Unfortunately, saying thank you seems to be an afterthought more and more. So at least once a month, I will take a few minutes to publicly appreciate someone that has had an impact on me.
This round: Agile 2025 (in several parts)
I’ve taken my time to write this post. And I’m still not sure I can explain everything that I gained from this week but here we go.
Maybe it’s the feelings from the world these days. Maybe it’s the partnership with PMI. Maybe it’s that this would now be the year that I have done every single role associated with this event. Maybe it’s because it’s been 18 years. I don’t know and probably a little of it all of these things, but I went into this week feeling like this might be a bookend.
Don’t get me wrong, everything was not all rainbows and pixie dust. But something clicked for me that made a comment really sit with me… “maybe it’s not a bookend but a semi-colon.”:
In 2007, the conference was much smaller. I got to meet a ton of people that are what I think of as the people whose shoulders I stand on (the OGs). They welcomed me, encouraged me, supported me and educated me. Some even became good friends of mine over the years. Despite using XP in 1999 and Scrum starting in 2005, no part of me thinks of myself in that group.
When I was creating my “I stand on these shoulders” community slide in my keynote, I had two goals. One, recognize some of the OGs that helped me and a couple of current people. I had one attendee say they didn’t know most of the faces and it made them want to research their contributions. That made my heart happy. Two, to create a spot to honor four individuals that I miss dearly: David Hussman, Jean Tabeka, Bob Sarni and Tamsen Mitchell. I almost took this slide out because I didn’t want any “I wasn’t on the slide” but there are only so many faces I could fit on one slide, and I needed to honor these four while I was on stage.
But over the course of the event, I noticed something. Others consider me an OG. Not just me but a group of us that all came into the community around the same time – that has helped connect from then to now. I knew who fell into this group just by the comments that came about this slide from people like Ronica Roth, Matt Barcomb, Nayan Hajratwala, Brad Swanson, Dana Pylayeva, Markus Silpala, Llewellyn Falco, Richard Dolman, and others. That slide wasn’t faces but our mentors, teachers, and friends. And it does make me sad that so many of those faces were not at this year’s event, even some that haven’t attended for quite a long time, but it doesn’t change their impact on me or this community. And although, I will likely fight the OG category, I’m realizing that this community has always changed. There’s never been two years the same and I can’t expect no change going forward. So, it doesn’t have to mean an end, just change. And I get to choose how I react, engage and embrace that change. I’m just at a semi-colon in this journey. And I’m ready to face whatever comes next because that’s what the Agile community does.
At the highest summary level, I walked away from Agile2025 with – learning, laughter, connection, and compassion. I filled my energy and hope — thanks to everyone that engaged in whatever capacity they could. I am grateful for the Agile Alliance, the organizers, the sponsors, the volunteers, the speakers, and the attendees for making this space one that I will never forget.
As this might be the longest post conference summary I’ve ever written, I’ve organized it into parts. Think of it as a choose your own adventure of what you want to hear more thoughts about:
