Agile conferences near the UK

One of the best ways to get more information on using Agile in your organisation is to attend a conference where you can discuss your situation with a wide range of experts and peers. Here is a short list of conferences to consider that are close to the UK:

• Agile North - A small local community conference that is a good opportunity to get to know other practitioners. Next conference: Agile North 2008. Preston, Lancashire, 13th November 2008.
• XP Days Benelux - A spin-off euro conference based on the successful London XP Day. Next conference: XP Days Benelux 2008, Eindhoven, The Netherlands, 20-21 November 2008.
  
• XP Days London - More Agile than XP these days this conference is a highly regarded London conference with typically excellent quality presentations. Next conference: XPDay, London. 11th & 12th December 2008.
• Agile200X - Not near the UK but as the biggest international agile conference it is worth considering. It is getting slightly large for comfort recently, but you can't beat it for breadth of speakers and topcis nor the openness of the peer review process. Most of the presentations from Agile2007 are available here. Next conference: Agile 2009 Chicago, USA. August 24-28, 2009.
• Agile Open Europe - This is an open space conference where everyone can present or discuss topics of interest to them. Next conference: Not announced yet, June or July 2009.
  

Getting started: Standups

One of the first techniques to introduce in the enterprise is Stand Up Meetings. Here are some links to information on them:

• Stand-up meeting from Wikipedia
• It's Not Just Standing Up: Patterns of Daily Stand-up Meetings by Jason Yip
• Rethinking Stand-Up Meetings by Steven M Smith
• Stand-up Meeting Antipatterns by Charles Miller
• The daily meeting checklist from Scrum Checklists PDF by Sprint-IT

Getting started: What is Agile anyway?

When introducing agile into a large organisation many people have no knowledge at all what agile is. Here are some resources that give a overview of agile:

• Website: What is Agility, and Why Should You Care?by Mishkin Berteig


• Website: A Brief Introduction to Agile By Jeff Langr


• Website: The New Methodology by Martin Fowler


• PDF: The Seven Principles of Lean Software Development by Mary and Tom Poppendieck


• PDF: Getting Agile with Scrum by Mike Cohn


• PDF: Extreme Programming: A Gentle Introduction.


• PDF: An Introduction to Agile Methods (XP) by Steve Hayes


• PDF (mini-book): Scrum and XP from the Trenches by Henrik Kniberg
• PDF (mini-book): Scrum Checklists by Sprint-IT

Getting started: Identify the whole team

There is lots to do when starting out a project in an Agile way, one of the first things to do is start getting the whole team together. Here are some resources on roles and responsibilities:

The business/customer/product owner:

• Being an Effective Onsite Customer or Product Owner - great description of the ideal Product Owner.
• Jeff Patton's excellent presentation: Blending User Experience & Business Analysis thinking in the Agile Customer Role
• Some typical problems and solutions a customer may face
• The need for a customer advocate