Personal WIP

As my faithful subscribers (all both of you) may have noticed, I haven't posted anything in a while. Despite my commitment at the beginning of the year to blog at least weekly, I found myself recently with too much Personal WIP (Work In Progress). Let me catch you up on what's been going on.

New Baby!

We recently welcomed our third child into the world! His older brother and sister are both very excited, as you can see. He's been a joy, one that's kept us quite busy! He came in at 10 and a half pounds, which means that I spent more and more time helping at home to alleviate the burden on my already overburdened wife. This was a no-brainer - as my WIP increased, the priority went to my family.

Agile2014

Last week I had two firsts: I attended my first Agile Alliance conference and presented at my first Agile conference! I made sure that I had family and friends in place to assist my wife with our 2-week-old and flew to Orlando to co-present with fellow Agile Coach, Todd Kromann. We didn't use any slides, just a hand-written handout (available here), some index cards, markers, and tape. We played a game and had a great discussion. We even had the Dude himself, David Hussman, show up and commend us on our use of his Intellectual Property. We had a blast! Of course, in order for it to go as smoothly as it did, I had to spend some time before the baby came tweaking the handout and rehearsing the workshop.

Walmart Agile Summit

Prior to Agile2014, I participated in a 3-day Walmart Agile Summit in June. While I wasn't as involved as I'd have liked (again, that pesky WIP), I was on the core team and got to present a dry-run of my Dude's Law workshop. I got to meet Al Shalloway and Don Reinertsen, and I got to see Pat Reed and Rich Sheridan again. It was a fantastic experience made possible through the hard work and dedication of many people. I may not have had a lot of bandwidth, but I wanted to make sure I dedicated at least some of my WIP went to the Summit.

Walmart Agile Transformation

Of course, as the Agile Summit might have indicated, we're taking the Agile effort at Walmart quite seriously. I'm not going to disclose a lot of information or details - this isn't going to be a case study - but Todd and I were the first 2 Agile Coaches in Walmart's Bentonville office, and we wanted to make sure the Agile Transformation was done by invitation, not edict. We've had fantastic support from senior leadership, and the success of our Agile teams has accelerated the grassroots momentum that's been building. The Agile Summit served as gasoline to the proverbial fire, and interest in Agile began to rise sharply, even before the first day of the Summit. My time at work has been exciting, challenging, and incredibly rewarding. As much as I wanted to keep sharing my thoughts with the blogosphere, I owe my professional efforts first and foremost to my fellow Associates.

So that's what I've been up to. I can't promise I'll resume blogging on a weekly basis, but I am cautiously optimistic that I'll be posting more regularly that I have the past few months!