Partnership & Possibilities

For some time, I’ve been ruminating on how to answer folks who query, “How do I convince people that Agile is better?”

High Performance
supports and reinforces
Creativity/Innovation
supports and reinforces
Constructive Conflict
supports and reinforces
Commitment
supports and reinforces
Trust
Derek Neighbor’s post about Patrick Leoncioni’s team dysfunctions model prompted me to share a model I developed many years ago for work with self-directing teams. Esther Derby and I use the model as part of our “Secrets of Agile Teamwork: Beyond Technical Skills” […]

Values vs. Principles vs. Practices in the Iron Cage of Death*: Three Go in, One Comes Out
Discussions about where to start with Agile approaches tend to devolve into “you got your practices in my values”…”no, you got your values in my practices.” Trying to bridge the gap, some folks say, “look at the principles for […]

Tom Cagley posted an interview with me at his Software Process and Measurement-Cast blog. Tom begins the podcast with part 7 in his series of audio essays, “Traceability, A Radical Approach Based on User Involvement.” The interview with me starts about 25% of the way in. We discuss Agile, Agile Adoptions, Retrospectives and upcoming events.

Nick Oostvogel describes a creative activity to revive boring retrospectives and tell the shared story of the project (Gather Data). He calls it Mr. Squiggle.

I’m enjoying lots of tweets from the Lean/Kanban conference yesterday and today. It’s new and fun to “attend” a conference from a twitter-remove, and I still wish I could have attended in person. From all reports, it’s a wonderful conference.
Following the #lkconf thread, I’ve read much discussion about the new Lean Software & Systems […]

As of this morning (Feb 23, 2009), hundreds of potential presenters have submitted 922 possible sessions for Agile 2009. Each of those 922 sessions needs feedback to become the best it can be. Think of it as a massive multi-player perfection game (MMPPG). All of us need your help to make sure our sessions give […]

Jack Milunsky wrote about the Top Ten Activities of a Product Owner. His post included number 6:
6. Participates in the daily Scrums, Sprint Planning Meetings and Sprint Reviews and Retrospectives. There’s always a lot going on and always an excuse to miss the meetings. But each of these Scrum ceremonies is another chance for […]

We had a great time at Agile Open Northwest last week. About a hundred people gathered together to consider our theme “Agile for Real” and discuss 60+ related topics. At the end of the event, our ROTI score (return-on-time-invested) was 3+ on a scale of 0 to 4. The volunteers and I took lots of […]

Jim Shore posted on his blog about two courses, The Art of Agile Planning and The Art of Agile Development, that he and I will take to Europe this spring. He’s put in photos and and comments from evaluations when we held the class last October. Participants said nice things, like “The facilitators were excellent! […]