This is the fifth episode in a series that started with episode 35. Agile process are empirical which means they rely on an inspect and adapt loop. If the loop is too slow or How does your framework ensure alignment with business priorities? -Linda Merrick, organizer of Scaled Agile Community.

Agile Framework Fight Night happened at Seattle Scaled Agile Community in the downtown Seattle. The venue was Zonar Systems. You can find Scaled Agile Community in Meetups: http://meetu.ps/e/GFnmC/rD8M/a.

These are our the fighting panelists:

Ricardo “Dad of Doom” Garcia from Team DAD

This “Dad of Doom” has over 30 years of industry experience and has implemented and managed numerous software projects using Agile Practices for Fortune 500 companies. His work has been featured in white papers, cover stories in magazines, and is a frequent speaker at conferences and Agile expert panels.

“Rowdy Roddy” William Rowden from Team LeSS

“Rowdy Roddy” brings 7 years of experience to his executive coaching — as co-founder/CTO of an Agile software company, Gray Hill Solutions, he developed traffic.511.org, an Advanced Traffic Management System, and a transit route analyzer. His love of languages enhances his development coaching — he can write in over 20 computer languages (most recently Perl, C# 3.5, and Java) and two natural languages (English and Spanish), and is currently studying Mandarin.

Alan “Anarchy” Dayley from Team FAST Agile

“Anarchy” spent much of his career writing embedded software for industrial products. Along the way he discovered that his greatest strength lies in the communication part of software creation. “Anarchy” work- with teams and companies to find their own way of being Agile instead of just doing agile.

Heather “Widowmaker” Webster from Team SaFE

Lancer “Unkind” Kind, moderating

“Unkind” lives in Kirkland, and loves nothing more than writing micro tested software. For the last five years he has delivered consulting services in China, India, as well as the USA. He’s a publishing author of science fiction and Agile Noir, a project management business novel. He’s podcasting at Agile Thoughts, 敏捷理念 (the Chinese edition of Agile Thoughts), and SciFi Thoughts. His Agile at scale business novel is “continuously delivered” via Lean Pub at: https://leanpub.com/AgileGrande

Team LeSS:

(echoy, quiet room.

“Hi there.” (echoy)

“I can see by the look on your face that you expected more. Well, we had more. In fact we had a LOT more. We had offices for management over there and there. And there. A lot of people. A lot of very important people. It was a very grand arrangement. The org chart was such a thing of beauty! It told a story of managers very busy with small Agile teams. You wouldn’t believe the dependencies with all those teams. (tisking) We brought in coordinators and managers for the coordinators. And all the escalations! Oh heavens, you wouldn’t believe the managing those other, angry managers needed. And the suffering! Yes! We didn’t have enough meeting rooms for all the escalation meetings. So there were plans to add on another wing just for dependencies, coordinators, and escalations. The architecture. Oh you should have seen the drawings! But then, we got the LeSS consultant. (heavy sigh) and well… She made us reform our teams, and you know, that totally the planned expansion. The dependencies and escalations were LeSS. So then all the management and coordinators were greatly, well LeSS. Management really loved that consultant, well LeSS. But the stockholder were happier. And the teams, well you know there seemed like a bunch of cry babies, but they became happy when their efforts were connected to products purchased by customers. (dismissive:) Well, you know, who’d a thought.

Freesound.org contributions by cabuy.