Standups offer the most benefit when they are kept brief (30-60 seconds per team member) and to the point––sustaining communication about the state of the work. It helps when team members know the questions ahead of time and come prepared to answer them succinctly.
Help to define the World Retrospective Day you want to attend. Take the WRD survey. #retrospectives
Agile Fluency™ Game available to take home to your own teams. Attend the workshop April 3 in Portland.
For OrgDesign, OrgDev, & Agile Center of Excellence practitioners who want to gain more depth in organization design, the Organization Design Forum conference is in Santa Fe, New Mexico, this year, April 24-27.
In December, Debbie Madden, from Stride Tech, interviewed Diana Larsen and Ainsley Nies, the co-authors of Liftoff: Start and Sustain Successful Agile Teams. Debbie called Liftoff (the first edition), “one of my all-time favorite reads.”
Calling all testers and QA focused team members! Have you wondered about how your work and perspectives fit in James Shore and Diana Larsen’s Agile Fluency Model?
Recently, Dave Rael, interviewed me for the Developer on Fire podcast. Our conversation ranged far and wide, but never strayed far from the central theme of learning and life. Hope you enjoy listening!
At Agile2016, Ainsley Nies and I met with Dave Prior and the LeadingAgile media crew to discuss the newly published second edition of our book, Liftoff: Start and Sustain Successful Agile Teams.
Recently, I read an interview between Bernie DeKoven (who has aliases as varied as: Major Fun, The Shaman of Play, and more) and Barry Joseph (Associate Director For Digital Learning, Youth Initiatives, at the American Museum of Natural History). While the whole interview is delightful, and I recommend it, I was particularly struck by the game called “The Out Blessing Game” or “Endless Blessings.”
If you’re in a particular Agile crowd, “certification” is a dirty word. On the other hand, the Human Resources/People department in your organization looks for certifications on your resume, asks about them in job interviews, and you may get promoted or better compensated party through the accumulation of certifications. Getting “certified” as a user of a tool, or as a signal of skill acquisition may give you a personal boost as well. So, what’s with the dirty word? What’s not to like about certification?
There’s this thing…as Jim (James Shore) and I have mentioned before, in the early days of Agile we would visit teams and hear, “This is the best job I’ve ever had. I love this work.” People who were doing Agile (usually Extreme Programming) were excited about it, they shared it with others, who did it, and got excited. But at some point, someone shared it with someone who got excited about it and shared it but didn’t DO it, so their sharing lost a bit of fidelity, like a copy of a copy.
This an update for the Agile Fluency Project on Kickstarter. I’m very excited about the project and its implications for team learning and the world of Agility. Since it’s the culmination of our thinking about fluent proficiency and has implications for the Agile community, I’m including it on the FutureWorks blog.
Recently James Shore posted his “Lament of the Agile Practitioner” to provide history and background, from his perspective, for how we arrived at the Agile Fluency model. And, further, for moving into the next phase that we’re calling the Agile Fluency Project.
Steve Berczuk writes a short and succinct article on TechWell describing, “Why Agile Retrospectives are Important in Software Development.” I’m looking forward to reading the comments and responses he gets. More and more I think of Agile Retrospectives as an opportunity for the kind of learning that leads to real adaptive action in complex situations.
Coincidence is a funny thing. Have you noticed that some topic/issue/concept/activity will come up in your life, then for a while you bump into it everywhere? Happens to me all the time. Lately, I’ve been bumping into new ideas for check-in activities, and reminders about familiar ones.