Global Day of Coderetreat 2012: Utah Style

Global Day of Coderetreat (GDCR) is coming up on December 8th this year.

Don't know what Coderetreat is? Check out http://coderetreat.org/about

Don't know what GDCR is? Check out http://globalday.coderetreat.org/

Pluralsight (@pluralsight) and Ancestry.com (@Ancestrydotcom) are sponsoring two Coderetreats in Utah. David Adsit (@davidadsit) is organizing both (I personally think he's a little crazy for doing that, but David is a little crazy). They will be at the two Pluralsight offices (Layton and Lehi).

You can register for one of the two events below on Eventbrite.

If you’re in Utah County or South Salt Lake County…
Facilitated by Kay Johansen (@utahkay)
http://lehi-ut-coderetreat.eventbrite.com/
http://coderetreat.org/events/global-day-of-coderetreat-2012-lehi-utah-us

If you live further north…
Facilitated by Jim Cooper (@jimthecoop)
http://layton-ut-coderetreat.eventbrite.com/
http://coderetreat.org/events/global-day-of-coderetreat-2012-layton-utah-us

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact David or me directly or check out http://utahsc.org/ for more updates.

Agile and the Chasm

In the book Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling Technology Project, Geoffrey Moore discusses the idea that technologies start with early adopters and at some point must “cross the chasm” to majority.

At the recent Salt Lake Agile Roundtable meeting, there was a brief exchange on if Agile had crossed the chasm.

My thought (which is informed by recent experiences with the majority) is that the term “Agile” and some of the practices (Scrum/Scrum-like practices) have crossed the chasm but the values expressed in the manifesto have not.

What do you think?  What has your experience been?

Does the Manifesto matter?

I recently had the chance to interview candidates for a position on my team.  I put together a list of questions that I believed would be a unique and effective way of phone screening candidates.  Without giving away the whole list (I may disclose it later), here are the first two questions:

1. Tell me something about yourself that isn’t on your resume.
2. Are you familiar with the Agile Manifesto?

I had two out of seven candidates that I phone screen answer in the affirmative to question 2.  Now not being familiar with the Agile Manifesto isn’t necessarily uncommon, I guess.  But the inconsistency came from the answer to the next question:

“What Agile practices are you familiar with and/or have used?”

I figured the answers would be “I haven’t used any”.  Because if you have done “Agile practices” you’d certainly know what the Agile Manifesto is, right… right?

BUT…

the answers were mostly in the “like, Scrum? Stand ups? Yeah, we do that stuff on my team.”

So… these candidates had presumably been introduced to the term Agile, to some Agile practices but hadn’t taken the time to investigate further, to understand the roots of the Agile movement, to do a quick Google search!  Granted none of them had incredible answers to the Agile practices question, but they did have answers.

I guess I just don’t get it.  I mean, I do.  But I don’t.

Would this matter to you?