is being posted on Wednesday, December 23 at noon MST.  Why?  Because I don’t plan to be on my computer very much, if at all, between then and sometime on December 28th.  Between those two dates I intend to watch my favorite movie a number of times.  Yes, my favorite movie of all time is “Miracle on 34th Street” in the original black and white version.  It has been my favorite movie for as long as I can remember.

One of the reasons I like the movie is because in many ways I can relate to the character portrayed by a very young Natalie Wood.  She goes from being very logical and not believing to believing with all her heart because she sees something which literally transforms her thinking.  This happens to me all the time.  I like to think I’m pretty open-minded about things, but a lot of the time I’m really not that open-minded.  Instead I am like Susan Walker (Wood’s character) who is completely consumed with logic and what she knows she knows.  Fortunately, like little Susan I can be persuaded, it just isn’t easy.  It takes something pretty big and special.  Fortunately that happens a lot!

When a transforming event occurs it changes my life and makes me a better person.  This has happened to me in all areas of life including business, personal relationships, sports and anything else you can name.  I’m always thankful for all of those great events.  At this time of year I try to take the time to appreciate them all more fully and part of that is enjoying personal and spiritual time with the people I care most about.  So, despite the fact I love interacting with those of you out there in cyberspace, it is time for me to take some time away this week and be with family and friends.

Until next time I hope you are Making Agile a Reality^® by remembering to be sustainable (don’t work overtime this week!) and enjoying life while appreciating work.

I hope you have a Merry Christmas or at least enjoy this time of year (depending on your spiritual beliefs).  I know for me it is truly the most wonderful time of the year!

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Recently I’ve been asked to write an occasional article for the Weekly PM Insights newsletter.  This newsletter is published every Sunday night and so far has had some excellent articles.  There are some very good names in the world of Project Management writing articles, and Ray Posch (the editor) was open-minded enough to ask me to write the occasional article dealing with an agile topic.  Good articles, open to agile – hardly sounds like a project manager newsletter!

Ray is doing a great job and if you are a project manager it is probably worth subscribing to get a few articles a week in your email.  It won’t disappoint!

By the way, my articles so far appear in issues 1, 5 and 7, so Ray is definitely keeping to his promise of publishing something on agile quite frequently!

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On October 20, the Agile Cooperative will be hosting a free one-day seminar designed to give attendees a lot of information about what is really required to be successful with an agile adoption.  If you are in the Denver area and your organization is giving any consideration to adopting agile you must attend this seminar!  We aren’t going to pull any punches.  We will be talking about real numbers, real needs and real chances for success.  Click HERE for more information and to register.

I certainly hope to see you on the 20th!

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So far I am having a great time at the Agile2009 conference in Chicago.  There are some amazing speakers at this event.  With approximately 1350 attendees this is clearly a big deal!  Some odd scheduling issues (Jeff Sutherland in a small room???), some bad scheduling luck (all 3 Agile Cooperative members speaking at the same time on Thursday) and a few other quirks are going to make it slightly less than it could be for me personally.  However, it is still great to be here.

I wish I could relay all the funny stories that have already happened to me in just a bit over 24 hours on site, but I can’t.  I’ll just relay one which I found particularly amusing.  A person came up to me and said something to the effect of “I want to pick your brain on becoming an independent agile consultant.”  Of course I responded that would be fine, but then I asked why they wanted to talk to me.  The response floored me – apparently Agile For All is one of only a handful of small agile consulting companies formed during 2008 or 2009 which is being successful.  I never even thought about it that way.  I was always too busy working to make it more successful.

Finally, if you are interested in Making Agile a Reality^® for your organization I highly recommend attending Agile2010 in Nashville, TN August 9-13, 2010.  If that doesn’t work, then how about Agile2011 in Salt Lake City, UT August 7-13, 2011.  Or if you are really looking ahead Agile2012 will be in Grapevine, TX August 13-17, 2012!

