Outside the agile echo chamber - exploration

Agile conferences are great places to talk to like-minded people, explore new topics and reflect on war stories of what worked and what didn’t. People often talk of being re-energised or re-focused after a few days at a conference. However, quite often people with experience of agile will talk about preaching to the converted at such events. Given what we see currently in wider society should we be more challenged about what we are doing and whether it is right?

While we have been focusing on “better ways of developing software”, many other issues have emerged around our efforts to develop software. From a lack of diversity and inclusion through to the increasing number of ethical questions arising from the application of technology, these issues have blindsided most of the agile community until they started to force their way into the mainstream. If we really believe in inspect-and-adapt then at a meta-level we seem to be struggling to learn from the emergence of these issues because other things are surely lurking outside our sphere of consciousness. Should we not step back, reflect and maybe listen to the quieter voices rather than arguing about which variant of TDD is the best?

Join us to consider whether we are talking about the important things in the field of product development and, if not, what we should actually be talking about.

The pair of sessions aims to encourage us to look beyond the hyperbole and habit and to search for the most valuable things to our time an attention to.

Session 1 - Exploration, we set the scene, and offer food for thought.

Session 2 - Elaboration, as a group we generate topics and techniques to help notice and address issues.