Recently I facilitated a workshop at the Agile Goa 2012 Conference titled – “Agile Way of Dealing with Uncertainty in a Complex Adaptive World“.

Abstract: It is human nature to look for patterns while solving new problems. We have a dangerous tendency to reuse what we already know to solve the next problem. We rarely discard what we’ve learned; we simply build on top of it. Sometimes this is a useful tactic, but often new problems and their context are slightly (if not vastly) different than the previous ones. And applying our previous way of doing things, will not be best suited for tackling the new problem.

In the software world, we’ve seen a similar desire to find the “one true way”, “the BEST method”, “the silver bullet” to solve all software development problems. Alas, after decades of trying we’ve not found one.

In this workshop, I’ll let you discover why this is not possible and possibly explain how best to deal with this problem. This ideas in this workshop are based on my experience backed by latest research from Cognitive Science, Complex Adaptive System’s Theory and Evolutionary Psychology.

Slides:

At the Agile India 2010 conference, Sandeep and I ran a workshop to shed some light on the kind of aping that’s taking place in the software companies trying to be Agile.

Clearly we don’t have all the answers. Nor do we know the best way to build software in the right way (if there was one.) But we do know one thing:

The right way doesn’t involve mindlessly following practices just because some “expert” says you need to.

In this workshop we took a critical look at various “agile” practices and tried to highlight the dogma and ceremony that has creeped in. We also questioned if the practices defined a decade ago are still applicable? If yes, have they evolved since? What are some of the original creators of these processes practicing today?

The Agile Software Community of India (ASCI), (a registered society founded by a group of Agile enthusiasts and practitioners from companies all around India) has successfully organized yet another agile conference in India called ‘Agile India 2010’. For the first time in India, we had 4 Gordon Pask Award Winners at a single conference: David Hussman, Jeff Patton, J. B. Rainsberger and Naresh Jain. Also for the first time, ASCI organized a unique twin-city conference, where this 2-day event was held in Mumbai (Jan 16th and 17th) and in Bangalore (Jan 22nd and 23rd, 2010).

The Goal of the conference was to challenge the process dogma, provide food for thought for creative problem solving and help us take the art-of-software-development to the next level. This year, the focus of Agile India 2010 was on real Agile practitioners who’ve “been there, done that and wanted to explore the future of Agile.” Targeted at Agile enthusiasts, researchers and educators, Agile India 2010 offered an ideal platform for attendees to network and learn about the latest research and cutting-edge Agile industry practices directly from the experts through talks, hands-on technical sessions, workshops, competitions and tutorials.

The conference featured 26 recognized National and International speakers, over 250 enthusiastic participants from over 75 companies, 7 Keynote talks, 10 Workshops/Tutorials, 5 Product Demos, 7 Experience Report, 25+ Lightning talks and a thrilling Programming with the Stars competition.

Like every year the conference participants were gifted with a Conference T-Shirt and a carefully selected book as a souvenir. This year the participants had a choice between 3 books:

• Apprenticeship Patterns
• The Art of Lean Software Development
• The Productive Programmer

ASCI is proud to partner with our sponsors, BNP Paribas, ThoughtWorks and Xebia and our Mumbai host Mukesh Patel School of Technology Management & Engineering to bring this conference to you. Our sponsors, also corporate members of ASCI, have been long-term supporters and promoters of Agile Software Development methods globally. A special thanks to Industrial Logic for providing the support to organize this event possible. Also a big thanks to our supporters, Directi, Binary Essentials and Agile Alliance.

Some of the highlights of Agile India 2010 included “Programming with the Stars” – a fun post-lunch segment each day where “ordinary” conference attendees paired with legendary developers from top companies around India, who have attained a high degree of mastery in Agile development. The duos perform live on stage in front of a panel of judges, David Hussman, J. B. Rainsberger and Jeff Patton. PWTS lived up to its expectations by being both entertaining and educational. Rajesh & Amit were rated as the best pair in Mumbai. While Bhavin and Mukesh won the best pair title in Bengaluru.

The conference also featured over 25 lightning talks where participants shared their thoughtful, unique idea about Agile in under 3 minutes.

Also this year the conference tried to be as environmental friendly as much as possible. Some of the steps taken at the conference were:

• Skipped handing out printed material like conference program, printed handouts & slides (except for what the conference sponsor handed over).
• Skipped handing over notepads & pens. Another big source of wastage. Very few people take notes and they usually carry their own.
• Lunch and snacks were served in washable plates & steel spoons. Usually conferences use throwaway plates and plastic spoons.
• For drinking tea, coffee & juice, we requested the conference participants to carry their own mugs & water bottles.
• Conserving Electricity: We tried to switch off projectors and Air Conditioners when ever possible.

To back all of this, both locations had an enlightening talk from Captain Planet (aka Saurabh Arora) showing the effect of global warming and how we can take small steps everyday to avoid further worsening the situation.

Like every Agile India conference in the past, this conference left delegates coming away with new ideas on how to improve their software development process by applying Agile practices to development and delivery. All the conference slides are available from the conference program page on our site www.agileindia.org/agileindia2010.