Agile Leadership Network Houston

APLN Houston is Two!

Our second year has been one of growth, one of outreach, and one of making the organization a bit more formal.  APLN Houston membership now tops 650 making it one of the largest APLN chapters in the nation. With the APLN Houston To Go program, we also began to reach beyond our primary venue at Sysco spreading our belief in agile practices to a broader audience. In May we hosted our first training session in partnership with Kumido Adaptive Strategies introducing Innovation Games® for Agile Teams. Over the year we have brought speakers from Chicago, Washington DC, Salt Lake City, Flagstaff, Miami, New York, Alberta, and Mumbai. We learned about performance measures, Agile PMOs, the Pomodoro Technique, lean program management, managing across the knowing-doing gap, planning for value creation, heard an experience report from Petris Technology, and conducted an agile panel discussion agility. For a quick recap just watch the amazing video Ron Whitebread compiled for us. He is becoming quite the video artist!

None of this would have been possible without each of our 650+ members continuing to support us, continuing to pass the word, continuing to volunteer to help, and continuing to give us guidance with your feedback.  Because of this our dream of building an agile community in Houston is becoming a reality, as well as an example for others to follow.

Our success is also due in no small part to the great set of companies who have honored us with their sponsorship. Taking top honors of course is Sysco Corporation who has opened their doors allowing us the use of their outstanding meeting facilities for more than a year now. We are most fortunate to have this support.  Then offering a dizzying array food and refreshments, door prizes, books, and assistance with speaker expenses have been companies like TEK Systems, Triad Resources, Apex Systems, Object Information Services, Disys, CPP, Lithespeed, Winnow Management, and Sogeti.  And supporting our outreach program, Waste Management, Hewitt, and Pros have each graciously hosted APLN Houston To Go events.

To begin adding a little more formality APLN Houston incorporated as a nonprofit corporation in the state of Texas in March 2010.  This was the first of several necessary steps to support our growth and ensure our continuity into the future.

I would be remiss by not recognizing the leaders that have stepped up to take active roles in running the organization.  Ron Whitebread, Alan Bustamante and Shravan Arra have been involved since the start.  Barbara Brown, Allan Watty and Jaynee Lafferty joined the team over the last year or so and together they have all provided steady guiding hands and inspiring new ideas to say nothing of some remarkable teamwork to keep ALPN Houston moving and growing.  Alan Bustamante made a quiet exit this year, relocating with his fiancée to Cinncinatti, Ohio. We will miss his drive and energy, but know our loss is Cinncinatti's gain and that Ohio's agile community will be very well served.

Looking toward year three, we of course have more plans to execute, more goals to achieve, and more dreams to dream.  As with any truly agile team, we can take pride and solace in knowing that together there is nothing we can not accomplish.

-- Robbie Mac Iver, President APLN Houston