I recently had the honor of speaking at the Emerging Technologies for the Enterprise Conference, where I renewed some friendships, made some new acquaintances, and spoke about something I enjoy: failures.

Last summer I debuted XP: My Greatest Misses 2000-2007, which became popular due to its honesty and directness. (See an example of the response to it.) I followed this theme of reflecting on failures to gather some mistakes I have seen people make as they make the transition from work group in chaos to agile team. It’s important to note that I didn’t talk about the five biggest mistakes, the five most common, nor the five most dangerous; but rather, simply about five mistakes that came to my head. As you’d expect, once I’d written my five in the notes, I found a number more, especially as I sat in my fellow presenters’ sessions. Even when they weren’t describing mistakes at all, they triggered a number of memories—so many that I could easily have written the 20 mistakes new agile teams make.

Please enjoy Five Mistakes New Agile Teams Make, and if you’d like me to visit your user group, please contact me at the prominently-displayed e-mail address on this site. You should also consider contacting the Agile Alliance to find out how to qualify for funding to bring out-of-town speakers to your user group or event.

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