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”
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”
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, …
At the end of 2011 I wrote about what makes an agile mindset (in my opinion) and even made a fancy infographic about it: It concentrates on how people think about their colleagues as humans vs. cogs; whether they have a growth vs. a fixed mindset; iterative product development vs. extensive planning and more. These …
Continue reading “What is an Agile Mindset? Six years later”
Recently I’ve been presenting our Work Hacks at a couple of places and talking about pairing up as part of it. Not only do we pair program but we also mob program and pair up across roles: Dev and UX designer, PO and customer support, UX and PO, dev and customer support, dev and … …
Continue reading “How did you introduce pair programming at sipgate?”
Last week I attended a very enlightening workshop hosted by solution-focused coaches Veronika Kotrba and Ralph Miarka. Early in the workshop Veronika introduced a superb metaphor for giving advice that nobody asked for. I’ve written about unsolicited advice before, but the coconut-model does a much better and funnier job. Let’s start with one of the …
After about 2 or 3 years into my agile journey there was a time when I would listen to a talk or read a book and be like “Yeah, it’s exactly like that! I wish someone had told me 3 years ago! It would have helped me a lot! Why didn’t anyone tell me that?” …
[This post has been a draft since 2013. Not sure why, it was 95% finished…] At OOP one presenter asked the audience and thus me: “How did you successfully resolve the biggest challenge in your professional life?” My answer: “Talking”. Every one else’s? “Conversation”, “Communication”, “Face-to-face-meeting”. In many ways I’m paid for having conversations: As …
When I give my talk “Thank God it’s Open Friday!” people always tell me how much they liked hearing about our failures on the way to a solution that works well for us. It’s surprising to me, because our previous trials with a slack day are only loosely related to the very successful end result. …
Continue reading “Talking about failure – Long Way to Lean #1”
[This post is part of a series about Menlo Innovations, the company described in “Joy, Inc.“] There is an interesting passage in “Joy, Inc.” about change saying that when you take away one reward system you have to replace it with a different reward system – one that encourages the behaviours you’d like to see …
Continue reading “Replace Rewards or What are you celebrating? – Menlo #5”
