The Agile Business Conference 2007 was held on 2/3 October and was the usual mixture of meeting old friends, making new ones and much thoughtful presentation and discussion. Among the highlights were:
Ken Schwaber, the inventor of the Scrum software development method, led a discussion boldly entitled “When will Microsoft go bankrupt?” His key tenet was that Microsoft’s software code-base is highly complex and convoluted, meaning that rapid changes are difficult to make. This leaves them vulnerable to young upstarts like Google who have not had the time to have grown such complicated code-bases and therefore can respond more quickly to market demand. He added that Google was starting to show a trend to such complexity – which will in turn leave them vulnerable in a few years’ time.
He also dropped a fascinating snippet that the Scrum method (traditionally used for medium-risk software projects) had been used to develop the very high-risk software for a heart pacemaker! Sadly, it was a throwaway comment and he did not elaborate further.
Mary Poppendieck gave a presentation on the similarities and differences between agile methods to make software and Lean manufacturing techniques to make products.
The launch of the Agile Project Leadership Certification Programme – a series of examinations designed to be an independent assessment of the competencies required to be an Agile leader. More details here.
