Agile Complexification Inverter

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...

Presented in OpenSpace at Agile Games 2018 for FUN and Feedback. This game design is not focused where you might assume - at training people how to "do" Scrum.  The inventors of the game, Tim Snyder and Derek Lane, are focused upon the experience of Scrumming, the group dynamics of being a scrum team.  The game has been designed, and is being refined with the objective of allowing groups of people that know how to do Scrum, to experience some of the Ah-HA moments that mature Scrum team learn after many, laborious retrospectives.  By compressing the group dynamic into a game with the glorious "happen-chance" cards causing random, yet all too common software development events, playing this game for a few hours can give you the deep insights that may only be achieved after months or years of real-life time developing products.  Learning doesn't require time... * Al Shalloway. One of the core questions Tim & Derek have been pondering:  How does one gai...

You have not empowered a person by telling them "you are empowered."  This is a classic mistake in communication.  When one does this, they misinterpret their message, "I'm empowering you..." with the action that a verb such as empowerment requires to happen.  This person is taking a short cut, by giving the platitude of empowerment in place of any action that would be view by the other as empowering. "When told that they are empowered to do something; this message is actually interrupted to dis-empower the persons agency." How does this misinterpretation occur?  Why do we humans mess up this simple act of communication? Let's look at an example: For a few months I had been working with a new team of software developers at a large organization.  Like many organizations they had already done the agile/scrum thing and it didn't work for them.  Recently the leadership had built a satellite office and started from a very small pool of tenur...

An Exercise in Estimation:  How many times can you fold a piece of paper in half & half again... I do this exercise when beginning scrum teams start story estimation or task estimation.  While this exercise has a unique twist that is very different than task estimation or story estimation - very few people foresee this aspect of the exercise, so it adds to the ah-ha moment. Start by giving everyone a sheet of typical paper (8.5 x 11 in the USA - although the size just doesn't matter).  Then tell them the exercise but ask that no one do any thing yet.  First we will estimate.  The task is to estimate how many times you could fold the paper in half and then again in half and repeat... without doing it what's your estimate of the number of folds? Ask people to call out their estimate, write then on a board in no particular order or fashion. Typical groups come up with estimate in the range of 5 - 20 folds. If you want to do math... calcula...

Went to Agile Warrior Series   (Jan31, 2018) to visit with about 200+ Warriors in Dallas, TX.  And as the lunch time entertainment I brought some tangram puzzles and we practiced our collaboration skills while eating.  It was a great conference, with Uncle Bob Martin, Clean Coder Blog  delivering a wonderful morning address. And Luke Hohmann , of Conteneo , &  Innovation Games , describing his view of the future of the Agile movement into "frameworks" of collaboration. Also there I saw a MVP of the Scrum Game by Tim & Derek.  This is a great example of the creativity in the Agile community and the deep desire to share knowledge and experiences.    Presented at   AgileGames2016  conference in Boston, April 28, 29th. But  not   Agile2016  - so you can only see it in the  Microsoft NERD center MIT.         I presented this workshop at Agile Camp - Dallas , Oct ...

Here's a overview of a Scrum Immersion workshop done at GameStop this month. A case study example. Normally these workshops start with the leadership (the stakeholders or shareholders) which have a vision for a product (or project). This time we skipped this activity. The purpose of the Workshop is to ensure alignment between the leadership team and the Agile Coaches with regards to the upcoming scrum workshop for the team(s). Set expectations for a transition from current (ad-hoc) practices to Scrum. Explain and educate on the role of the Product Owner. Expected Outcomes: Create a transition plan/schedule Set realistic expectations for transition and next release Overview of Scrum & leadership in an Agile environment Identify a Scrum Product Owner – review role expectations Alignment on Project/Program purpose or vision Release goal (within context of Project/Program & Scrum transition) Once we have alignment on the Product Owner role and the Project V...

Yesterday (July, 2015) we did a lunch-n-learn at GameStop HQ on pair programming.  I think it was a great success, largely because we serve food, and I've been told that everything goes better when people are sharing a meal together (and even better with adult beverages). Are you interested in Pair Programming?  I'll confess, the term is a bit misleading.  I was asked by multiple people if the topic was just for programmers.  No - no it's not just a programming technique. It is also for any kind of knowledge work.  Such as testing, or analysis, or writing stories, or ... yes coding, scripting, excel spreadsheets, etc. The Agenda: Pair Programming Simulation Start with a warm up exercise (totally non-related to the topic).  This allows all the late arrivals to find a seat and not miss out on the real start of the session.  I've found this technique (soft start) to be a required technique for companies that have not adopted basic meeting protoc...