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.
Jim Shore posted on his blog about two courses, The Art of Agile Planning and The Art of Agile Development, that he and I will take to Europe this spring. He's put in photos and and comments from evaluations when we held the class last October. Participants said nice things, like "The facilitators were excellent! I really enjoyed the 'jump in and swim' approach to applying what we learned as we went."
Since Jim did such a great job, I'm not going to try to duplicate it. I'll just send you here to read about it.
In this video from the ÖreDev conference, I present some ideas about the changing role of managers in organizations that have adopted Agile methods.
I've been on the road a lot and away from my blog lately. I'm glad to be back and happy to announce the latest iteration of:
Secrets of Agile Teamwork: Beyond Technical Skills
February 24-26, 2009, at the Kennedy School in Portland, Oregon.
Invest in three days with Esther Derby and me learning the interpersonal tools and skills that support highly collaborative software development.
Improve team communications, learn how to give and get feedback in a way that builds strong working relationships, identify and navigate conflict, and help grow your team.
We'll be back at the Kennedy School in Portland, Oregon...complete...
Over the years, I’ve noticed when I have a stronger response to particular phrases, sentences, doggerel, koans, and so forth. I get a thrill when someone can frame an idea simply and powerfully into a pithy statement. I collect those inspiring or clarifying quotes. I find them in many sources and sometimes in unlikely places, though usually not from compilations.
Today I’ve decided to share five of my favorites:
An Ethiopian proverb:
When spiderwebs unite, they can tie up a lion.
Rudyard Kipling, poet:
All good people agree,
And all good people say,
All nice people, like Us, are...
Last month, Cory Foy sent me an email about a project retrospective that gave his team new insights and direction. He used the subject line, “They got it!” You can find the story of Cory’s recent retrospective experience, along with the thread of additional comments, on the XP list digest archive.
Kevin Kelly, author of Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, & the Economic World, writes about scenius (a.k.a., "the communal form of genius").
Which made me think about skunk works in general and, inevitably, Agile teams and their open workspaces.
An Agile coach contacted me to discuss an issue on his team. One of the critical contractors on his team had left the project for another assignment, unexpectedly, on two week’s notice, just before an important release. Oh my! The coach described his initial shock and dismay. He wanted ideas for how to handle the unexpected loss of a team member with his team. Together we developed a list of five actions that would help deal with this impediment.
1. The Agile coach could contact the contracting agency to give them feedback on the impact on the project of...
Does your team have Working Agreements? (WA’s)
Effective teams think about how they will accomplish their work together before they begin working. They describe the levels of performance and professionalism they want to achieve, then record them in Working Agreements.
WA’s cover such areas as:
What does “done” mean for us?
What will meetings look like for us? (e.g., type, number, frequency, duration, attendance expectations, decision-making, etc.)
What Agile engineering and project management practices and methods will we incorporate?
What interactions, teamwork and collaboration will best support our work? (e.g., communication flows, conflict, feedback, continuous learning, social time, fun!)
Effective teams regularly take stock...
I’m sitting at the Portland Bar Camp, listening to my friend Tony Deis from TrackersNW. He’s tell me about how he ran a outdoor camp for high school students using Agile practices. Tony said, “We got to the campgrounds on Sunday after a long drive. It was raining. We had an Umiak to build and a rotation schedule of activities for the campers. Bn Monday, I felt miserable. We were missing the kids and staff expectations for the kind of freedom and accountability we want for our camps.”
Naresh Jain pledged to connect the dots between Agile practitioners around the world. Today he wrote a post about it. He's taken another step (in addition to convening the SDT conference and conferences around India) by creating a group on LinkedIn. Dear Reader, if you're an Agile Alliance member who would like to connect with other practitioners, and you have a profile on LinkedIn, you can join the group.
Bas Vodde posted an article on action planning in retrospectives . It’s a tough issue, and I agree with Bas’ take on it. Team members need to see clearly how the actions they choose will affect their work long term. Bas suggests each proposal for action links each near term action with the long term goal it will help the team achieve.
This
story on yahoo shows one reason I live in Portland: nicer drivers. :-)
Like many humans, I have a few topics about which I can become passionate. My hot topics include:
- Healthy, productive teams and their leaders.
- Open Space, Retrospectives, and other highly collaborative processes that help people think and build community together.
- Women as leaders.
- and some others
This month something came along that pokes at several of my hot topics at once. Business Week wrote an article on the growing popularity of "unconferences". At first, I was delighted to see collaborative processes getting more visibility in the press.
Then I read further and found a broader, underlying story. Chris Messina wrote