I attended the Öresund Agile Conference in Copenhagen last week, which was organised by Softhouse.

Day one I attended Mary Poppendieck’s “Management Issues for Lean Software Development” workshop. It was the usual Toyota worship, value stream mapping and other material from their latest book. An excellent performance as usual, but some overlap from other Poppendieck workshops I have attended.

Day two was the main conference day, which turned out to be a very nice day with a good atmosphere and with the following highlights:

• Stop the Line Quality, Mary Poppendieck - She tried not to overlap the workshop from the day before, and managed partly. She has updated her presentations to the latest ideas from her book.
• Patterns of Outsourcing Software Development, Jim Coplien - Jim is very entertaining to listen to, when he delivers sarcasms and takes very strong positions in different matters. Mention test driven development to Jim and you will get a lecture on just how bad it is. He believes that the only thing that should drive development is the customer, or perhaps value.
• The first thing to build: trust, Diana Larsen - A very good presentation on how to build successful teams based on trust.

Day three I attended Diana Larsen’s workshop “Stimulating Team Success: Agile Managers as Facilitators”, actually I also introduced Diana’s session and acted as host. This was my first workshop with Diana and it was truly a positive experience. She made sure we not only would benefit from her experiences, but also from the vast experience of the workshop participants. The main theme was how managers in an agile environment must be more supportive and facilitating instead of commanding and controlling. I.e. more leader and less manager.

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