Agile Complexification Inverter

Recess Kit I've found yet another tool for improving teams.  This is a subscription service that monthly sends you and your team a fun and engaging way to reflect upon your work and discover areas to improve.  Take a look at their site and offering and give it a try like I did. I will update this post as I get to experience Recess Kit and their monthly box of yummy with my team. See Also: Retromat - A well planned Retro Retrospectives trump Planning Collaboration Tools List

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 ...

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...

Now that everyone knows about Bill Murray's movie Groundhog Day - I love February 2nd.  It's my favorite , most enjoyable, beloved, cherished, esteemed day of the year.  And I don't need to tell you again how many LIKES I give this redundant day... so on to the story. Bill & Groundhog Well this happened about ten years ago, and about 6 years ago, or maybe it was 4 years past, and seems like we did this about 24 months ago...  or it could be today! The Agile Transition Initiative at the company has come upon an inflection point (do ya' know what that is...  have you read Tipping Point ?).  I'm not exactly sure of it's very precise date... but  Feb. 2nd  would be the perfect timing.   The inflection has to do with which direction your Agile Transition Initiative takes from this point into the future.   Will it continue on it's stated mission to "transform" the organization?  Or will it stall out and revert slowly to the stat...

I'm extremely concerned today for my country and this planet.  It appears that history is repeating.     January 27th -- International Holocaust Remembrance Day . President  Trump bars refugees and citizens of Muslim  nations entry into the U.S.A. The New York Times By Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-N0827-318 / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de Four score and four years ago a dictator brought forth on the European continent an evolving plan to rule the world and subjugate the masses. Now we are engaged in a great resistance , testing whether our nation, or any nations conceived from the learning of our mothers and fathers and so dedicated to liberty, can long endure.  We are met on a great social square of technologic creation .  We have come to dedicate a portion of our wealth, wisdom, and life to those in history that have offered their lives and wisdom so that we may learn and prosper.  It is altogether fitting and proper that we should ...

A few months ago Michele of Sliger Consulting, Inc. asked about my first Agile Light Bulb moment, I've had a few of them but one that easily came to mind was this one with the Washington State Appellate Clerk court case management systems people back in 2005. In just two months our newly delivering Scrum team had put into production the "undoable" feature - BAM! - value delivered, trust confirmed, transformation successful. "My light bulb moment was during the product demo in the Sprint Review Meeting, when the state of Washington Appellate Clerk of Court told me he and the courts had been waiting 20 years for the feature that our team had just delivered. In just two months our newly delivering Scrum team had put into production the "undoable" feature - BAM! - value delivered, trust confirmed, transformation successful. He later sent me the requirement spec for the 20-year-old feature and it read just like our epic story and its children we discovered...

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...

"The 21st Century is when it all changes.  You've got to be ready."  -- Capt'n Jack Harkness What does a 21st Century company look like?  Here's some principles, some templates, some examples.  I believe the 21st century will see a movement toward companies being good social citizens (not money focused) these movements are already starting and we are only 14 years into this century.  Movements such as Conscious Capitalism, Sustainability, Triple Bottom Line, Lean/Agile, etc. I intend to work for one of these new breed of companies before the decade is done. A look at the No Manager movement at Treehouse  a learning company focused on learning... No Managers: Why We Removed Bosses at Treehouse How to set priorities, create budgets and do project management in a #NoManager company How salaries, career progression and reviews work in a #NoManager company How to communicate in a #NoManager company Kotter's 21st C Org Model Here's ...

What does it take to have a first rate customer experience when there are more customers than sales representatives?  Yes, this means there is going to be some form of wait, a queue.  Here is my comparison of experience at the Apple Store to that of the restaurant, CheeseCake Factory which we went to right afterwards. At the Apple store we were put on a wait list to see a representative (the greeter used a text description and my wife's name to put her on the list explaining that the next available person would find us, as we browsed).  I asked what the description was, and this is how my wife was described: "tall, with long hair, in a jean jacket with multi-colored scarf".  I suggested that they had the technology to just snap a picture and attached it.  She said there might be privacy concerns with that. We browsed and found the item we needed (a Mini Display Port - HDMI adapter).  About the time we had found it an Apple ...

The (USA) founding fathers declared that the pursuit of happiness was a right of the people.  So do you have a right to be happy at work?  No.  But you may pursue happiness there as well as anywhere.  And you may wonder if happiness at work will be more productive.  There is not yet enough study in this regard, and the studies of 19th C. work methods like the Hawthorne Studies might not be generalizable to the modern knowledge workers. The Surprising Myths About Happiness at Work  (Inc.com)  A body of research has found that a happy workforce doesn't necessarily equate to a productive one. The Research We’ve Ignored About Happiness at Work (HBR.com) The Science of Happiness  in depth report by Scientific American. The Harvard Life study of Happiness 75 years of it. Learn the latest psychology behind why it's hard to be happy, and take the quiz to learn how your contentment compares to that in other cultures. Scientific Ameri...

Here is an excellent question:  Would you make the trade?  Trade a happy marriage for career success. Two things happened to Sandra Bullock [in March 2010]. First, she won an Academy Award for best actress. Then came the news reports claiming that her husband is an adulterous jerk. So the philosophic question of the day is: Would you take that as a deal? Would you exchange a tremendous professional triumph for a severe personal blow? New York Times Op-Ed Columnist  David Brooks The Sandra Bullock Trade According to one study, joining a group that meets even just once a month produces the same happiness gain as doubling your income. According to another, being married produces a psychic gain equivalent to more than $100,000 a year.   One method of resolving this question is to understand motivation versus satisfiers as Herzberg described them in his Two Factor Theory .  Money is a satisfier, happiness is a motivator.

Happiness - the pursuit of happiness has equal weight to the rights of life and liberty Knowledge - the progenitor of many others e.g. law, justice, fairness, virtue; one must 1st have knowledge Imagination - the human animal is unique in its ability to imagine a future and then create it; imagination is required for compassion Pragmatism - a balancing power, a moderator that accounts for context and operates within knowledge bounds David's Personal Values were developed during a Organizational Leadership Master's program (2008). Publishing inspired by Luke Hohman of Innovation Games tweets on the companies values.  So why not publish my own value statements. Happiness . The founding father's inshrined this value within our Declaration of Independence.  Giving the pursuit of happiness equal weight to the rights of life and liberty (Declaration of Independence). Recognizing that while the framers of the republic considered life and liberty an unalienable right...