In 2009 Perficient China hosted our first Hangzhou Scrum Forum. The event attracted more than 75 participants from Hangzhou, Shanghai and across China. Feedback on the event was overwhelmingly positive so we decided to make it an annual event.
As another series of agile events, the Agile Tour China stops were being planned around the same time we were planning to have our forum this year, we decided to join the two together. This past Saturday, October 23, 2010 we hosted this year’s event, the Agile Tour China Hangzhou stop, the first Agile Tour China stop in China for 2010.
Agile Tour Hangzhou welcome banner posted on our office building.
The event was a huge success. Attendance this year was more than double our 2009 event, peaking at over 150 people.
Acting upon the virtual retrospective we held at the end of last years meeting we were able to bring forward all of the “things we did well” and also address all areas identified as “things we can improve”.
This year we were very fortunate to have Ms. Jean Tabaka, author of Collaboration Explained as our morning keynote speaker. Jean presented a 2+ hour session on Agile Learning and Visioning Models, which included some interactive games. The audience expressed interest and excitement as the session unfolded.
After Jean’s session, which due to the overwhelming reistration had to be held in our building’s cafeteria we had lunch (making the venue very convenient). After lunch there were parallel presentation sessions on TDD by Perficient China’s own Lancelot Zhu, Technology Architect, and Building a Shared Vision for Continuous Improvement by Sun Ni of NSN. Jean and Daniel Teng, China’s only Certified Scrum Coach (CSC) hosted an agile game the stressed collaboration and communication as teams navigated through a maze. A second series of presentation sessions followed, with Ethan Soo presenting on Concuering the Most Difficult Problems in China and Asia and Kong Linlin presenting on Agile Measurement Exploration.
The day ended with another keynote from Jeff Xiong, one of China’s most prolific writers on all things agile.
We were very happy that even by the end of the day, though off of our peak attendance in the morning, we still had over 130 people attending Jeff’s final keynote.
Agile Tour China official event poster that will be traveling to all of the Agile Tour China stops.
The feedback on this years event was even more positive than it was for last years event. The event is a great start to the Agile Tour China, and several members of our team will be participating in other Agile Tour stops. Particular appreciation was given to the Perficient colleagues who volunteered to support the coordination activities. They did such an excellent job that we were ask if we would be wiling to support the Shanghai stop as well, which members of our team have graciously committed to doing.
Our first two years of hosting an agile event have been a great experience, and we’re already looking forward to making next year’s event even bigger and better.
