Alef Arendsen

So I’m having breakfast in Aarhus this morning with several people I met at JAOO in the past couple of days and all of a sudden a woman at the table asks somebody else about which whiteboard markers he uses. I continue to eat my slice of bread with strawberry jam, not really paying attention when the guy responds by saying how he hates such-and-such brand of markers, because it goes bad and all really fast. He also mentions he has a set of markers that have tips at both ends. They continue to discuss which post-it notes they use because apparently there is a really big difference in the stickiness of the post-it notes of various brands. One of them then mentions he can’t get a certain brand of post-it notes in China after which they rave a little about that specific brand (they’re so sticky, and the colors, they’re great) and somebody actually offers some of the post-it notes of that specific brand to the other.

As a software developer at a conference, it is of course strange to hear people not talk about laptops, IDEs, chairs, mice, et cetera. This would really sound like a very strange and out of the ordinary conversation of course, if I hadn’t known about the fact that I just joined the ‘agile’ table with amongst others Diana Larsen, chairman of the Agile Alliance. For those of you that are not in the know, agile is how certain (mostly lightweight) software development processes are characterized that focus on getting software out the door in a more predictable way while ensuring the software meets clients’ demands.

Diana and the other people at the table are agile thought leaders / trainers / consultants and facilitate various types of meetings in software development organizations. And as you might know, facilitators usually have this little briefcase with a roll of brown paper, an endless amount of post-it notes and several dozen whiteboard markers.

Now of course the discussion that went on above all makes sense. They’re talking about their tools they use in their jobs. They’re facilitators and they love their job and love good tools. It’s just as with computers; if you’re a programmer, you want the best IDE, the best machine, the best chair and keyboard that money can buy. Of course with me, being in the software industry for a while already, I had never realized you can actually be geeky about non-gadgety things, the things I’m usually geeky about (my chair, my keyboard, my mouse, my puter, my iPod, my phone, my whatever-gadget-comes-to-mind).

I mentioned this to Diana and we had a good laugh about it, but also concluded that tools are incredibly important and that it really helps succeeding in your job.

By the way, at the conference, unfortunately I didn’t have a chance to follow any of the agile talks. I had to prepare slides at the same time as some of the talks and sometimes the schedule conflicted a little bit with other (more technical) talks that I wanted to see. I’m not that much of a process guy although I fundamentally believe the approach Diana et. al. are advocating really helps getting things done (especially getting software out the door).