I am feeling rather pleased with myself. I've had 2 sessions accepted for the Agile2008 conference in Toronto this year.
The first session, on Wednesday at 8:30 on the Tools stage, is Critical Chain AND Agile - best of friends which is where I show how Goldratt's Critical Chain and Agile's iterative/incremental are not alternative practices, but complementary practices. I'll briefly cover how both work - this will reveal that both have an aweful lot in common. I'll show how the agile software development parts of larger projects can easily fit into bigger Critical Chain plans (which, on any decent project include far more than just software development tasks). I'll show how to use Critical Chain techniques to plan and execute iterations inside agile projects. I'll also cover, breifly, how both are usually inadequate because they are single-project solutions which have to work in multi-project environments. I'll be writing all of this up in more detail in the "Rolling Rocks Dowhnill workbook" - but that won't be happening until next year. If you happen to be in Scotland I'll be doing a preview (beta) at AgileScotland in a couple of weeks (16th of June).
The second session always makes me giggle. My friend Graeme Thomas and I will be co-presenting Programmers may be from Mars, Customers may be from Venus, but why does everyone think that Project Managers are from Uranus? at 10:30 on Wednesday on the Leadership and Teams stage. Graeme and I ran this session at XPDay last year where it was remarkably well received. Graeme and I show how to use Goldratt's Conflict Cloud process to uncover the big problem between Managers and their staff. (If you are into TOC then we take three UDEs and apply the 3-cloud techniques). We teach the Conflict Cloud technique using what I invented and call Conflict Calisthenics which I've found the most effective way to teach the technique. I promise that anyone who comes along and has to leave unexpectedly after 15 minutes, will be able to remember how to do clouds.
[Graeme and I are currently outlining the story for a small business fable / book of the same, or similiar name. It'll be a bit like the one-minute manager.]
Adrian Mowat, a fellow AgileScotlander, will be running his session on his TDD framework FIT4Data on Friday at 8:30AM. He'll be doing an AgileScotland beta of his session on the 28th of July).
