Speaking at Agile Roots conference
I’ll be giving a keynote at the Agile Roots conference:
The topic is, unsurprisingly, Artisanal Retro-Futurism ⊗ Team-Scale Anarcho-Syndicalism. Here’s the blurb:
A problem with the word “Agile” is that everyone already thinks they understand it at a gut level. Worse, everyone already thinks they’re agile in spirit. (After all, the thesaurus tells us the alternative is to be clumsy, stiff, slow, and dull.) So it’s too easy for people to feel free to launch into “doing Agile” without ever having a serious conversation about what that actually means.
This problem is easily fixed. We’ll just stop talking about “Agile” and start speaking of “artisanal retro-futurism crossed with team-scale anarcho-syndicalism.” There is, I think, no danger that anyone will reflexively say, “Yes! That’s just what I’ve been wanting to do all along!”
The new name does more than just encourage conversation. It encourages conversation about those very properties of Agile that have become obscure as Agile has been commodified. In this session, I’ll unpack the meanings of the new phrase and encourage you to rediscover what’s been lost.
I hope to have trinkets.