Video on Agile Executive Briefing
About a year ago I gave this presentation at Agile Tour Toronto 2009 – Agile Executive Briefing – Situational Assessment and 50,000ft view of Agile. DZone finally posted it. Read More
How to Read a Book
A friend and fellow Agile coach – Jason Cheong-Kee-You – told me about this approach to get more out of books. It is one of those little nuggets that help make every day life go better. Thanks also to Allister McKinnell for starting the chain reaction. Read More
Use Value Stream Mapping for Current State Assessment
This post is about how I run a value stream mapping workshop as part of an Agile/Lean readiness assessment or as part of ongoing process improvements. Read More
Serious Problems? Use A3 Technique to Nail ’em!
This post shows the A3 technique and how it is an effective management tool.
The contents of this post are my summary of THE BOOK on this subject: Managing to Learn: Using the A3 Management Process to solve problems, gain agreement, mentor and lead – by John Shook. Available via Lean Enterprise Institute and Ocapt (in Canada).
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Accelerate Your Team with Cross-Training Charts
Cross-training charts (also skill training charts) are a standard part of the Lean toolkit. They are used to identify limited skill sets that can lead to bottlenecks and work stoppage. See manufacturing example. Read More
My Pomodoro goes to 11
Alternate Title: Organize and prioritize your personal projects.
I keep my life sane use David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) together with the Pomodoro Technique. GTD is great for managing the little stuff (like email) and Pomodoro is great for managing and prioritizing projects. Read More
Constellation, Journeyline and Marketplace for Tuning Teams
Lyssa Adkins ran a very practical session at DeepAgile that shared several tools for team formation or for tuning up existing teams. She often uses these right at the project start since team members may know very little about one another – even if they have been working together for years. Here is a run-through of three of the exercises.
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Learn to coach and observe through play
At DeepAgile in Boston, I played Yellow Brick Road: Fresh InsightsThrough Peer Coaching. The game was led by it’s inventor – Portia Tung who did a great job even with a very large group. If you haven’t played this, I suggest you make the time. Read More
Approaches to Organizational Change
Mary Poppendieck gave her usual well-researched and convincing tour-de-force presentation at LSSC10 on several approaches to organizational change with a talk titled “What’s wrong with targets?” Read More
LSSC10 Keynotes on Process Models, Assumptions and Risk
Sadly, I did not do as good a job capturing the the LSSC10 keynote sessions as I would have liked, but maybe I captured something you missed… Read More
Improve your communication through nonverbal rapport
At Scrum Gathering Orlando, I ran an experiential workshop titled Improve your communication through non-verbal rapport. The session turned out really well so thanks to everyone who participated. My only tools were a flip chart and some markers, so the purpose of this post is to provide details for attendees as well as provide visibility to anyone interested in better communication. Read More
Crucial Conversations
One important book that has been in my communication toolkit for years is Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler. I am mentioning it now since I shared some of these elements in my Scrum Gathering workshop Improve your communication through non-verbal rapport. I’ll blog on this shortly; back to the book. Read More
