Discovering Agility

I’m flying back from a pretty successful trip to Copenhagen. I was here as part of something IBM calls an “Innovation Discovery Workshop”. We met with one of IBM Denmark’s largest customers. It was my first time doing one of these, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. Lots of high level, smart people talking about how the bank could change or adapt its business in an agile or nimble fashion based on customer needs – interesting but scary. The topic of the session was Business Agility - I was asked to attend so I could bring my perspectives on Agile Software Development into the discussion.

The two day session was held at a Spa/Hotel just outside of Copenhagen in a town called Skodsborg. My first challenge when I landed on Wednesday morning was finding a train from the airport to the small town about 40 minutes away. I have to say, I was pretty impressed with myself, having found the train and very easily wandering around the town to find my way to the Kurhotel and Spa.

Anyway, there were about 15 people from Nordea there and maybe 10 IBM’ers all from a variety of disciplines – and if you know me, I know NOTHING about banking and money so I was feeling a little out of my element!!! Anyway the idea behind the two days was to explore areas within the bank’s process and business model where they could be more innovation and agile in an attempt to respond to changes in the business climates. The first day wasn’t too bad – lots of good conversation and getting to know each other – the wonderful three course meal at the end of the day (complete with three courses of wine) helped to loosen everyone up.

I got to speak in the morning of the second day. I was scheduled to talk about Agile Software development and specifically I was going to focus on Scrum as an Agile technique. Unfortunately (for me) I got to follow one of our Distinguished Engineer’s and VP of Innovation in the CIO’s office: Francoise Legoues. She did an outstanding job – simply “wowing” the room and I think really setting the stage for just how innovative IBM can be. Lucky for me (not): A very tough act to follow.

So, armed with my lucky pink shirt I jumped in feet first and gave it my all! I think it went well – and it typical “Matt Style” (very animated and excited) I think I convinced them I know a little about the topic. There were lots of questions and comments afterwards – so I always take that as a good sign! I focused not so much on how to do Agile for software development, but rather how to “think” with an Agile and iterative (small step) mindset. They’re doing Agile development already. In fact Nordea is at the beginning of their Agile journey and like most teams just starting out, they have lots of questions (and lots of confusion) – They’re going to do fine though – they are very committed and very passionate about what they’re doing! It’s really exciting to see!

Did we help them ? I don’t know. They seemed to really get a lot out of it and watching Nordea talk amongst themselves about how to proceed (using ideas we forged together) I think I would say we did a good job!

I didn’t get to much sightseeing. The day ended around 4:00pm on Friday and a quick look at geocaching.com showed that there was a quick geocache about 0.2 miles from my hotel. After a brisk walk I quickly found the “cave” where the cache was hidden. It was really pretty cool. Around the back of that big opening was a little opening with stairs that led to the top (where the cache was hidden). Of course I left a Samstone there in memory of Sam Cohn (the son of a fellow IBM’er John Cohn) who was tragically killed in a car accident at the age of 14.

I did make it into Downtown Copenhagen for Dinner with two of the IBM workshop attendees: Adam Cutler and John Vergo – John works about 200 yards from me in Hawthorne, NY but we had to travel about 4,000 miles to meet – go figure! Other than the rain, it was a good night. It felt like Copenhagen should feel: wet and cold – in a good (European) way!

So, back home and back to the grind. Business travel for this year is done (I’m pretty sure).