Of all of the captivating talks I saw presented at this year’s Gnomedex, some of the most surprising and enjoyable were delivered in five-minute chunks by the ladies and gents of Ignite Seattle and Ignite Portland.

The Ignite community challenges you to answer the question:

If you had five minutes on stage what would you say? What if you only got 20 slides and they rotated automatically after 15 seconds?

Ignite chapters have now begun in cities all across America.

My favorite of the Ignite presentations that we saw this weekend was delivered by Jason Grigsby and was entitled “Cup Noodle: Innovation, Inspiration, and Manga.”

If you view the video, you will see what made this presentation so amazing. The story of instant noodles in a styrofoam cup turns out to be a business legend that demonstrates some of the key themes of Agile development, and best of all it’s captured in a manga, a Japanese comic book.

• Have a compelling vision and lead passionately
• Accept the challenge and embrace the constraints
• Design with the user in mind
• Iterative, collaborative design and constant improvement
• Use diversity to your advantage to bring in new ideas
• Unbox your thinking and look for answers in unexpected places
• Understand your unique selling proposition
• Celebrate your victories along the way

A product that has nourished billions and even been used for disaster relief, and yet it still has things to teach. The Agile models we use today have their roots in Japanese post-war business and their drive for rapid, constant improvements.

So make yourself some instant noodles and kick it old school.

Serena Software’s TAG Conference begins on September the 7th and attendees can take advantage of a special giveaway from Serena and Valtech: Free Agile Mastery training.

This two-day training course will immerse you into real-world learning scenarios where hands-on exercises and interactive discussions will dominate the class time. As Valtech’s core Agile course offering, Agile Mastery prepares team members for the realities of working on a project where daily stand-ups, burn downs, relative estimation, users stories and much more are the cornerstones of everyday life.

If you’ve looked into Agile training, then you know that a course like this usually costs $1,400 per person.

About Eli Israel

Eli has been a leader in SaaS for more than six years. In 2002, he founded an anti-spam software company based on the Software as a Service model well before SaaS became the de facto standard for online product delivery. Eli has guided companies through the transition from ASP and on-premise deployments towards true Software as a Service.

He is a seasoned practitioner of both traditional and Agile lifecycle methodologies and has trained clients, customers, and peers to deliver products on time and budget by building effective, enthusiastic product teams.  Eli’s track record includes major wins at large customer accounts with significant bottom-line impact.

He is a patent-awarded inventor, a published technical author and has delivered winning technical and business presentations to customers, analysts and members of the press.

Eli Israel current serves as Director of Development at Serena Software, where he oversees product development of Serena PPM On Demand and Serena Agile On Demand.

About This Blog

The Partly Cloudy blog is about the challenges and victories of migrating existing applications to a SaaS delivery model. Because of the radically different sales, marketing, operations, and finance needs of a successful SaaS offering, your company has to be integrated, collaborative, and efficient across departments and must engage the customer in a community, not just deliver a product.

In this blog, we will discuss the objectives, strategies, and tactics of making your move to the Clouds a triumph.

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