Last Thursday, the agile community of greater Leipzig met at Mercateo.

“Greater Leipzig”?
Yes, meanwhile we have more frequent visitors from Dresden as we visit them. Sad, but true 😉
… wave to the several Anjas and Sebastian. You know, who is meant.

Sven came from Chemnitz – long time no see.
At other occasions we had visitors from Halle, Jena, Erfurt. Rolf is constantly commuting between Leipzig and Berlin.
Alexander Krause joined us as he was in contract here.
So, there is a lot mobility in agility and one center of agility seems to be Leipzig.

Before I entered the ground, I found this:

Did You noticed the number-plate? WE – GO 2?
How great is that? On a GT?

Story behind:
I recognized the number plate and liked it instantly.

Coincidentally, there were public officers watching over parking traffic. I asked them whether they know it is legal to photograph and publish it without contacting the owner. They confirmed my legal position, “public” = “legal to publish” (no person involved).

But it was no problem at all. In the moment, I wanted to enter the meetup, the owner and his companion returned from shopping. We had a small talk about cars and number plates and I asked for permission to publish. He gave to me and we bid farewell with handshakes.

Nice!

I entered the atrium of the “Städtisches Kaufhaus” (city’s department store). It was one of the earliest shopping malls as no-one called it that name.
Today it houses shops, restaurants and lots of office space. One of the office facilities is used by Mercateo.
Coincidentally a bunch of 8 people or so arrived in groups of mostly two – more or less in the same minute. Nobody had an idea, where to go – even after improved description on meetup.com.

We greeted each other by handshake. It felt nearly like family re-union. Some of us met for the 10^th time and frequency is getting shorter since beginning of 2017. We decide to spread out to explore the atrium and esp. the entrance for the office section. As I found the meetup sign next to one door we easily came together to proceed inside.
Most impressive elevator outside Paris. And a lot more trustworthy from optical appearance. 🙂

As we arrived, we hearty welcomed each other. Great hellos – everybody to everybody. Awesome mood.

Mercateo has a great and impressive space for creative working. You can recognize on first sight that they are doing agile software development. Looks a bit like the premium version of Basislager (basecamp – co-working space).
I was instantly in dialogue with Doreen (Mercateo) and Sven from Chemnitz. We shared our thoughts about requirements and bad experiences upon office buildings. Especially the older ones seem to offer challenges in configuration for agile co-working. You need openness and silence, concentration and bubbling creativity at the same space and often at the same time. Not quite easy …

We had a topic emphasis this time: PO-ing.

For me, I used that meeting to gain insights for pricing my easy adaption-postcards for the up2U-protocol.

We pitched for some topics and got our session planning final.

Round #1

We had two areas at hand. Rolf discussed his topic “PO and Program Management – does that fit?” in a glass cube near to our open space where we talked about estimation on title “Do You still use 1,2,3,5,8,…?”. Frank Stephan offered that topic.

We collected all methods that were familiar with us. We discussed under which circumstances “no estimation” might be a valid option. These are

• the team is the product (single team product development)
• stories are more or less of same size (1, 2 at Fibonacci)
• you have a small amount of uncertainty

In the end, this describes a Scrumban approach for a one-team product. Stupid.
You need to do a (perfect) refinement and do measurements like cycle-time and number of stories per sprint-release to determine position and make forecasts on functionality for demanding users.

As we finished collection of what we are using or used at other occasions, Frank unveiled to us the “3-point-estimates method“.
They experienced at Frank’s environment a reasonably accuracy for their work. For them it works fine (T&M subcontractor, one customer-workstream).

But, You have to keep in mind that exactly those people have to estimate, that will do the work in future.
No 3^rd party estimations about what estimations should be resulting in! Yes, I experienced this reverse price dictation at another occasion. 🙂

Round #2

After Pizza break, Doreen and I joined our sessions to offer a PO centric talk. Her part was more operable intended (how and when to implement UX?) and my part should be the same direction, a little more general (“Make Your product greater, again!”).

I wanted to gain insights and inspiration about a topic I want to do a Pecha Kutcha speak about in May.

Unfortunately, we got stuck in disruptive innovations and Apple (the “other” that defines “normal”).
So, time ran out and the part where I saw the common ground with Doreen, the operational handling, wasn’t really reached at all.

I felt a little guilty about partnering with her and afterwards the shared agreement could not be fulfilled, but Doreen said it was OK for her.

In the end, it pushed me where I wanted to get to.
The visualization, I had in my mind, got totally out of point. It did not work. Fail early …

But I got resonance that brought me ahead. “Greater” in my terms was more intended in means of “taller”. But it can also mean “awesome” and attracts users by being so. “Greater” could also barely mean “wider”.
So, my insight was, that “greater” is mainly growing like humans. Once growing in tall, then in width – like children grew up.

The growth in tall is adding functionality that is than smoothed in use (like education of humans).
It is then applied to a growing number of occasions (winning additional adopters – growth in width). Again and again and again.
Evolutionary growth. Non-disruptive. Stupid.

Wrap up

Unfortunately, I did not got anything to know about the other sessions. So, I cannot report what went on and which insights Rolf got on his PM/Program Management issue. The parallel session in round #2, I missed completely in title and worked out content.

The evening was also of additional value for me.
I got an idea about pricing the EACs for up2U-Protocol.
I realized by a query, that there is no market for single sells – only for giving away for free.

It was valued about 10 times of a sightseeing postcard, but taking three of them makes a price that feels “too high”.

So, the day after, I decided (under this impression) to offer premium priced bundle-packages.

• Family-size (50 pcs)
• Community-size (250 pcs)
• Organizational-size (500 pcs)

I oriented at Dunbar’s number. And rounded up to widely accepted even numbers like “250”.

Now, I got a pricing that reflects value, reduces handling overhead and offers the opportunity to realize a reasonable margin, once got running.

Target achieved, mission accomplished.

I am very satisfied by that evening. RoTI 5 – as always!

/famous last words

Thanks to all that made this happen!

Enjoy, and share if You like. Feel free to make Your life great, also!
“Likes” are welcome. Comments are appreciated.