This year, I attended XP Days Benelux for the first time, and I want to share some of the insights and impressions I got from this event. To tell the truth, I have not been at any XP Days-Events before, and my mind was blown away. This was not what I expected. It was much, much better.

Session Kanban cards at XP Days Benelux 2009

I have attended a fair share of (scientific) conferences, and in my experience, the interesting things always happen in the coffee breaks, or in the poster sessions. Lectures are somewhat stiff, usually scientists talk about work they’ve already published, and it is very rare to hear any truly new insights. Finally, questions after the session are often pro-forma, and rarely lead into deep discussions due to lack of time. Don’t misunderstand me – conferences are important places to meet, but the official program often isn’t too captivating. Go into a lecture hall and watch from the back what all these people with laptops are doing – working, skyping, coding, writing email… but I am getting off track, I think.

At XP Days Benelux, this was all different. People come to share and to interact. From the start with an icebreaker session each morning (and I was still thinking “oh no! psycho-touchy-feely stuff!”…), people started networking, and I have met a lot of interesting people and have had interesting conversations with many, inside sessions and in the coffee breaks. It was a very enjoyable experiences, rounded off with the games night in the bar, where werewolves and belgian beer were the driving forces.

Xavier Quesada and Laurent Morisseau held a session on Visual Management for Agile Teams. Here, we built scrum task boards in groups and discussed the many different ways you can actually do that and what it means for the team and the managers.
The Retrospective Hero session by Nicole Belilos and Willem van den Ende used a role-play simulation that challenged two coaches (and they did warn the audience – don’t be a coach unless you’re experienced) to manage a crisis and lead the team through learning lessons from it. It was scary how well people slid into their roles! One big lesson: In a crisis, try to let the team voice their emotions first, as they will come out anyhow. But (a big but!) do it without going too much into the touchy feely direction.

The action continued into the night with a BoF by Pierluigi Pugliese on his solution focused approach to agile coaching. Another BoF was run by Serge Beaumont on practical tools, like the Ready state and Jeff Patton’s Story Mapping for the Product Owner. Both BoFs have noticeably created a lot of buzz in the community and it seems clear that Pierluigi and Serge have hit a nerve with what they presented. Moreover, I think that there are a number of points that connect the two talks.

In the Solve Conflicts Without Compromise session, which was run by Pascal Van Cauwenberghe and Jef Cumps, the session leaders tried to introduce a model that allows you to (I am simplifying here) figure out in 6 steps that two conflicting goals can – at least very often – be lifted onto a higher level, where all of a sudden their underlying goals are compatible, and it is just a question of carefully assessing all the assumptions that were made concerning the goals. An interesting approach, but at least in the session, none of the (real life) conflicts were really resolved. Then again, solving conflicts in 90′ is a big feat to aim for, if you are doing it for the first time, even more so.

Eating your own dogfood: Using Agile methods to set up conference desk

Finally, Portia Tung introduced us to the retelling of the Wizard of Oz fairytale, and how you can use the yellow brick road as a path in peer coaching. I found this session amazing, since we were in turn describing our problems, coaching others in addressing their problem, or observing the coach-coachee interaction.

But, as I said in the opening paragraphs, the sessions are excellent but aren’t really what makes this gathering great. It is the very open spirit, a genius loci (there really isn’t much more to do around the conference center either), which makes the participants try to learn from each other rather than try to get the daily office work done on their laptop during the sessions. Oops, there I am back with my initial rant – so I better stop right

Posted by Michael on Sunday, November 29th, 2009 at 6:29 pm.