Cape Town gathering day 1 concluded in a networking event where I caught a few moments of Henrik's improv on the baby grand at the Westin Grand.

Before I plunge into day 2, a sketch of what stood out on day 1.

Henrik's Keynote

Henrik Kniberg's keynote was excellent, setting the tone for the gathering. He revisited the core scrum values (not the agile values) with frequent references to the "black book" and closed by stoking the scrumban fire a bit.

Deep dive: Boris Gloger

Estimation in depth. Wow, Boris broke my brain in three fabulous ways:

  1. Magic estimation — parallel sorting algorithm to achieve estimation of hundreds of items in minutes.
  2. Contracting on business value, not time and materials — with an exit for the client if they're satisfied before the fixed cost is reached.
  3. Changing Level of Done - choose the set of constraints (definition of done) that allow you to start delivering features, then change the constraints and get everything to done again.

More to come. Off to the wildcard that is open spaces!