Recently I have noticed conversations in the Agile Community getting increasingly hostile. Whether it be about scaling, self-organization, estimation, or a variety of other topics, there seems to be some reason one side or the other has to be ‘right’. I’ve personally been in the crossfire and not once was there any inquiry about why I had my opinion, only some circumspect attribution as to my opinion being off the mark.
Perhaps it was… Perhaps not… Who is the judge?
So something I and a colleague (@Ryan Ripley) have decided to try is put together is an unconference to bring together people to discuss these thorny conversations. And by discussion, I mean dialog, not debate. In other words, the point is not to prove someone wrong or right, but rather understand there position and whether it is valid for your context. Using a philosophy espoused by Peter Senge, we need to expose and elevate our assumptions so that we can find what works and doesn’t between the positions. We call this Agile Dialogs and have set-up a website (rudimentary at the moment). Our first dialog will be about how to predict value with or without estimates. If you have an opinion for against or somewhere in the middle, we hope you will join us. You can find out more info at the Agile Dialogs website; please consider taking the short survey at the end and of course joining us on November 13th at the Navy League Building in Arlington, VA..
Paul Boos' Nimblicious - Making Agility Tasty 
I find Marshall Rosenberg’s explanation of “The Surprising Purpose of Anger” works for me. Can we talk about – amongst other things – folks’ needs?
– Bob
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks for joining in Bob!
That would definitely be one thing to be proposed as a topic: “What are the needs to which we are attending by giving estimates?”, which could be followed up with “What is the another way to attend to the needs of those that requesting estimates?”. These could then followed up by (more rhetorically), “Given my work context and what people need, what do I consider a good mix of tools to help attend to the needs of others – with others being not only my customers, but my colleagues/team members.”
(And hopefully would be thinking on these will help attend to the needs of the attendees by focusing on those questions).
One assumption I can see in even the theme: is it a prerequisite to predict value? Do I need to have predictable value production? If I look at some of the BBRT material, as long as I am getting relative improvement, that may suffice.
LikeLike