Let me check: Last post is from August 2018. More than a year ago. Wow, that’s worse than I expected. And that post isn’t even there anymore. It moved over to retromat.org. I guess that settles it, this blog is dead 🙁 It’s not for a lack of topics. I’ve got about 10 drafts and… Continue reading Is this blog dead?
Are you aware of the stories you tell yourself? – Clean Feedback
Have you ever wondered how discussions escalate into shouting matches? Into a series of accusations and “I never said that!” “Yeah, you did!” Us humans have a tendency to think that the stories we tell ourselves in our heads are the actual factual truths. We are rational beings after all. Or are we? At least… Continue reading Are you aware of the stories you tell yourself? – Clean Feedback
Ad-Hoc Leadership
[This topic in German will be part of the upcoming 2nd sipgate book \o/]. We don’t have any middle management at sipgate. In our teams nobody is anybody else’s boss. Hearing this, visitors often assume we’re without leaders. In fact, the opposite is true. (Disclaimer: We do have a hierarchy. It only has 2 levels… Continue reading Ad-Hoc Leadership
Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches need an Emergency Fund
Scrum doesn’t fix an organization’s problems. It makes problems glaringly obvious so that they have a chance to fix them. Except that “glaringly obvious” is relative and sometimes you still need someone to point to the steaming pile o’ shit of a problem and say it out loud. Sometimes to someone that has the authority… Continue reading Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches need an Emergency Fund
Expect turnover – Agile transitions and changes in the work force
The other day, I’ve had 3 visitors from a large corporation. Since one of them was from HR we talked a lot about these topics and exchanged our hiring processes. One hidden criterium of theirs is that people must be “leidensfähig” to a certain extent. “Leidensfähig” is a beautiful German word that literally translates to… Continue reading Expect turnover – Agile transitions and changes in the work force
How we take decisions without managers and teamleads
We don’t have any middle management at sipgate. There is still a boss – bosses even, plural – and we look to them for strategy and long term planning, but they are not involved in day to day decisions. In our ~12 product teams no one is the boss of anyone else. This often prompts… Continue reading How we take decisions without managers and teamleads
Mistakes were made – 3 things not to do when going agile
There are many awesome practices we do at sipgate that I love to share with others. But we’ve also gotten some things very wrong, especially in the beginning in 2010. Let me spill the beans about 3 “do not recommend” things for a change 🙂 Double duty Scrum Masters All the first Scrum Masters were… Continue reading Mistakes were made – 3 things not to do when going agile
And what else?
Have you ever had to broach a difficult topic? You prepare, you make notes and you head for a 1:1. You start by talking about various smaller topics. You avoid the big fat whopper of a topic that you’ve been worrying about. Time is ticking by. You’re stalling. Then at the end of the –… Continue reading And what else?
Trump, sad, glad
There are a lot suggestions for Retromat that I can’t include. Most commonly I decline because an activity is a variation of one that’s already in – just like the following one. I thought it was a fun one (gotta keep a sense of humour in trying times …) and asked its creator Leszek Blacha… Continue reading Trump, sad, glad
So what? – Look for the real problem
Recently this statement raised my inner alarms: “We’ve got lots of problems! For example, nobody is pair programming.” Why would this rub me the wrong way? That nobody is pair programming? After all, I am indeed a huge fan of pairing up. I witness this practice’s many benefits every single day at work. But no,… Continue reading So what? – Look for the real problem