Agile Alliance Americas

Let’s talk about boards.

Not the task board, but another kind of board…

“The Agile Alliance is a nonprofit organization with global membership, committed to advancing Agile development principles and practices.”

Despite the fact that the AA claims global membership, the current board of directors has 9(!) people from the USA, and 4 people from Canada, Brazil, New Zealand and Sweden. Yesterday I received news that the “Nominations Committee” put forward six new candidates for the board of the AA: 3 people from the USA, 2 from Canada, and 1 from Brazil. They were presented to me as “a geographically and culturally diverse group”. I laughed so hard that the British gave me an annoyed look from across the North Sea.

Now don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against either the current board members or the new candidates. I know plenty of them personally, and I’m sure they will do fine. But I find it hilarious that AA’s concept of “global membership” has an almost exclusive focus on North and South America. It makes me wonder, do the Americans, Canadians, and Brazilians need so much more help advancing Agile principles and practices than those other few people out there? Like, oh, a couple of billion in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East?

Perhaps they should add Americas to the name of the Agile Alliance. It would give them the much-coveted triple-A status!

p.s. It was suggested to me that travel distance plays a significant role in the selection process. In that case, maybe next time the Nomination Committee could find a geographically and culturally diverse group of people from Salt Lake City.

p.p.s. It’s not much better at the Lean Systems Society either.

p.p.p.s. I'm not complaining. I'm just taking some things not too seriously.