I'm in the early stages of organising a sizeable conference here in Scotland so, not having organised anything on this scale before, I did a little google search on "How to organise a conference".
This article from The Times came up top of the list. I haven't read the article all the way through yet because I keep giggling like a schoolboy when I get to the suggestion that your first step should be to figure out what you want to achieve and the warning that "Woolly briefs are our biggest problem".
I imagine that it is because they itch in places which we grown-ups don't dare mention.
It reminds me of an article I read when I actually was a school boy which claimed that Lady (this was before there were even two, let alone three, in a marriage) Diana wore "300 pound underwear". I figured that she probably weighed a full ton when she was fully dressed.
It also reminds, on a more serious note, that the biggest problem faced by many software development projects is that they start with a brief promise or commitment (e.g. "rebuild trust with the customer", "be first to market", "reduce the batch run from 12 hours to 2", "delight the customer like our competitors can't", "halve the time it takes for a customer to get approval for their mortgage" ,,,) but then the promise gets lost and replaced with a filthy great contractual requirements document. It's the process of delivering the promise which, often, makes it woolly. This applies just as much on agile teams as non-agile.
