Exploration Through Example

Example-driven development, Agile testing, context-driven testing, Agile programming, Ruby, and other things of interest to Brian Marick

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Mon, 31 Jul 2006

The Gordon Pask Award 2007

Each year at the Agile200X Conference, the Agile Alliance presents the Gordon Pask Award for Contributions to Agile Practice. Here's its description:

The Gordon Pask Award recognizes two people whose recent contributions to Agile Practice demonstrate, in the opinion of the Award Committee, their potential to become leaders of the field. The award comes with a check for US$5000.

Last year's recipients were J. B. Rainsberger and Jim Shore. This year's are:

Laurent Bossavit, for translating Extreme Programming Explained into French, for early and helpful activity on the English-language XP mailing list, for organizing a French-language site, mailing list, and wiki, for XP Day France, for the (incipient) thoughts on his blog, and for his championing of code dojos.

The collaborators Steve Freeman and Nat Pryce for helping found XP Day, for their long-time involvement in the Extreme Tuesday Club, for their joint role in the development, evolution, and popularization of the idea of mock objects and its realization in jMock, and for the networks of collaborations they're involved in (storytelling in Fit and scrapheap programming, for example).

(That "network of collaboration" thing presents a problem. Steve and Nat are extreme examples of a problem the Pask award faces: given the collaborative nature of Agile, any boundary you draw that says "this idea, here, is due to that set of people, there" is bound to leave out contributors. Steve and Nat are far from the only people who've worked on mock objects, and they've both collaborated with other people on other things. Where do you draw the award's line? There'd be some justification for giving it to the whole of London, or at least to the whole Extreme Tuesday Club.

(The committee—Rachel Davies, J.B. Rainsberger, Jim Shore, and me—discussed such matters for two and a half hours, maybe more, one night [causing me to rudely skip dinner with Laurent, for what I hope he now thinks is a good reason]. At times, I found myself thinking that maybe the whole idea was too much trouble. Where I ended up is that we should not avoid doing greater good because we cannot distribute all the credit that's deserved. I hope no one gets upset. Believe me, trying to pick two awards from many possibilities is just no fun at all.)

Our criteria are evolving (and, starting with this second year, they're mainly in the hands of the past recipients). We are looking for people who provide both ideas and actions. We want people who are advancing the state of the practice. But we also want people who are spreading knowledge of the existing state of the practice, so that Agile teams know what more there is to learn. And we also want people who are helping people on a personal level, not just at the abstract level of ideas.

## Posted at 09:31 in category /conferences [permalink] [top]