Helping small products grow big.
Well I must say, Rakuten is an amazing company and I am very impressed. They certainly know how to put on a conference!
My favourite talk was from Taichi Watanabe who spoke about the 10% Rule at Rakuten Travel. I have asked him to share his presentation, it was gold.
I gave a talk on the agile and innovation programs we run at Atlassian. If you are interested take a look:
Some questions cropped up subsequent to the talk – read the Q&A now.
We are always looking for opportunities to improve what we do at Atlassian. Here is one example from Michael Tokar of the GreenHopper team:
Hey all,
There are conversations currently happening in the JIRA team about 20% time and the way in which it is taken. … I wanted to get a feeling for how you all think about 20% time as it is right now.
Some questions for you to ruminate on as you drink tea. Feel free to discuss or reply privately. For this exercise, just think about the time on the GreenHopper team, not other secondments.
Do you feel like you get “enough” 20% time?Do you feel like you have been “shipping” the fruits of your 20% time? Or do you put time in for not much shippable gain?
What motivates your choice to work on a particular thing for 20% time?
Do you ever feel like your choice in 20% time project will conflict with the product vision of GH / JIRA? Does this concern you?
How much involvement do product managers have in 20% time? How much do you think they should have?
Do you feel like you have great 20% time ideas but you have trouble getting access to the right people to help you finish them?
Is there enough visibility around what 20% time projects do get shipped, from an individual / GH / JIRA family team perspective?
Cheers,
Tokes
I’m talking about the Atlassian experience with 20% time at Rakuten Technology Conference tomorrow. Just thought I would share this email as it is more validation that we are constantly looking for opportunities to improve our practices. Love it.
Next week I am speaking at Rakuten Technology Conference 2012, I will be sharing the Atlassian story of Agile and Innovation. I’m really excited to be attending this event as Rakuten is a fascinating company. I strongly encourage you to learn more about them by reading this excellent Wired article about Rakuten and their founder. Read it now, how can you not with an image like this?!
Hiroshi Mikitani, Rakuten Founder
Rakuten first came to my attention when I met Yasunobu Kawaguchi of Rakuten at SF Agile in June of this year. Yasunobu was visiting with Taichi Watanabe, a colleague from Rakuten. They were both in town to learn more about Agile.
We bumped into one another again at Agile 2012 in August of this year. This time Yasunobu had brought 20 or 30 friends from other companies in Japan. Amazing to see the impact on the Agile space in Japan that this one man is having!
Agile is Japan is poised to take off. I’m sure of it.
If you are in Tokyo next week. Ping me and say hello, we’ve got an Atlassian User Group on as well as a few other bits and pieces.
