Thinking Inside a Bigger Box

The next half year, I’m scheduled to give the talk “Experience Agile Programming” in Kiev, Gothenburg and Riga. In the presentation, I pair with a local developer and show a coding kata in Java, Ruby or CoffeeScript. After the presentation, I engage the audience in a discussion of what they saw, when they would use it, etc. I might also show a few more programming tricks if time permits and the audience requests it.

If you are a local developer in Kiev, Gothenburg or Riga this could be a chance for you to improve yourself. I’ve got more than ten years of experience with extreme programming practices and chances are you will learn a few tricks that will put a smile on your face. I will practice with you before the conference, and my goal is to make you shine during the presentation. Chances are that your peers will recognize your skills after the conference, so this may help you get some local fame and build your personal brand. Finally, programming as an exercise is great fun and the experience is likely to leave you with a smile on your face.

Here’s what Jussi, who I paired with for #TampereGoesAgile has to say about the experience:

agilepoodle

(Jussi Mononen)

Still totally overwhelmed by the skills of @jhannes @ #tamperegoesagile. Highlight of the conf: 1 hour if pairprogramming with him! On 18-9-2011 11:22:52 from HTC Peep

If you’re a programmer who’s willing to take a risk, learn a lot and get some attention from your peers, please get in touch via @jhannes, johannes@brodwall.com or comment on this blog post.

Instead of using Scrum, maybe we should use MyScrum. It’s like Scrum, with the stuff added that you think will super charge your MyScrum.

This is my MyScrum:

• I want to measure velocity every week
• I want to demostrate the product with a cadence that makes sure users show up to the demo
• I don’t want to have story point estimates, I want to have story point budgets
• I want the product owner, not the team, to own the budget/estimate (but they team may veto)
• I don’t want commitments or forecasts from the team, I want measured historical progress
• I want to plan per story, not per sprint
• I want the developers who will develop a story to follow it (or pass the baton to other developers) from detailing to deployment.

What does your MyScrum look like?