When Diana Larsen and I teach a two-day Leading Agile Retrospectives workshop, the second day is stand up facilitation practice. We create the bare bones story of an iteration, then the class works together to design a retrospective. Each participant has a chance to...
In my previous post, I described a framework for offering feedback on work results and work relationships.Step 2 is Describe behavior or results. Use neutral language and examples. If the person doesn’t recognize himself in the description or agree with the...
Art Petty posted Why I Hate the Praise Sandwich.Praise sandwich, as you recall, involves buttering someone up with a compliment or praise, stating a criticism, and then fluffing them back up with another bit of praise.Sounds icky, too, doesn’t it?Art offers:5...
I just heard that a group of people is working on a CMMi-like framework for Agile Product Management. And of course there’s the Agile Maturity Model. And various surveys to assess Agility.”Maturity” and “agility” are the wrong things to...
Esther Schindler recently put forward a scenario about a struggling employee named Frank, and solicited advice from her network.Briefly, the scenario is this: Frank was a great maintenance programmer, but the company is retiring the system he worked on. Frank has...
Peer feedback is a core skill for collaboration. It’s impossible to work closely with out running into some bumps: differences, disappointments, and disagreements. Peer to peer feedback can help keep working relationships on track and improve results (and it...
Building trust may seem mysterious… something that just happens, or grows through some unknowable process. Like many things, there are concrete actions that tend to build trust (and concrete actions that are almost guaranteed to break trust down).First, a...
In these unsettled times, you can spend time worrying about things you can’t control, or you can take action on things that are within your control. Here are 10 things you can do as a developer to make yourself more visibly valuable, which may keep you off the...
Teams have gone in and out of fashion as a way to improve productivity for years. In my field, teams are essential. The work requires a broad mix of skills and collaboration. But, myths about how to establish and support productive teams abound. These three are...
I hear people talk about getting executive support for Agile adoptions (or other organizational changes). But I seldom hear people talk about what that support looks like. It’s more than money and speeches. Want to know how to really help your organization...
