XP/Agile Universe 2003: Day 3, part 2

XP/Agile Universe 2003 was held Aug. 10-13 in New Orleans, LA (NOLA). See my previous posts regarding day 1, day 2 and day 3.

During lunch Alejandro Goyen of Microsoft talked about how MS was going agile and the issues encountered. Most of the issues are typical of grassroots adoption (programmers don't want to test, pair, etc.) as well as some cultural ones (8,000 developers work on Windows Server). It is nice to see MS trying, but as one question pointed out, they are not asking for any help by those who have been there before.

Kent Beck was the final speaker of the conference. His topic was “Avarice: the Fifth Value?”. Essentially Kent is trying to pull XP over the early adopter curve into the mainstream. He sees the way to accomplish this by understanding better how XP might appeal to business. He points out that the 4 values of XP appeal to technologists, but not to business. So how to relate those values to business? He mentioned that maybe the values need to be modified or added to, but rejected that possibility. Instead he sees money as the feedback value of business. If a business gives you money in exchange for something, that is feedback that you are doing the right thing. If you give money to a business, you are telling them they are doing the right thing. I.e. feedback.

All in all the conference was great and I am looking forward to Calgary in 2004. Maybe I'll even have a paper to present.