Lean Product and Process Development Exchange - Denver

About 2 weeks ago I was in Denver on the Lean Product and Process Development Exchange. This was a small conference which focused on lean product development (not just SW). I was invited by Marry Poppendieck to come and speak on a panel she was organizing together with Peter (Xerox), Glenn (Spaceshuttles) and Patrick (Intel).

Even though I had a huge jetlag most of the time (11 hours timezone difference and a 36 hour trip), the conference was very good. The presentation held were very impressive and interesting. One of the most interesting take-aways for me was the use of test-first development outside of Software. It has a completely different meaning, but still is based on similar concepts. I really enjoyed the conference focus on knowledge creation. The only annoying thing to me was that there was still quite a lot of focus on tools and silver bullets, though people told me that compared to other conferences, there wasn't much.

Our Lean Software panel turned out to be more short presentations. I presented on feature teams and stop organizing product development using projects. People told me it was interesting, so that makes it successful. I enjoyed my co-panelists talks a lot too, about Scrum, legacy and space shuttles :) Also enjoyed the discussion we had and sharing some good (and bad) experiences.

The conference was definitively worth it. Next year they will organize another one, so you might want to join that. You can find the presentation of the conference here