First time experience, Agile Thailand 2016
Before proceeding with the Agile Thailand 2016 event, I would like to admit that this is also the first blog that I have ever written in my life. I will start this blog by writing about my perspective towards Agile.
As I have learned and experienced with the simulation of Agile project so far, I feel that Agile is one interesting method that can help we achieve our goals in the way that it is so flexible between each sprint. My personal thought before going to this event is that there is going to be lots of problem for accepting this “new” process to the existing organization and working people. Therefore, this is the good time to go and listen to what the professional and real workers thought regarding agile.
On the event day, my plan is that I am going to leave my university with my seniors at 9 a.m., and reach the destination at 10 a.m., which is the start of the first session. Speaking of problem, we were able to reach the area around 9.50 a.m., but we missed the CP tower, which holding the event, and spend around half and hour to find go back to the parking building. Therefore, my seniors and I missed both the pitching session and the first slot session.
The “first” session that I was able to attend is by my friend, Majeed. His topic is pretty interesting in terms of how he can adapt both Agile principles and manifesto to the football Euros. This talk actually give me a new perspective of agile practice. Besides from football, I can now think of many aspects that gain benefits from agile principles and values. For instance, if we live our lives by accept and welcome change, our view of living will change a lot and we will be happier for sure. Even “Working software is the primary measure of progress” can be adopt to. If we do lots of thing but nothing is actually being done and work properly, then, nothing is actually done as we earn nothing out of that unfinished or nonfunctional piece of work.
After finishing the first session, we went to have lunch and looking for next interesting session in the next slot time. We found out that “Estimate” (การประเมินราคา) and “Another way to create security test scenarios”. We then decided to divide ourselves into 2 groups and go to the one that we are more interested. I chose to go to the security test session as it was my curiosity since I had Data Communication and Network class at university. I always wondered that how can people think of various threats scenarios and protect them in advance? Do they really think of all the cases already?
After attending the session, I got the answer right away, they did not. Instead, the speaker pointed out that there are various ways to help people ensure security. Microsoft, which I was heard for many insecure problems, actually develop their principle of how to make things secure, Microsoft SDL (Security Development). He said that “Microsoft suffered from security problem a lot, so they create their own schema” which sounds both convincing and weird at the same time for me. It is convincing since they might be good at security field as they used to have these problems a lot, but it is weird as they, still, have lots of security problems. He the introducing lots of terms and methods that we can use, including “CIA” model, Functional and Non-functional requirement security, use case and misuse case, Attack Tree, Microsoft Threat modeling, and Stride. Lots of them are good tools to help design security test, however, most of them (especially Attack Tree) turns out to produce difficulties in term of document reports. This lead to the hard way to transfer and communicate these information to other people in different field, including manager. One of the tools that found to be useful in solving this problem is Microsoft Thread Modelling as it list out all threat (that they know) after we build the design of our system (such as communication between server and clients). Even though he did not relate his topic to Agile, I found some relationships between them. First, creating test scenarios need to be adaptive, he said. This actually links to Agile as we want to adapt to the feedback and able to welcome change all the time. Furthermore, if we adopt one of the agile value, “ Working software over comprehensive documentation”, it would be a lot easier for the team to measure the progress as they do not have to actually write a documentation, which is harder to do so. I am waiting for the summary of another session from my friend, which they say that it is pretty interesting, but still did not tell me on details about that session.
There were lots of topics/sessions that are interesting, including the most interesting one, “Teaching Agile at Mahidol for 1 Semester”, presented by P’Pond. Unfortunately, my senior had to go back already. Then, I had to go back too, otherwise, I would not be able to go back home. In this particular Agile event, I think it is the best chance for every people, not only one who participated in Agile, to earn and listen to priceless experience from experienced professional people, who have use and live with Agile. It also benefits people who did not know Agile as they can listen or even adapt new way of thinking and working to their owns. If I had a chance, I would choose to come to Agile Thailand event for every year as I believe that there will always be new and interesting sessions by great people every year. For me, participating in this event is the right choice and I would be regret if I did not come to Agile Thailand 2016