Posts by ellengrove

Are you looking for a simple way to liven up your retrospectives?  In my coaching engagements, I often encounter teams that are having ineffective retrospectives because they always take the same approach to framing the discussion. Using the same format for every retrospective preordains a very similar conversation each time, and it won’t take long for team members to start grumbling that the retrospectives aren’t working for them,...

What’s the best training experience you’ve been in?  Take a moment to put yourself through the retrospectoscope and consider what made it memorable for you. Maybe it was a Scrum training.  Or a ski lesson.  Or perhaps a first aid class.  I’m willing to bet that whatever type of training it was, you’re not fondly recalling sitting in a beige room being talked at or PowerPointed to death.  What I remember vividly from a long-ago Scrum...

I had a great time presenting a User Requirements with LEGO Serious Play workshop at Agile India 2014.  Sharing LSP with a new crowd is always fun, and the 100+ people who participated were enthusiastic and ready to play! One lovely surprise from my session was the amazing graphic summary Lynne Cazaly created: «Build your Dreams» session by @eegrove at #agileindia2014 – my visual notes #lego #seriousplay...

I love games for learning – playing about serious matters allows people to drop some of the filters and barriers that may unconsciously affect how group discussions unfold and really explore ideas.  And the laughter and drama of playing a game that involves body, mind and emotions in order to learn about something helps ensure that the learnings stick. At Play4Agile 2013, Markus Wittwer led an amazing and very popular game about team...

Well-formed user stories help Agile teams to make the right decisions about what to deliver next.  Ellen Gottesdiener and Mary Gorman’s excellent new book, Discover to Deliver: Agile Product Planning and Analysis, gives Agile teams practical guidance on planning and analysis practices that will help practitioners explore all dimensions of their product so that they are focused on learning the things that will enable them to deliver...