Partnership & Possibilities

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.

Deborah Hartmann posted a description of an interesting “Gathering Data” activity. She calls it “Draw Me a Picture”. It sounds like it would be fun and potentially quite insightful. I’m looking forward to trying it out soon. Thanks for sharing it, Deb!

In a recent Sticky Minds column, Naomi Karten writes about PMI (Plus/Minus/Interesting), a technique for helping groups think together about many aspects of an issue.

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 […]

Doc List writes about one of my favorite activities on his blog, Circle of Questions. I added a few comments there as well.
Esther and I describe the activity in Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great! We knew when we wrote the description that it would be a difficult activity for people to visualize in […]

As the chair of the Agile Alliance board over the last year, I’ve had lots of occasion to think about the effect of group values and principles on work. This pondering led me to invent a new activity for the the “Gather Data” phase of retrospectives.
Instructions for Values Activity:
Have plenty of […]

Over the years, I’ve noticed when I have a stronger response to particular phrases, sentences, doggerel, koans, and so forth. I get a thrill when someone can frame an idea simply and powerfully into a pithy statement. I collect those inspiring or clarifying quotes. I find them in many sources and sometimes in unlikely places, […]

Last month, Cory Foy sent me an email about a project retrospective that gave his team new insights and direction. He used the subject line, “They got it!” You can find the story of Cory’s recent retrospective experience, along with the thread of additional comments, on the XP list digest archive.
Here’s Cory’s story.
“Yesterday […]

Just because your team members feel shy about expressing (or receiving) appreciations in public, doesn’t mean you should stop doing them. Tami Flowers told me about her solution to making sure team members know what they’ve done that helps their co-workers and to encourage them to keep doing those things. She called it “Card Pass […]

I was at a party much too late last night (after the Agile2008 banquet), and it’s good I was there. Just as I was getting ready to leave, two people walked over to me and told me a story about their retrospectives.
One of them thanked me for the book and said that it had […]