Here’s a quick hot take (under the sun of Krakow while waiting for my flight departure, then on the train returning to Montpellier), regarding the 2014 edition of ALE. I’m delivering it to you in bits and pieces, without necessarily any links, rather impressions, memories, reflections.

Lessons Learned

I’m no longer really a fan of Jurgen Appelo’s discourse but he remains someone interesting to listen to. Since I arrived the day before in Krakow and Jurgen was doing a talk for the agile club of Krakow, I slipped in. I took two things from his speech that evening (August 19, 2014):

  • A good use of metaphors and analogies: developers, like actors, don’t have to seek other “titles”. There’s no “lead actor” or “senior actor”, etc. So why want to search at all costs for an evolution or hierarchy for developers? Another analogy between testing and management. Testing and management are important, but that doesn’t mean that managers or testers are important. These are two different things, and testing like management can be activities shared among different people.
  • An adequate response to a question that we hear too often: is my team performing? How can we measure it? To which Jurgen replied that evening: how do you measure your own performance, which generally allows us to perceive the difficulty, even the uselessness of measuring performance in these terms.

Beginning of the conference (August 20, 2014)

Stephen Parry reminds us of the importance of challenging everything, that is to say questioning everything. I think that’s the most important message he wanted to convey during his keynote and he confirmed it to me in the hallways afterward. We can also have fun picking up his expression “in most organizations it’s not really command & control, but rather command & hope”. Finally I note his use of the concepts of emotional debt to compare with technical debt, and authenticity gap, the (small) lie between what we know to be the truth and what we say is the truth.

I was able to participate in another session by the same Stephen Parry, from which I kept in memory the distinction between improvement and transformation. It may seem obvious when stated this way, but in practice it implies diametrically opposed behavior and approach.

My favorite session in the official program was that of Pawel Brodzinski, I couldn’t tell you precisely why, but the coherence and clarity of his message on themes I know well particularly won me over. Along the way, he allows me to have precise references for something I regularly cite: only 30% of change initiatives are realized (John Kotter, 1995 & McKinsey 2008, Bain & Co 2008, Ashkenas 2013).

And also this beautiful quote:

People copy the most visible, obvious, and frequently least important practices – Pfeffer & Sutton

Here are Pawel’s slides.

I attended Alexis’s session on the connection with opensource. This allowed me to confirm my use of my opensource culture in my coaching, or to concretize certain intuitions by putting words to them. For example, the importance of managing sources through a common trunk, development driven by date, with a biannual rhythm (like ubuntu), organizing “summits” to force meetings in dispersed or distributed teams.

Finally I’ll mention a “body awareness” session with Sabina, it allowed me to confirm that while I had no issues with breathing or physical contact, I was quite blocked in bodily expression. Even if I tried to disprove this the same evening at the dance party (I got my mind set on youuuuu, it gonna take money, a lot of money and preciouuusssss time).

Open Space, lightning talks & pecha kucha

This was the best part of the official program.

From the openspace I will naturally keep in mind the session I was able to propose on how to do our training differently (a topical subject since with Claude we are launching our first raid agile).

The notions of magic and mystery by Olaf Lewitz to oppose the overbearing domination of (pseudo)science. There was like a fundamental debate during this edition between a vision that still remains quite anchored in science by Stephen Parry and precisely this approach much more on the intangible, impalpable by Olaf Lewitz. All while strengthening the friendship that exists between these two beautiful people.

With Olaf I was also able to test personalities poker. Very nice, quick and probably very effective in retrospectives or at different moments in a group of people’s life. You can be sure this will be used during a dinner during raid agile, or at smartview for our retrospectives. We are going to translate the “deck” with Alexis.

From the lightning talks I retain that as soon as the speaker takes themselves too seriously, the magic disappears. Olaf’s silent lightning talk (which will generate silent communication for the rest of the conference from signs much more effective than the one with the loudspeaker), Yves’s moving lightning talk (about his burned house).

