I’ve just spend a lovely weekend at FrOSCon, the “Free and Open Source Software Conference”, in Bonn. One of the talks I attended was “Projektstatus: Nachrichten vom anderen Stern” (“Project status: Messages from a different star”) about communication. I wish I could have listened to this, when I started out as a Scrum master. It …
Continue reading “Four-sides model & the relationship layer”
Following up on my ode to whiteboards, here’s some very practical advice for people researching what flipchart to buy: Don’t buy one of the 3-legged ones like shown in the image on the left. Maybe it’s just me, but I keep falling over the front legs. Especially when I’m writing while still trying to keep …
Two months ago I started a new job. I left nice old colleagues and got nice new colleagues. The companies are the same size. No big diff there. But there is a very visible difference in the respective offices: Old workplace: 200 square metres of whiteboard surface + glass walls – all of them covered …
While researching for my brief history of Agile & Lean, I read the following in the Wikipedia entry for “User Story”: User stories generally follow the following template: “As a <role>, I want <goal/desire> so that <benefit>” but the shorter version is commonly used as well: “As a <role>, I want <goal/desire>” I was truly …
Continue reading ““so that” is the most important part of a user story”
In “My Favourite Usability Books” I recommended a German article about writing well. One commenter asked for English resources and I decided to translate it (with consent of the author Susanne “Su-Shee” Schmidt). Not everything is applicable in English though. The mindset is different (e.g. complicated and convoluted sentences are often considered “good” German, especially …
A while back Udo Pracht tweeted: I’m totally pissed by those coaches who are “solving” my problems (w/o permission!) when I thought I was just having a chat with them. I guess that for people who spend a great deal of their time thinking about how to make things better, such as coaches and system …
It makes me sad when a PO presents a new story and the first thing out of a developer’s mouth is “It can’t be done!”*. A story is meant to be the basis of a discussion – “It can’t be done!” is harmful to this discussion. As long as there is no timeframe attached to the …
I vividly remember a situation in which I gave adjusting (i.e. negative) feedback applying everything I knew about communication – I-messages, stating observable behavior, outlining negative consequences of the behavior, actionable wish – and still not getting my message through. The recipient was just like “So what? What’s so bad about alienating the other teams?” For …
It might seem trivial, but one of the key learnings from my time as a scrum master is that people long to be heard. Being understood by someone else, validates the speaker. Listening says “I care. I take time and pay attention to you. You are important! Your take on things is valuable.”
You know that saying “Don’t judge a book by its cover”? Well, I usually do jugde a book by its cover and I’d never have bought “Systemisches KONSENSIEREN” (“Systemic CONSENSUS”)! When a colleague dropped it on desk, I made fun of it – its whole appearance is “touchy-feely” in a bad way and, come on, …
