On the Retrospectives Yahoo Group, Michael Webb posted a link to his article Eight Barriers to Effective Listening. This article provides practical advice on how to improve communication. Since one of the basic practices of Agile Work is to maximize communication, this article is essential reading!
We know that teams go through identifiable stages of development: forming, storming, norming and performing (1). What exactly does this look like for an Agile team?
I recently completed reading An Introduction to General Systems Thinking
Agile Work holds that process improvements are most effectively planned by those who perform the work. So, what happens to the manager role when we empower teams to self-organize? I recently turned up this old email, outlining how Scrum, an Agile project management method, reframes management responsibilities…
Wanted: Cat Herder
The previous article was interesting enough for me that I wrote it up real nice, got it edited, and published it as a downloadable pdf. Check it out at the Berteig Consulting Inc. Agile Work Resources page. There is also a whitepaper about Agile and Lean and a one-page Agile Work Cheat Sheet. Have fun!
In “Built to Last : Successful Habits of Visionary Companies
This list of Quotations for Learning and Programming is heavily weighted towards programming tasks, but there is a lot of very generally applicable wisdom. Here’s a sample:
A common mistake people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools. (D. Adams)
Berteig Consulting Inc. has announced an updated public course schedule which includes a one-day introduction to Agile Work, and a four-day intensive course for teams. Both of these courses have been offered previously in a private setting and they have received loads of positive feedback (and suggestions for improvement which have been incorporated into these public versions). And yes… this is blatant self-promotion!
Mike Dwyer has written up a very nice analogy between the simplicity of the Scrum method and the simplicity of the waltz.
At the Coach’s meeting ten days ago, several of the attendees used a series of phrases to refer to the learning process or cycle that Agile Work promotes. These vocabularies all have a different slant or implication but they all map to each other fairly well.