New(s)

Nick Oostvogel describes a creative activity to revive boring retrospectives and tell the shared story of the project (Gather Data). He calls it Mr. Squiggle.

Deborah Hartmann posted a description of an interesting “Gathering Data” activity. She calls it “Draw Me a Picture”. It sounds like it would be fun and potentially quite insightful. I’m looking forward to trying it out soon. Thanks for sharing it, Deb!

In a recent Sticky Minds column, Naomi Karten writes about PMI (Plus/Minus/Interesting), a technique for helping groups think together about many aspects of an issue.

I’m enjoying lots of tweets from the Lean/Kanban conference yesterday and today. It’s new and fun to “attend” a conference from a twitter-remove, and I still wish I could have attended in person. From all reports, it's a wonderful conference. Following the #lkconf thread, I’ve read much discussion about the new Lean Software & Systems Consortium (LSCC) and the organizers' intention to provide a certification. I’ve read that Lean is a “mindset” shift, not a methodology. [Hmmm, where have I heard that before?] "Unlike Agile" is the sotto voce subtext I surmise. In one tweet, Aaron Sanders...

Jack Milunsky wrote about the Top Ten Activities of a Product Owner. In reply, a number of folks commented that they didn’t like the idea of a Product Owner attending Sprint Retrospectives.