I participated in Agile Dinner in Helsinki.
I gave a talk on a failed project of mine. It handled two problems encountered in the project, namely inability to match schedule expectations and eventually failing to meet the customer needs. It was a good project and I learned a lot. But it did fail. I concluded the talk by clarifying what I mean by failing by giving six conditions for project failure.
I managed to raise a good bunch of questions and comments, which was a nice starter for the evening.
Ari Tanninen gave a talk on a project which utilized solid agile practices and a team of skilled individuals and which managed to deliver an outstanding solution by any measure. But the project failed miserably. Why?
Ari's presentation was followed by intensive discussion on how a developer could prevent such a failure from happening. Cause to the failure was an organizational problem which could have been (and was) observed by 'techies'. But how to communicate this to management, that is, to business people? To people with a different personality type and communication style?
Three hours of thoughtful discussion on software development. I felt great afterwards.
http://confluence.agilefinland.com/display/af/Helsinki+Agile+Dinner+May
