Doing Trumps Reading: Training from the Back of the Room Workshop June 5-6 2014
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 training is not the words of wisdom falling from the instructor’s lips, but rather the games, exercises, and...
read moreThink With Your Hands!
Our own Ellen Grove on InfoQ! Ellen teaches improving personal development using the Lego Serious Play thinking, communicating and problem solving technique....
read moreBuilding Your Dreams at Agile India 2014
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 http://t.co/0LFXtbLMff— Lynne Cazaly (@lynnecazaly) February 28, 2014 I think Lynne’s graphic is a better summary than my...
read moreThe Team Responsibility Game
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 responsibility that explores the importance of shared intentions and playfully illustrates some of the effects...
read moreDe l’importance de commencer les mêlées quotidiennes à l’heure
Avoir un horaire régulier pour la mêlée quotidienne est une règle de Scrum qui est considérée par plusieurs Scrum Masters débutants comme optionnelle. Pourtant, c’est leur responsabilité, en début de projet, quand l’équipe vient d’être créée, de renforcer cette règle. Vous pensez « Vaut mieux attendre pour commencer, car tout le monde n’est pas arrivé? » Si ça arrive souvent, personne n’hésitera à se faire un café à l’heure du daily, car on ne veut pas attendre pour une durée indéterminée que la rencontre commence; À la longue, les gens...
read moreVote for “Discover To Deliver” class to be offered in Ottawa! (or Montreal!)
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 great products. There ‘s an opportunity to have the “Discover To Deliver” class offered in either Ottawa or...
read moreInterested in presenting at Agile Tour in Ottawa or Montreal?
Agile Tour is a series of one-day non-profit Agile conferences held in 80+ cities around the world in October and November. Agile Tour conferences provide excellent learning value for not-very-much cost by bringing in top-quality keynote speakers and presenters, and are a great way to meet other Agile folks in your community. Agile Tour Montreal has been going strong for several years now (they’re planning for 600 attendees in 2013), and I’m really excited that the Gatineau-Ottawa Agile Tour 2013 is shaping up to be even bigger and better...
read moreTop signs you work in a dysfunctional IT environment – A pair-brain dump with Louis-Philippe Carignan
Since this is our first attempt at a collaborative post, Louis-Philippe Carignan and I decided to keep it small and simple by writing a top 10 list. As you’ll notice, the list got away from us! It has become a brain dump of the dysfunctions we’ve observed in various IT environments along our coaching careers. We also added a few tongue-in-cheek items 😉 Top signs you work in a dysfunctional IT environment: Individuals are identified the same way as a printer: as resources Face to face communication is considered redundant if a document...
read moreSimulation Lego : un retour d’expérience
Au cours des deux dernières semaines, Ellen et moi avons donné ensemble une formation de mise à niveau sur l’Agilité et Scrum : la première en anglais (15 personnes), et la semaine suivante en français (18 personnes). Nous y avons testé avec grand bonheur la simulation Lego basée sur un article d’Alexei Krivitsky. Cette simulation, qui dure en tout 1h30 en incluant la discussion d’apprentissage, consiste à construire un village en 3 sprints de 15 minutes. Ellen a facilité l’exercice; de mon côté, j’ai joué le rôle de Product Owner et je me...
read moreIntroduction to Lean & Agile Work: presentation to IEEE Ottawa
On Tuesday, I had the pleasure of presenting “An Introduction to Lean and Agile Work” to one of the IEEE Ottawa SIGs As a prelude to the conversation, we played a simple variant of the penny game in order to spark some lively discussion and great questions to frame the rest of the evening. We then talked about Agile values and principles, and how those ideas are manifested in Agile and Lean practices. As the group was quite small, it was less of a formal presentation and more of a conversation with a few pictures to help clarify key ideas...
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