Pssst! Hey, look over there. You know, just over there to the right. See the events list? The next "Secrets of Agile Teamwork: Beyond Technical Skills" public workshop will happen Dec. 5-7. We have a few spaces left for folks who want to get good at this "individuals and interactions" and self-organizing teams stuff. Click over there and get more information.
While you're there, notice that the "Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great!" first public workshop since we published the book is also coming up soon.
Wow! What a wealth of opportunity awaits...just over there to the right. :->
I mentioned a book in my last posting, Deep Survival by Lawrence Gonzales. I keep finding things in it that seem so relevant to teams and Agile. I wouldn't say that writing software constitutes a life or death activity for the development team, but Gonzales' two "Rules for Life" certainly apply: "Be here now" and "Everything takes eight times as long as it's supposed to" (which he also calls "the friction rule".)
"Be here now" Gonzales translates as "pay attention and keep an up-to-date mental model." In other words, accept and work according to what is, rather than following the plan,...
One of these years I'm going to attend the NASAGA conference. Until I get there, I read Willam Wake's blog to catch a bit of the flavor.
Yesterday he wrote about Bernie DeKoven's session:
"Bernie described Csikszentmihalyi's flow model; with challenge and ability on two axes - too challenging, we're anxious; too simple, it's boring; right on the edge - we may get flow. Flow is characterized by a sense of timelessness, focus, stillness, vividness, oneness.
Bernie has another model to go with it: "we" is on one axis, "me" on another. With way too much "we" or too much...
On the Gemba Panta Rei blog post, Jon Miller says, “20% celebration, 80% reflection. In order to do kaizen right you have to celebrate your victories over waste. You need to make it fun.”
In a Sept 26 blog post, Bob Sutton, co-author of Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths and Total Nonsense, refers to five points he’s learned about teaching people to innovate. Point number 1?
“1. Producing smart individuals is the first step; teaching them to collaborate is the second step.”
Just a small reminder to all the smart folks :-) about our “Secrets of Agile Teamwork: Beyond Technical Skills” public workshop coming up in December. (Check out the sidebar under Events.) It’s where Esther Derby and I share our focus on collaboration and the skills Agile teams need to inspect, adapt,...