Agile Complexification Inverter

I'm from the Carolina's where legend has it that our family commonly just hunkered down in the home on the coast and waterways than to head for inland shelter. Now that's from the old school days of barely improved (read paved) roads. They counted a storms severity by how high on the back porch steps (about 15 - top to ground) the water reached.  I don't recommend this action in todays world of long range forecast and transportation options. I do recommend a drink or two in a hotel bar, far far away. This is the week that Harvey came ashore in Texas.  I live on a hill in the little old town of Grapevine outside Dallas and Fort Worth.  And thank you all for letting me know that a storm is coming... I didn't get out and walk Malibu before the rain hit, so I grabbed a hat and we went anyway.  Much nicer walk with the drizzle, I'd say. I'll raise a glass to you - if you were not smart enough to do the responsible thing, at the last responsible moment. ...

Pondering some messages... both the implied, the implicit, the unintended, and the overt. What are the messages when a manager calls a meeting and schedules it for an hour... then repeatedly states that they have nothing really to talk about, and after the group does the appropriate amount of beating the horse, the manager states "I will give you back 20 minutes."? One overt message is the meeting is over you are dismissed and you have 20 minutes returned to you to get real work accomplished. Another implied message is that your time is not your own and now the manager is returning their time, time they require of you to attend their meeting, is now returned to you so do with it as they have done - spend it well.  [ Because anyone delusional enough to think that time belongs to someone, is just off enough to believe that one can spend time. ] The unintended message - the part that rubs me raw; like when manager's refer to people as resources (typically implying...

I've made a transition from gray tones to living color - much like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz (the first color motion picture). Dog Groomer's have a natural capability to accept a being for what they are and how they present, as well as what their humans may desire.  This is a wonderful ability - we should learn from them.  I had a great conversation with my local groomers at the Blissful Bark Dog Wash , about peoples expectations and inherent biases based upon look, job title, etc.  This capability of acceptance and a deeper level of judgement came to me as they asked about my hair color choices.  They told of the judgements that a dog groomer receives - one even equated the title's status to that of a stripper (good company if you can have friends in low places). From this and other conversation I've had as a result of a choice to live with more color, I've made some interesting observation about you people. You humans are preoccupied by noticing inconse...

A rant on Metric's I wish I had written...  so I'm going to just include it by reference and call it my own. One thousand Words on Metrics Here's a quote to get you even more interested in clicking that link... Conclusion In short, I find most grasping for metrics to be a reliable metric for lack of understanding of human behavior, not only that of those who would be measured but that of those who would do the measuring. If a higher-up wants a metric about a team, say, as an input to their judgment about whether the team’s work is satisfactory, oughtn’t there be some other way to tell? And if I choose nearly any metric on someone else’s behalf, doesn’t that reveal my assumption that I know something about how they do their good work better than they do? Or worse, that I prefer they nail the metric than do something as loose and floppy as “good work”?  Well - will you look at that!  Yareev's even willing to apply his own metric to his work.  What a ...

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...

Mayhem Just last month I receive a congratulatory letter from REI MasterCard - 10 years of a mutually beneficial business relationship ....  until .... chaos ensued (thank you Mr. Mayhem).  So I accepted the opportunity to communicate with my business lender on an incident that made me very dissatisfied with their policies. Subject: Re: Congratulations on your REI World MasterCard anniversary!  Thank you Robert,      Just to let you know - I’m sure this will interest you - I will shortly be canceling my 10 year relationship with REI MasterCard, because of the quality of service you have just required me to deal with. I’ve got a great payment history and have been using our card to pay bills on line and automagically for years. Recently through my oversight, I forgot to pay my bill on time. So in response to this great customer who always pays his bills and once in 10 years paid late, your organization saw fit to block all payments, causing fu...

Retrospective at GameStop based upon Corinna Baldaug's Retromat. Retro process phases: Set the Stage, Gather Data, Generate Insight, Decide what to Do, Close the Retro REF: http://plans-for-retrospectives.com Set the Stage: give time to “arrive” and get into the right mood and focus upon the goal Gather Data: reflect upon what happened, create a shared pool of information Generate Insight: why did things happen this way? What patterns can we observe? Decide What to Do: Pick what to work on, plan concrete steps of action Close the Retro: reflect upon the retrospective, how could it improve? What shall we follow-up upon? Activities for this Retro: Quick Questions  In ONE word – what do you need from the retro? In ONE word – what is on your mind? In ONE word – what is you current mindset in regards to your project: are you a: Explorer – eager to dive in and research what worked Shopper – Positive, happy if 1 good thing come out Vacationer – Reluc...

