Agile Complexification Inverter

Thinking on Jay's suggestion at his presentation  ( DFW Scrum , AgileFest! ) to create an Agile Playbook ; I'm wondering why scrum masters don't do this more often.  Well, guess what?  It's very good advice.  The authors Chip and Dan Heath give this very advice in their new book Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work . Why do teams continually over estimate the number of stories they can complete (potentially shippable tested working software) in a sprint?  There are many reasons.  But what play would you run next sprint if you were the team? If your team already has an agile mindset, then the natural play will be to reduce the amount of work they are bringing into the sprint.  The result of this play is to return the team to a consistant delivery of value.  Resulting in a predictable velocity.  This predictable velocity will be used for projecting the release scope or date. The problem for many teams is they do not posses an agile mindset.  There

I presented at the Results Oriented Web Conference in Dallas last week.  It was a very nice conference with lots of interesting people.  I had fun with my presentation,  The Marshmallow Design Challenge .  Turns out it was finger licking fun. Finger licking FUN! Marshmallow Design Challenge A winner - 26 inches tall. Wondering what this fun exercise teaches?  Watch the TED video to find out.   Spollier Alert - it's more fun to experience it and then watch the video. Next time I'm bring one of these: From Amazon See Also:   Agile Games Video of Marshmallow Challenge

One of the suggested improvements for our AgileFest! 2013 was a  "How-To" document for planning a conference.  So in the nature of an experiment in gathering some "validated learning" I'm going to post a rough draft of this future book here.  If it gets some interest, hits, comments, suggestions then I'll turn it into an eBook. Since this page will be an on going effort to create a draft, outline, sketch, etc. of the whole how-to guide, you may want to revisit this page in a week, and again in a month. First, creating a conference is an Agile project, so treat it like any other agile project.  Hold several visioning meetings and workshops.  Insure that you and the core group explore your vision of the conference, understand the explicit goals, and try to uncover the hidden agenda of the conference drivers.  Don't kid yourselves there are alterative motives - everyone has some, so get them out in the open. Define what a success will look like.  Defin

[Reprint of article in "The Current" a Sabre newsletter.] “Serious” Fun at AgileFest! More than 200 Sabre employees participated in the “sold out” AgileFest! event in Southlake on March 21. AgileFest! is a one-day conference covering all aspects of Agile software development and was created and sponsored by the Airline Solutions Development Agile Coaches. This year, eight industry experts from around the country hosted sessions to share their ideas about Agile – ranging from the theoretical to the practical. Luke Hohmann, founder and CEO of Innovation Games, kicked off the morning with the keynote speech in a packed cafeteria. Luke focused on how we can use serious games with our clients to have deeper conversations, unearth priorities, drive innovation and ultimately, deliver better results. The conference then split into sessions, to allow participants to choose the topic that interested them most.  Options included a session by Eric Nusbaum about creating p

Sabre's AgileFest! Lessons Learned Review A few people that attended  AgileFest! 2013  came together to solidify lessons learned at the event.  We created  mindmaps  of the sessions.  Shared key points the speakers shared in their presentation, and exercises.  Here's our mindmaps. It was April Fool's day - so we started with an example of how to draw a mindmap in real time.  Will played the Google Nose (beta) Video , and I mapped it as an example.  Darn - didn't get a picture of that map. The Mission for the Lessons Learned session was to create an artifact for sharing and reflecting. Mind Map example Here is the group still talking about the wonderful lessons from AgileFest! 2013. What's in Your Playbook -- Jay Packlick Distributed Teams Workshop -- Derek Wade Intro to LEGO Serious Play -- Steve Paro Navigating the Sea of Change -- Modesto Hernandez & Derek Lane Creating Positive Culture to Drive Innovation