Agile Complexification Inverter

Chatting with an old colleague about the issues we both face with facilitating group learning environments in the post COVID era we decided to broaden the discussion to learn more from other colleagues in similar predicaments. Event RSVP   -  Friday 2020/Apr/17 @ 2pm CT via Zoom Tom Perry described the proposed event as: In the pandemic era is the agile age of face-to-face communication over? Are post-it notes a thing of the past? How will we re-tool for this brave new world? Or perhaps we should just wait it out and get back to our task boards? Join us for this lively Lean Coffee and tell us where you stand! We are thinking it will start as a Lean Coffee event. .. and what it leads to... we are prepared to be surprised! Join us! David's pre-event Notes & Thoughts Tom Wujec:  Got a wicked problem?  First, tell me how to make Toast.  TED Talk Discusses the need for collaboration in resolving "wicked problems" and the need for decom...

I've seen way too many teams working with just a big list of stories (they call it a backlog - but it's not).  Many of these organizations can find someone to play the role of the (proxy) Product Owner, and that unlucky bloke will do the best they can at prioritizing the list... but it's still not a Product Backlog. What is really amazing is when you hand that unlucky PO a list of SIZED stories and they can see the cost of those wee little things that seemed like a big deal because we've all been living with that crap since forever.  But now with the addition of a story size, those little nuisances become a top priority.  The team's value goes up in the eyes of the stakeholders and users because the apps are visibly being improved. "But sizing all those stories will take forever and a day." That is what my product owner said a few years ago at a client known for its storage products.  And being great organizers of storage, they put those skills to t...

Does your Agile community have a local hub, a place where you are 80% sure you will run into almost everyone in the local universe if you attend enough events, meet ups, and bar tabs? Mine does, ... let's test this out...  I will tell you my locations - and if you know much about it, let's see if you can ... guess, ... no, not guess,  predict, no... forecast - can you forecast the name of our local hub of Agile community? I'm in Grapevine, TX ... let me broaden that for you...   Dallas / Fort Worth . Now if you have any experience with the DFW area ... been to user groups in the area or perhaps software development oriented conferences.... you may know the place where... like Cheers - where everybody knows your name .  Who is it? Spoilers .... hi sweetie ... I will put the answer a bit further down the page. I just read this article in INC. - Here's the Secret Sauce for Turning Your Business Into a Beloved Community Fixture   By Leigh Buchanan ...

The Committed Sardine By Ian Jukes  A blue whale is the largest mammal on earth. The adult blue whale is the length of 2½ Greyhound buses and weighs more than a fully loaded 737. A little known fact is that a blue whale is so large that when it decides to turnaround, it can take 3 to 5 minutes to turn 180 degrees in the opposite direction. As a result, some people have drawn a strong parallel between blue whales and our school system. It just seems to take forever to turn them around. There as some people who just don’t believe the public school system can be turned around. But compare the way a blue whale turns around (slowly) with how a school of. . . Sardines – which is the same or even greater mass than a blue whale. . . A school of sardines can almost turn instantly around – how do they do it? The answer is simple. If you take a careful look at a school of sardines you will notice that although all the fish appear to be swimming in the same direction, at any one ti...

What must an Agile Transformation initiative have to be reasonably assured of success? We "change agents" or Agilist, or Organizational Development peeps, or Trouble Makers, or Agile Coaches have been at this for nearly two decades now... one would think we have some idea of the prerequisites for one of these Transformations to actually occur.  Wonder if eight Agile Coaches in a group could come up with ONE list of necessary and sufficient conditions - an interesting experiment.  Will that list contain an "engagement model"?  I venture to assert that it will not.  When asked very few Agile Coaches, thought leaders, and change agents mention much about employee engagement in their plans, models, and "frameworks".  Stop and ask yourselves ... why? Now good Organizational Development peeps know this is crucial, so I purposely omitted them from that list to query. One, central very important aspect of your Agile Transformation will be your Engagement mod...