Agile Complexification Inverter

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...

Bees do a dance that bee keeper refer to as the Waggle dance... It is with great pleasure that you can watch and using the power of science have this dance translated into English. Bee Dance (Waggle Dance) by  Bienentanz GmbH What does this have to do with Scrum?  The power of a metaphor was well known to the creators of Extreme Programming (XP) - so much so, that it is one of only 12 "rules" that those really smart people decided to enshrine into their process.  It is also the most likely rule to not be mentioned in any survey of software development practices.  Unless you happen to be chatting with Eric Evens, and he may agree that he's captured the underlying principle in Domain-Driven Design, the Ubiquitous Language pattern . Have you ever observed a great scrum team using a classic tool of many innovative company environments - the physical visual management board (Scrum Task Board). The generic behavior for a small group of people (say around 7 p...

IDEO-University 'From Ideas to Action' Lesson 1. Join the dialogue on G+ Agile+ group . Dialogue on Collaboration  on Facebook (PDF) Collaboration starts with who we are and our story - not the technology or the data "The Future of Work Is Social Collaboration from Inside Out, where people connect around the why of work from who they really are as individuals in community. They collaborate in generative conversations and co-create what’s next, i.e. their unique Contribution of value to society – what we might call Social Good. They collaborate by taking the time to appreciate and align each other’s unique, hard wired, natural strengths, creating new levels of authentic and trusting relationships to take the Social Journey." Jeremy Scrivens  Director at The Emotional Economy at Work What does dialogue mean... what does it contribute to collaboration? Here's what the inventor of the internet Al Gore had to say about this: Audie Cornish speaks with form...

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...

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...

This tech is so exciting it scares me... tapping into human emotions.... the feedback loops that could be developed.... the opportunities to learn....  endless! Affectiva , a startup, is announcing the launch of its mobile software development kit (SDK) for tracking emotions. "The company says it can analyze a user’s emotions by tracking their facial expressions, and it uses that technology to measure the effectiveness of ads. With the new SDK, mobile developers will be able to add these capabilities to their apps as well." -- TechCrunch Anthony Ha "This means Affectiva’s technology could be embedded into consumer products — a spokesperson suggested via email that the possibilities include healthcare, education, and gaming apps."  -- TechCrunch Anthony Ha See  -- TechCrunch Anthony Ha article How could we use this tech (SDK) to nurture better teams?  Reinforce positive sharing and interaction behaviors for a group of people (geeks) that love to intera...

What are the affordances that are missing from the virtual task board?  There are quite a few. The perceptual psychologist J. J. Gibson coined the term in the late 1970s to mean the relationships that an actor (person) can have with objects in the world.  Then Donald Norman popularized the term in his book " The Design of Everyday Things ." You may think these affordances don't matter much.  But after you have them (via using a physical task board) you will find they are sorely missing. I can: Hold a task and show it to you. Now you know exactly what I'm talking about. Many virtual task board have no way of denoting a selected task.  Pick a different task and hold it. Now I know you are talking about that one, but I'm still referring to the one I hold.  Move a task. The motion is the affordance. Not the before and after location of a task - don't confuse position with motion.  Pass a sticky note to you, now you have it and this denotes res...

Just imagine proper form and you can increase strength in your pinky finger 35%. Imagine Increased Muscle Strength!-Experiment In a fascinating experiment, researchers at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation discovered that a muscle can be strengthened just by thinking about exercising it. For 12 weeks (five minutes a day, five days per week) a team of 30 healthy young adults imagined either using the muscle of their little finger or of their elbow flexor. Dr. Vinoth Ranganathan  and his team asked the participants to think as strongly as they could about moving the muscle being tested, to make the imaginary movement as real as they could. Compared to a control group – that did no imaginary exercises and showed no strength gains – the little-finger group increased their pinky muscle strength by 35%. The other group increased elbow strength by 13.4%. What's more, brain scans taken after the study showed greater and more focused activity in the prefrontal cortex than before. The rese...

Agile Games 2012 conference in Cambridge. " The Marshmallow Challenge is a remarkably fun and instructive design exercise that encourages teams to experience simple but profound lessons in collaboration, innovation and creativity." David presenting the challenge at Agile Games conference. Watch Tom Wujec's TED.com talk about his many experiences with this exercise.   Agile Games 2013 ! See Also:   Results Oriented Web conference Marshmallow Challenge workshop Don't mistake the Marshmallow Challenge with the Marshmallow Test by Walter Mischel.  One is a design challenge - the other is an experiment designed to see if personality traits such as self-control are malleable. Cephalopods Have Passed a Cognitive Test Designed For Human Children Cuttlefish were given a new version of the marshmallow test, and the results may demonstrate that there's more going on in their strange little brains than we knew.

I had a wonderful Christmas.  My nephews got me addicted to the Dragonvale game.  A land where one breeds dragons of various types - did you know, dragons are very hybidizable (I'm sure that's not a standard dictionary word). Dragonvale - iOS simulation game. To build up to a high enough level to purchase a breeding cave one must build treat farms, dragon habits and grow crops.  For this there is an internal game monetary market.  The prices of these goods are set by the game designers (I'm assuming it is not a true " free market ").  The game does not have a sane and balanced market pricing system. The objective of any game designer is to get you to play and have fun.  That is objective number one - design in the fun-factor (see MIT Technology Review 's Exploiting the Fun Factor ).  A secondary objective is to build a game where people will spend money - real cash in exchange for virtual goods.  This is one technique f...

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...