Regrets

  • The “in”, that is to say the official program of ALE was too dense, the breaks too short, and we’re heading straight toward a classic conference, without flavor. Everyone realized this and it’s going to change.
  • Especially since the session topics were treated very basically, when the speaker had prepared their presentation well enough, which wasn’t so often the case…
  • No deviation, no surprise in the speeches. I remained quite sad not to be shaken a bit during the official sessions.

Suggestions

  • Train and prepare speakers, and especially make them understand that ALE is a mature audience. In most sessions we could have started from the speaker’s conclusion and opened the field of reflection. We’re at ALE, for me it’s a different, advanced conference.
  • Alternate 1 hour of lightning talks, 2 hours of break to have these off conversations. No more classic sessions.
  • Have no program
  • Find a more authentic place (than a very beautiful classic business hotel).
  • An idea from Alexis: since it’s a community, it’s the time to do test workshops.

Future processing buries them all

I discovered at this conference the best sponsor of all time (of my life): Future processing. The most important first: they brought their masseuses (yes yes the masseuses who work for them full time for the teams, yes yes) and we all enjoyed them at least twice. And not little quick massages, real moments of relaxation. TOP. But Future processing also offered us a great party: rented the bar, food, and vouchers for drinks, all enhanced by four hours of bowling for whoever wanted it. Just TOP. Finally, as I speak to you I’m going to recharge my phone with the battery they offered to each participant. I didn’t hesitate to discuss with them their services (development, expertise, offshore in agile mode = that is to say commitment of means!), and I hope to work with them very soon.

The off

For people wondering about ALE, the real interest is the OFF. Everything that happens around the official program (perhaps except the openspace which also allows this opening): café conversations, restaurant, pub, during massages, in the hallways, while waiting for others, in the corner of sessions, during “dinner with a stranger” (we organize a dinner with 10 people we’re supposedly not supposed to know, which turns out to be true 50% of the time), everywhere, all the time. It’s hyper-super-mega powerful: only interesting people from all countries of Europe (26 countries represented) who open all communication channels.

By the way, ALE’s motto is “anarchy with a purpose” (I don’t know how to better translate anarchy with a purpose).

Off Conversation

Ideas from the off that will stay in my head I would say:

  • The reinforced importance of “face to face” coaching highlighted by a friend who knows what he’s talking about, and seems shaken by this change.
  • The importance of the ephemeral: I would speak of ephemeral practices. We live in a world where repetition is doomed to failure or mediocrity. Yet it’s something we’re asked a lot: can you redo what you did over there?
  • A confirmation of the importance of the immeasurable ethereal.
  • Coaching techniques related to the organization but face to face. So I’m going to start using the word coach more easily again…

The “French”

There were quite a few French people compared to usual: seven, but not that many. So I spent quite a bit of time with foreigners, and I was able to confirm certain images concerning the French:

  • I who have a deplorable English accent know… that they love it. So no worries, they all envy us our terrible accent. It seems that even in Jacques Delors’ mouth it was sexy.
  • We eat everything: I had ordered a typical Polish dish, chicken livers, the waitress worried about whether I really knew what I was ordering, the whole table answered her: it’s okay he’s French they eat everything.
  • Isabel (Monville) and I didn’t hesitate to be the only ones to have wine at lunch. So I got teased: “cliché” every following day, especially Sebastien, who himself German, didn’t seem “cliché” to announce to me with 4 pints in his stomach that he brewed his own beer at home. :)

Photo album

You will find here:

Kudos

  • Olaf & Mike (Leber) for the friendship and the pleasure of meeting again almost every year like this.
  • Alberto for all conversations and unexpected encounters throughout the 4 days.
  • To Pawel therefore, for the best session in the official program and Polish zapiekanki.
  • Natalie for the dance!
  • The “frenchies” for their presence: Olivier, Perrick, Guillaume, Alexis, Judi, Isabel
  • Stephen Parry for the power of fragility and Budgie’s guitar.
  • Future processing for being the best sponsor of all time because they offered us massages, beers, the party, the battery, phew I absolutely must work with them.
  • And naturally to the entire organizing team, impeccable, thank you very much.
  • Finally, to the Polish men and women who always have a smile.