I’m a big fan of using silent brainstorming in order to generate ideas as individuals before processing those ideas as a group. “Priming” is yet another reason why using silence is important. I’m currently reading Daniel Kahneman’s book “Thinking, Fast and Slow” – a behavioural psychology and economics book that describes his research on how … Continue reading
As one of the volunteers at Agile 2012 I was honoured to be asked to facilitate the volunteer retrospective. There were a few constraints that made this retrospective challenging. First, due to our volunteer responsibilities we had just under an hour to eat lunch and complete the retrospective. Second, there are about 50 volunteers – … Continue reading
I realize that many of you already scowl when you hear anyone talk about ‘best practices’. Instead of adding to that discussion, I’d like to share a short story with you about someone who influenced me to keep looking for better and to never assume that I’ve reached ‘best.’ I can still picture Mr. Loewen … Continue reading
Background In late 2012 when Dylan Smith suggested a blog challenge in order to encourage each of us to write more often, I quickly agreed. I don’t find it easy to write but I love the thought process that goes into it and I was hopeful that some extrinsic motivation ($ and deadlines) would help … Continue reading
I live and work with two phrases in my head that are important to me: “It’s the system, not the people” – Deming And, paradoxically: “It’s all about the people” – a statement heard often at Protegra that we try to use to guide how we work together. An event this weekend helped me to … Continue reading
When Yahoo released the memo about employees not being able to work from home any more, there was the expected backlash against something which has become more and more common. It was especially unexpected given that Yahoo’s new CEO recently had a child and might be expected as someone who would find value in being … Continue reading
At the Agile 2012 conference, Serena Software surveyed attendees about their biggest agile challenge. Here was the top answer: I don’t know how accurate their results are but prioritizing customer demand was certainly a challenge for me on my first “agile” project. We created a backlog with some pretty large user stories including “Search for … Continue reading
My friend Chad Holdorf describes golden nuggets as those practical things you learned from a conference that you can use on Monday at work. After attending the Innovation Games Summit this week in Santa Clara here are six golden nuggets I’d like to share with you: 1. Many of the attendees at my Silence of Agile … Continue reading
As Jen mentioned in a previous post, kanban has crept into our home. Here is a quick post to tell you how we build our board, how we use it, and the results. While some families create a permanent board, we’ve found that temporary boards serve us well. If you stop by some Saturday morning … Continue reading
One of the reasons I love to read books on Agile is because of the wealth of great ideas out there. It seems like every book I read allows me to discover one or two news ideas. The book I am currently reading is Ken Collier’s “Agile Analytics”. While reading this book I was introduced … Continue reading