The Agile Bazaar was formed by Ken Schwaber as the Agile Alliance New England User Group. The first meeting occurred on July 22, 2002. The first set of meetings was at an early sponsor’s location in Brookline Village, easily accessible via Boston public transportation. These meetings were characterized as stimulating discussion groups, where no one quite knew ahead of time where the discussions would lead, but everyone left with a sense of satisfaction that some of their curiosity about agile was satisfied. It was at one of these meetings that someone commented that the discussions reminded him of the “Bazaar” approach to Open Source development, where hackers (good guys, at one time) choose what they wanted to contribute, with the continuing addition of positive contributions evolving into a useful application. That’s when we decided to call ourselves “Agile Bazaar.” It is this quest for knowledge of all things agile that has remained the defining mission of the group through its transformations.

In 2003, the group had meetings at a Burlington, Mass. bookstore named Softpro. In contrast to the Brookline Village site, a lounge-like atmosphere, at Softpro we would sit in a tight circle in a brightly light back room. Here Ken’s ideas became the main focus. Alas, Ken’s success with Scrum and its increasing travel demands meant that we remaining birds had to learn to fly on our own. Soon after the bad news that Softpro had to close, we had a breakthrough event in May, 2004 where we hosted Mary Poppendieck. The success of that event convinced us that we could succeed at becoming a more traditional focus group, and host agile thought leaders from afar (basically nabbing them as they made their way through Boston.). But we didn’t stray far from our roots, thanks to venue sponsorship from local Agile companies like PatientKeeper and Quoin. The excitement of showing up for a “feed me” knowledge session continued. Perhaps the highlight of unexpected enrichment came one evening at PatientKeeper, where Jeff Sutherland is CTO. The discussion got around to program management. Suddenly Jeff excused himself for a moment and returned with his laptop and plugged it into the overhead. Jeff demonstrated how he would spend ten minutes per project per day, and produce burndowns that were publicly posted to the organization on a daily bases. Needless to say, our jaws dropped.

In May of 2005, a steering committee was formed. When we could line up a speaker, we would have meetings at Tufts University. If not, there’s nothing like a pub session.

Our most significant transformation occurred on Aug. 1, 2007. On that day Agile Bazaar became a chapter of the ACM. This alliance will allow us to better position ourselves to produce events that will carry out our mission. By inheriting 501(c)(3) non-profit status from ACM, we are able to develop larger events such as our seminar series. Nevertheless, if you just want to sit and talk and maybe pick somebody’s brain, there’s Tommy Doyles or Kinvera Pub or Pizza Unos or someplace you may like!