Do you believe that what you measure you will get?  If so you want to start to measure team happiness.  So what techniques do we have to measure something so ephemeral? This TED Talk by Dominic Price lays out a simple and insightful guide to assess your happiness. The health care industry has studied measuring pain and have very good data on their ability to measure and administer pain drugs upon a subjective self report.  Maybe we could do the same in knowledge worker teams and work groups. Team Happiness Net Promoter Score sheet Here's a riff upon the classic Net Promoter Score for measuring team happiness.   "How likely is it that you would recommend our team to a trusted friend that is looking for a job?" To calculate the NPS - the continuum is divided into 3 groups; the detractors (1 - 6), the passive (7 & 8), the promoters (9 & 10).  The passive are ignored - they do not promote your objective.  The NET promoter score is the pe...

A technique for increasing performance by using a simple (perhaps magical) recipe when giving feedback. Read the study, understand the method of investigation; ask yourself if this is similar to your work environment - just enough such that the technique might be generalized across the two different situations. Breaking the Cycle of Mistrust: Wise Interventions to Provide Critical Feedback Across the Racial Divide  by David S. Yeager, et. al. If you just want to cheat, read the "cliff-notes" version (it's what I did) - but I promise myself to go back after writing this post and read the study. Try This One Phrase to Make Feedback 40% More Effective  by Jeff Haden - INC. Jeff is quoting   Daniel Coyle , author of  The Talent Code  which references the study.  Now I'm referring to Jeff -> Daniel -> Yeager et al.  And you are at the front of the line of referral - maybe you should jump the line - read the original work. But y...

We were invited to Thomson Reuters for our AgileFest! 2013 planning retrospective.  Derek and Modesto did a wonderful job designing a metaphor board.  We had fun filling it in with concepts, ideas, feelings and reflecting on 3 months of work.  That work resulted in a great day of learning. Get Silverlight and view a PhotoSynth of the Retro board and space. Derek raises an eye at that comment Modesto can see with eyes shut AgileFest Lessons Learned Review

Here's my online collaboration tools list.  It is an ever growing and contracting list.  I'd love to collaborate with you on this list - leave a comment with your best tool. Tools for collaboration on documents: http://drive.google.com   Google Docs http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki http://sync.in/ http://icloud.com - Apple's Pages, Numbers, KeyNote etc. http://www.zoho.com/ http://codebunk.com   collaborative platform for online technology interviews (code & run) http://usecandor.com/  - a better form of brainstorming (removes first in list bias) http://jsfiddle.net  a JavaScript development (IDE) collaboration tool on the web https://www.hylighter.com/ enables intensive collaboration through a unique color-coding mechanism and linking capability. https://cocalc.com Collaborative Calculation -  a  sophisticated web service  for online computation;  batteries included. http://www.work-visual.com This App exist...

Agile Palooza - at Sabre HQ - March 8th. The Agile Coaches table at Sabre's Agile Palooza had a guest, Lance Dacy, Founder of DFW Scrum . The person responsible for the "Agile Palooza plan coming together" Charlsi, with the leadership, Chuck & Lisa. Overall feedback was very positive. Some of the feedback on the sessions - I think we call that a success!

Want to retain something you just heard - draw a doodle. Want to engage learners - get them active. Want to teach someone a skill - have them teach you. Want to change some behavior - make it fun. In all of these techniques the trick is to invert the traditional training paradigm.  The classroom was created to process children with unique talents into factory workers willing to follow directions of an authority. Doodlers, unite! Sunni Brown on TED.com Read Sharon Bowman's ' Training from the BACK of the Room! '. Don't think you can doodle - come out of the closet with these techniques from Dan Roam ' Back of the Napkin '. Maybe it all comes down to improvement, and the need to iterate - to recreate to improve . One can not doodle on the power-point slide one the screen. One can not quickly annotate a burndown chart in that spreadsheet (a learning moment). One can not give the marker to a participant and have them draw a diagr...