Scaled Agile DFW is a meetup.com group based in the North Dallas, TX area and it was one of the first meetups focused specifically around lean-agile at scale. Being part of this meetup has been tremendously rewarding and it has certainly enhanced my own learning journey. The group has almost 1,000 members as of October, 2020 and it is a private meetup group, open to anyone seeking to learn and share.
In early 2015, I had been an SPC for over a year and was becoming more involved in the Dallas area agile meetup community. At one of these events, I watched a presentation that claimed to be about SAFe; however, it blended the framework, then version 3.0, with some customized project management process. What they showed totally twisted things and convoluted what I had seen bring success to the organization I was working with. After the presentation, a group of us were discussing the event, and Armando Santos, a scrum master at the time, said, “let’s make our own meetup.” The idea of helping people understand that SAFe was not a process appealed to me and Armando, Pranab Das and I decided to start our own. I will say that, without the two of them, especially Armando’s skills as an organizer, we would not have been successful.
In 2019, I began traveling to El Segundo, CA regularly, to work with some USAF programs. I started a second meetup, Scaled Agile LA in hopes of being able to become part of the SoCal agile community. As I was planning to get the meetup going, the pandemic hit. The tragedy prevented us from building th3e community but it did open the door to sharing presentations between multiple meetups.
Scaled Agile LA is a meetup.com group based in Southern California and, until things are back to normal, it will share presenters with Scaled Agile DFW. The events are listed publically.
Please check out the “Videos” page for access to meetup recordings. Please note that not all meetup events are recorded and not all presenters have allowed me to post the recording publically.
Photo by Gabriel Tovar on Unsplash
