Innovate 2012 CFP now open

The call for presentations for IBM Rational’s Innovate 2012 conference is now open at www.ibm.com/rational/innovate . My hope is that some of you will submit proposals around Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) as this should be an important theme at the conference this year.

The conference will be held at the Disney Swan and Dolphin hotels in Orlando June 3-7. The conference always has great presentations and the party on Wednesday night where we rent one of the local parks for the evening is always a blast.

Can You Gain Super Powers from Disciplined Agile Delivery Training?

Although there are no guarantees, it is possible that anyone who takes Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) training may pick up one or more of the following super powers after doing so:
1. Water Walking. DAD trainees are smart enough, and practical enough, to do so only when the water is frozen and at least 6 inches thick. Mark and I both come from Canada, where this super power is fairly common even in non-DAD trained people during the winter.
2. Bureaucracy hyper-detection (BHD). Although you may have started exhibiting this power in the past, it will be much stronger within you after DAD training. An unfortunate side effect of this power is that it may drive you mad with frustration. Sometimes having super powers isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be.
3. Red tape cutting. You are now able to ask questions such as “Who actually needs this?”, “How can we possibly justify this?”, and “Surely there are more effective ways at achieving the actual goals?” which make bureaucrats quake with fear. Once the bureaucrats are disoriented you can then counteract their evil procedures with effective disciplined agile solutions that actually work in practice. This powerful one-two punch, in combination with BHD, this is a truly amazing ability.
4. Stakeholder pleasurefication. Get your mind out of the gutter, this power refers to your increased ability to produce working, consumable solutions which meet the actual needs of your stakeholders.
5. Quality increasifier. Any code that you touch from now on will sparkle with quality through application of agile quality techniques such as refactoring and TDD. This enhances many of your other powers and more.

Granted, there are other ways to gain super powers such as being bitten by radioactive insects, dowsed with experimental chemicals, being experimented upon by ethically questionable scientists, or bombarded by radiation. We neither recommend nor condone those strategies. Follow them at your own risk.

If you’re interested in finding out real information about Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) training, visit the IBM agile training page at http://www-304.ibm.com/jct03001c/services/learning/ites.wss/us/en?pageType=page&c=Z340950B41583X73 . Sorry, but at least one paragraph in this posting had to be serious.

Where’s Scott been?

I haven’t been very active on this site.  This hasn’t been for lack of desire to be involved but instead because I crushed a finger four weeks ago moving some small boulders around in my back yard.  The finger is healing fine although it’s still not the happiest camper right now.  Anyway, as I recover I’ll have more typing capacity.

Chapters 5 & 7 of Disciplined Agile Delivery available on Safari Roughcuts for review

The following chapters  have now been uploaded to Safari Roughcuts here.

• Chapter 5 – Forming disciplined agile teams

• Chapter 7 – Case study: Initiating a DAD project

Chapter 6 will be available shortly.

We look forward to your comments.

Mark & Scott