• Ponderings about 'what is the definition of...' Extreme Programming (on the XP mailing list) , Project, Agile, Leadership etcetera.
• DSDM and RUP have now adopted Extreme Programming, so there seems to grow consensus on what constitutes sound agile programming practices, as well as a growing chance of wider adoption of these practices. In many places SCRUM and XP are also combined.
• The number of conferences on agile is growing rapidly, besides XP2004, OT2004, Agile Universe, there is now also the agile development conference, xp days in the UK, Germany and the Benelux.
• Other conferences are adopting agile, as well as agile session formats. Yesterday I stumbled across Software Development Expo, they have experientials (highly interactive workshops) and an open space conference, as well as a track on People, Projects and Teams.
• The agile community in europe is both starting to face more outward (organising Agile Special Interest Groups to inform managers and software customers) and pulling together (keeping each other up to date on various events).

I'll continue collecting some more signs, If you see some, let me know yours!

Recently there has been an urge by the dutch government for people to work longer hours, based on the assumption that the Dutch don't work enough. Last week I read, that on average people work more than thirty years ago - so the assumption is flawed. Working hours are spread out over more people. Compared to thirty years ago more women participate in the workforce, and more many more people (men and women) are working part-time.

So what is our session about? It introduces systems thinking using causal loop diagrams (also known as diagrams of effects, Systems thinking is a methodology independent tool for understanding team and project dynamics and for finding effective interventions. We will use an experiential approach through playing a ball game ("group juggle"). All participants will be involved, either as a 'player' or an observer. We ran this game as part of a larger session at XP2004. The image below shows participants at xp2004 playing a second round of group juggle.

This game is derived from The Systems Thinking Playbook by Dennis Meadows and Linda Booth Sweeney, and I highly recommend this one. At a systems thinking meeting last week, we played another ball game, warped juggle. It struck us, that these games are very versatile and can be used for many purposes, e.g. showing group interaction, mental models, experience organisational change in the small, and explain causal loop diagrams as we'll do at xp day.

Managing change is better done by starting at check, so John Seddon suggests a change cycle that consists of only three steps: Check Plan Do. I can relate to this, because I have experienced the power of this cycle in various activities:

• Weekly planning games work like this Check what has been done last week and how that affects the customers' situation, Plan what to Do in the next week. Very simple, but also very powerful, as the software evolves together with the customers' situation.
• Retrospectives fulfill the same role: Check the current state of your process by looking back on the past project (or iteration), Plan new ways to add value and eliminate waste, by looking at what we can do better next time and Do by having the retrospective right in between your current and next project, and using the results directly in the next project.
• A systems thinking techique, that of creating a causal loop diagram (also known as Diagram of Effects) also follows this pattern. Check being telling a story and drawing observable values and the effects they have on each other, Plan finding intervention points within the effects or changing the system by introducing other observable values and Do enacting the interventions or changing the system.

Playing the blindfold game at the last xp-nl proved this again - if you steer every 20 seconds, you won't get the blindfolded person anywhere near the target. With 5 second iterations, this is much more doable.