Tuesday this week saw the launch of the Agile Special Interest Group at the Center. It was standing room only and we had 71 federal staff and contractors attend. Stefan and Andreas presented from Frankfurt and we handed out Jim’s white paper. I was pleased at the turnout; it seems that we judged the mood of the center right and succeeded in our one chance to make a first impression. The SIG team met this afternoon and we looked at the feedback. My boss, who till now has been somewhat skeptical on the topic of Agile, said he appreciated the realism that Stefan and Andreas brought to the discussion and he’s signed up to attend the Agile Boston event next week featuring Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber, the co-creators of Scrum.

We had a few questions from the audience at the end of the presentation that illustrated a healthy recognition of the challenges that face us as we try to introduce Agile methods to the Center. With that in mind, I talked with Larry, our organizational change management guy, about doing an assessment of As-Is stakeholder positions on Agile, where we want them in the To-Be, and how we’re going to get there. My question of the moment is how to make Agile robust under a range of customer styles and preferences and team skill levels. Alistair Cockburn in his Agile 2009 presentation I come to bury Agile… revisits Shu-Ha-Ri and the three skill levels in an Agile team. Right now I think we have precious few Level 3s, some more Level 2s, and a lot of Level 1s. Of this latter group there are necessarily going to be some that have no interest in being anything else than a Level 1, and I don’t want that to derail the initiative. Having said that, I think we have a good shot of being better than we are, and am looking forward to the journey.