One Man, Two Conferences

I’m fairly certain that I’m the only person who attended both THE Performance Improvement Conference #ISPI14 and the Global Scrum Gathering #SGNOLA this spring. I hold professional designations from both the International Society for Performance Improvement (CPT - Certified Performance Technologist) and the ScrumAlliance (CSPO - Certified Scrum Product Owner). As one who works as a education person among technologists, I’m interested in considering the distinction between the two conference crowds and the ethos of the attendees.

The conferences themselves were comparable in size, agenda structure, and cost. Both were more of an educational event than a trade show. Both had a lot more good than bad, and both experiences filled my little head with a boat load of information and ideas.

Below are two lists that show how they are distinct. I would love to hear your comments.

Conference versus Conference

Theme	ScrumAlliance	ISPI
Typical profession	External Agile Scrum Consultant	Internal performance consultant
Touted Credentials	ScrumAlliance certifications	Academic degrees
Gender mix	80% male, 20% female	50% male, 50% female
Conference locations	World-class cities: New Orleans, Paris, Berlin	2nd tier cities: Indianapolis, San Antonio, Reno
Book you need to have read or pretend to have read before attending	The Scrum Guide, by Schwaber and Sutherland	Human Competence: Engineering Worthy Performance, by Thomas F. Gilbert
Venue-based Metaphor	Music (New Orleans)	Auto racing (Indianapolis)
Conference groove	Networking	Forming bonds
Most popular tweet	A slide	A selfie
Awesome keynote speaker that had everyone buzzing	Kenny Rubin	David Maxfield
Book giveaway to support the awesome keynote presentation	Essential Scrum, A Practice Guide to the Most Popular Agile Process	Influencer, the New Science of Leading Change
Gadget giveaway	Portable smart phone charger	Thumb drive
Laughing, crying	Almost none	Almost constant
Typical model	Circular and repeating	Horizontals and verticals
Involvement of forefathers of the profession at the conference	None of the original Agile Manifesto signatories present	Almost every living performance improvement guru was present

Ethos versus Ethos

Theme	ScrumAlliance	ISPI
Foundation	Experience	Research
Holy grail	Delivering value	Measuring value
Common reference	Failed software projects	Skinnerian behavioral science
Before becoming a consultant, I spent years as a(n)….	Software engineer	Instructional designer
It all starts with articulation of….	An idea	An outcome
People are….	Resources	The most important thing
Management are….	Adversaries who don’t understand us and how we want to work	Leaders who don’t yet realize how much we can help them
Love/hate relationships	Hate for project managers. Disdain for HR.	Love everyone
About measurement	A lot of talk about things that should not be measured (defects, release cadence)	A lot of talk about what can and should be measured
On Training	One capable person can pollinate specific skills within a specific team	Scalable solutions and support structures need to be put in place
Don’t forget to….	Follow applicable scrum rules	Measure
People love to talk about how nobody talks about….	Continuous integration	Root cause analysis
View of the future	#noestimates	Predictive evaluation
They are snarky about….	Manual testing processes	Training as a standalone solution
Language of success	defect-free, minimum viable, value flow	greater discretionary effort, improved performance, employee satisfaction
Fancy word to describe most problems	Recursive	Unaligned
Fancy word to describe solutions	Automated	Holistic
What needs to be scaled	Coaching	Performance support
What attendees would learn if they attended the opposite conference.	An appreciation for the human component of success	An appreciation for the great learning agility that exists within work teams
And they would also learn	In order to quantify value, you need more sophisticated measurement techniques	People on teams don’t care about corporate interventions unless they have immediate prima facie value