XP days Benelux, first day

20 november 2008
The Benelux XP days were held in Veldhoven, a little town near the city of Eindhoven. Because of the heavy traffic from my hometown near Zaandam to the conference place I decided to go by public transport. At 6.15 hours I left home by car and went to the train station at Zaandam to take the intercity train. I could read the morning paper and do some Sudoku’s. A relaxed way to travel and quite a new experience. Took a cab at the train station in Eindhoven to arrive there at the conference centre at about 9 o’clock. First registration and coffee, choosing what ‘persona’ you resemble the most, and saying hello to some of the people I already knew.

The opening plenary started at 9.30. We immediately got an assignment to form a team of 4 members of different personas and to have a kick-off meeting during the day. Then all presenters told us in 30 seconds what their session would be about. We formed our team in a short time: we were complete after the first session. I realized again that people like to be asked to join. We agreed to hold our first team discussion during lunch. This first day 4 rounds of sessions were held. Sometimes it was hard to choose. I picked the following:

‘Dynamic planning for fixed price projects‘ led by Koen and Walter. They explained what they think is the difference between iterative and incremental, and what is disruptive about iterative. These guys explained that dynamic planning gives better financial results. They showed a two-dimensional diagram; on the Y-axes discounted cash flow, and on the X axes a cost curve and break-even point and return on investment they named ‘time’. I didn’t understand even after they tried to explain it again. I am well educated in financial accounting and I perhaps missed a third dimension, or would replace discounted cash flow for discounted budget expenditures and ROI for ‘return on revenue’? I think I have to do some reading: I got a tip from a new friend Yann to read a book by Alistair Cockburn. What I liked was the explanation of the difference between project results like ‘dirt’ road, ‘cobblestone’ road and ‘asphalt’ road. The whole thing reminded me of the three ways things move in many projects within the triangle of cost, time and functionality. The different roads stand for alternative functionality..

The next session was ‘So now you are an agilist… what’s next‘ by Jurgen. He pointed out 6 of his 12 law’s of software development or actually 6 of the 12 laws of ‘creative teams’ and the relationship and difference between ordered, complex and chaotic systems. We discussed some important assumptions. This was a very nice session.

Our (Ward, Stefan, Yann and me) kick-off team lunch was very good to get to know each other and to discus some of the topics.

After lunch I attended ‘mirror, mirror on the wall” by Portia and Pascal. We did something that was a bit like speed dating. To get to know as much people in a very short time. And then listen to the story of Snow White and the seven dwarfs and realize that these characters resemble types of people (like with Belbin’s team roles and Myers Brigg type indicators) The thing I liked most was that you could really experience that teams that consist of different characters work very well, a theme I like best: ‘Diversion and Inclusion’. Coincidentally I co-organized a meeting just the day before: a Women-in-Charge session in Rotterdam that was about this theme. I enjoyed myself very much.

The last session I attended was the one titled ‘the 9 fit falls of adopting scrum‘ by Eelco and Cesario. In this session they focused on big organizations and to 4 of the 9 pitfalls: not preparing the organization, defective product owner, doing scrum only by the book and no organizational learning. This was very informative; we had some good discussions and tried out the ‘fishbowl’ format. That is a kind of informal forum discussion. I found out I like it a lot.

After the closing-ceremony there was an Aikido workshop that was real fun. Somewhat sweaty I helped gathering Lego building blocks from previous sessions and then we had diner. Unfortunately I had no room to freshen up so I had to do this in the powder-room We had a lovely diner with again some nice talks and discussions. The food was very good. At about nine I said goodnight and ordered a cab which drove me to hotel Que Pasa. All rooms were booked and I had to book this hotel about 2 km from the conference centre. I phoned my loved one and after taking a shower wrote this part of the story on my laptop. Read my email and sms and voicemail messages and closed my eyes at about 23.00 hours. It had been a long but very good day!