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I just found out that this blog is now listed as a Top 100 blog by The Daily Reviewer!  I am truly flattered to be in such great company.  If you want to look at other agile blogs, or blogs on other subjects check them out by clicking on the ribbon image to the left.

Now that my self-imposed sabattical (I know, that sounds strange, but it’s a long story!) is over, it is time to get back to writing.  A little jolt like this mention is just the motivation I need!

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Today is an interesting day. Back in January 2009 I decided to apply for registered trademark status for the phrase “Making Agile a Reality.” Today I found out that the trademark registration is complete and Agile For All now has a registered trademark. So instead of “Making Agile a Reality™” we will start to use “Making Agile a Reality^®.” I am quite excited, but also a bit humbled by this.

I am humbled because I feel having this registered trademark implies being able to deliver upon it’s promise. Agile For All has been doing so since the company was formed, but now it somehow feels a bit different. I know this is silly because nothing really has changed, yet I can’t shake the feeling. I think I LIKE the feeling, it is just different for me.

Now, how to add value for others to this blog post? I think a discussion of why I chose “Making Agile a Reality” as a slogan would help others understand the specific issues I see in the industry, and hopefully help them avoid those issues!

First of all, the phrase was chosen because it kept bringing me back to the real reason Agile For All exists.  It isn’t to make money (although it does), or help promote me as a speaker (although it does), or to just give people knowledge about agile (although it does).  The real reason Agile For All exists is to help teams and companies use agile effectively!  Too often I saw teams failing because they were taught how to do agile, but that was the extent of their knowledge.  As any agile practitioner would tell you, it is important to not only know the practices (the hows), but also the nuances behind those practices and the reasons they work.  It is important to know how to recognize and fix problems which arise from implementing new practices.  It is important to get help through the rough patches.  I saw too many teams learn agile and then not succeed.  My goal with Agile For All is to help teams be truly successful with agile, not just teach them how to do it and then stop!  For those of you who may be considering an agile transition, make sure you recognize there is a high cost to doing training without ongoing coaching.  There is even a higher cost to doing those ineffectively or in a way where you become dependent upon someone else for your success.

Reason number 2 for the “Making Agile a Reality” phrase is to help potential clients understand my mindset about helping them.  I feel it is important for any successful agile transition to start with the knowledge it is not only possible, but highly probable the team will be successful.  Teams MAKE agile a reality, it doesn’t happen by accident!  It is hard work, continuous improvement, transparency and a host of other things which work together toward success.  It isn’t just sending someone to a simple agile training course and then expecting them to lead the team to agile success.  Again, if you are thinking about an agile transformation, remember how important it is for the team to believe it is the right course of action so they will give it their best effort.

Lastly, I like “Making Agile a Reality” because it helps me do the right thing.  I have seen some organizations make a lot of money from some clients because they sold the client what they asked for instead of what the client needed.  I’ve seen coaches embed within teams to such an extent they couldn’t be extracted without causing the team to fail.  I’ve seen trainers teach various flavors of agile courses because it is what they had, rather than partnering with others to provide what was really needed.  All of these things are done because it helps the vendor make more money, or they just didn’t know better.  By using the phrase “making agile a reality” I hear “provide what the client needs to be successful with agile.”  This is very important to me.  My reputation is built upon success, fairness and delivering exceptional value.  The above scenarios wouldn’t bother me because I go back to “making agile a reality” and quickly recognize the futility of those approaches.  This is part of the reason I helped form the Agile Cooperative.  By pro-actively partnering with other fantastic organizations I know I can help make agile a reality no matter what a client really needs in order to be successful.

So a bit of advice for those of you who are thinking about moving to an agile process:  concentrate on the results, not the steps to get there.  Understand the costs may be higher than you expect.  Grill potential vendors about how they will help ensure your success.  Ask a lot of questions and don’t move forward until you get the answers you need.

Until next time I’ll be Making Agile a Reality^® for more clients by remembering the reasons I applied for registered trademark status in the first place!

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