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Showing posts from February, 2017

Don't hate the Joke - learn to tell it Well

Countless times I've heard people say they hate the Scrum joke about the pig and chicken .  Some people just can't tell a joke. Jeff Sutherland points the fickle finger of fate at Ken Schwaber for starting this fable : I've hated having to tell teams this joke... the lore of the Scrum pig and chicken is so pervasive that before long someone is going to call someone else a chicken (or a pig)... and then you have to tell the joke to help that person retain face... it can be quite uncomfortable for me. I think my disdain for this joke has to do with two of American's least favorite farm animals being featured.  We call people chickens to say they have little courage.  We call people a pig to insult their appearance (clothing choices, weight, manners).  Had the joke featured a cat and dog... it would be so different - wouldn't it? Now Jake it appears has taken this joke metaphor to a new level...  good job Jake! See Also: It is 2018 and this joke is st

Big Data for Little Problems

Big Data for Little Problems -OR- What happens when the customer has better data about the service than the provider and has better networking, better press coverage, better clout, better market reach and reputations? (Feb 23) My good looking wife just spent 2 hours trying to straighten out Frontier's billing machine... it's not easy.  The amazing thing I observed for my recliner while sipping an adult beverage was her influencing techniques.  Now another amazingly disconsernation ( not a word ) is that Frontier has some awesome support people.  But oh-my-god do they have a tough job.  It's the system that has failed.  And they have to figure out how to make some legacy piece-of-crap work. But it's not going to lead to happy satisfied customers (testify). Her father, Jim, moved into the home with us in December, he loves Western movies, and is an encyclopedia of knowledge better than IMDB.  So we called up Frontier (our FiOS provider for 6 years) and added cab

Dialogue on Distributed Agile Teams

Here's an interesting article by Patrick Lencioni: Virtual Teams are Worse than I Thought Dialogue on Distributed Agile Teams Pondering communication styles, our human ability to truely understand one another, and the tools we use that constrain these attempts.  Peter Senge evolved the concept of dialogue for learning organizations. Extending quantum physicist, David Bohm's ideas on three basic conditions necessary for dialogue: 1) All participants must "suspend" their assumptions, literally to hold them "as if suspended before us"; 2) All participants must regard one another as colleagues; 3) There must be a 'facilitator' who 'holds the context' of dialogue. DAVIDAKOONTZ · 11 MONTHS AGO Dialogue, as it turns out, is a very old idea revered by the ancient Greeks and practiced by many "primitive" societies such as the American Indians. Yet, it is all but lost to the modern world. All