Multitasking game from Alan Cyment

no comments | Posted on Wednesday, January 25th, 2012 | Read more articles about 'Agile, Games, Sustainable Pace, Visual Management'

In the agile world we have a few exercises to show the effects of multi tasking.

Last year I when I did a personal agility workshop with Gerry Kirk, he teached me a new one. He learned it from Alan Cyment

It became my favorite exercise about MT.

We divide the  group in two. The two parts are standing in a row facing each other.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We do 3 exercises in multiple ways.

 

  1. a complex hand exchange (like in a child song)
  2. Count from 1 till 10 with your partner using your fingers. (Person 1: shows 1 finger, then person : 2 fingers, person 1 shows 3 fingers…)
  3. “sing” a song. Person 1 says one word and then her partner says the second word and then again person 1.

The first round we do the exercise in sequence. First exercise 1, then exercise 2, then exercise 3.  What makes this exercises harder is that for each exercise you have a different partner. So after you have finished exercise 1, one row shifts one position to the left. (and the first person moves to the last position.) And the same again after you have finished exercise 2.

In the second round, people start the first exercise and when the leader says so, the group switches to exercise 2 or 3. Now this is when it becomes interesting as people have to remember where they were and they have to find their new partner and remember at what part of that exercise they where.

This exercise reminds most participants about their worklife. Always changing priorities, finding partners back. Before you can do a small task, the priorities have changed again.

One of the interesting things about this exercise, is that everytime I did this, in the first round all 3 exercises are finished in less time then finishing the first exercise in round 2.

So switching priorities does no help, not even to give the impression that things move faster.

 

Yves

 

 

 

 

Who is Lyssa Adkins

one comment | Posted on Tuesday, January 24th, 2012 | Read more articles about 'Agile, Who is ?'

Lyssa career is a nice example that people can recover from Command & Control.  (Paraphrasing her words, read her book coaching agile teams  if you want to now more about it.) I first met her through one of her articles about conflicts. We exchanged some e-mails. I was too late to be a reviewer of her book. It did not matter, I read it multiple times after that. I still owe her a text for her website.

Everytime I see her, she (like a lot of people in our community) is smiling.   And she proposes as the next person someone with the same name as on of my kids. How touthful of her…

This WhoIS  has less funny links  as what I used to do. I spend my WE doing a coachRetreat and working on the book version of WhoIS. On top of that today my godfather died, so I did no take time to be funny.

The Who Is book will contain an extra answer from everyone, so subscribe, once I have 50 subscribers I will publish the first version. (And as I am using LeanPub, you will be able to download the new versions as they appear.)

 

What is something people usually don’t know about you but has influenced you in who you are?
I am a singer and learning to sing in a chorus is an exercise in shining and blending. Back and forth, letting your voice shine while blending with the others, weaving in and out with the other voices in the choir. Singing in a choir also takes tremendous attention and hard work – it’s not for the feint of heart! My choral experiences have taught me discipline and they have solidified my already strong blue-collar work ethic (that I learned from my parents). Most of all, singing in a choir had taught me about exquisite moments of pure joy, when the harmonies come together just perfectly, when the emotion gets conveyed and everyone in the performance hall can feel it. Bliss!

If you would not have been in IT, what would have become of you?
I wanted to be a marine biologist but may parents strongly discouraged me because they thought I wouldn’t find a good job after all of that education and training. what really sealed my fate, though, was chemistry and really, anything mathematical. I just could not figure that out (still can’t). So, my days as a biologist were numbered. Although my undergraduate degree is in Management Information Systems, I never really had my heart set on building IT systems. I was always more interested in the business-end of the systems and drove people crazy by asking “why?” all the time. They fixed that, though. Even in my earliest jobs after college, I was constantly assigned as the project manager – because I was loud and could organize things (especially people). So, I got buried for the next 15 years in project management process and paperwork and didn’t have time to ask “why?” anymore. Six years ago, agile restored the ability to ask questions that matter and I am forever in debt to agile for that.

What is your biggest challenge and why is it a good thing for you?
My biggest challenge is that, sometimes, I trade being kind for being right. I can be really scathing and too-blunt sometimes, and I can cut people down with just a slantwise glance. I work to improve this all the time. I even have a coaching structure to help me – it’s a big art-glass heart necklace and I wear it to remind myself to bring my heart and kindness along for the ride. I’m still going to be forthright because I believe that often serves people the best. It’s just forthright-ness with more kindness.

What drives you ?
What drives me is the absolute waste of human potential I see around me everyday. I keep thinking, “if we could recapture and inspire even just 10% of that wasted potential, there is nothing on this planet we couldn’t do.” This is why I’m so passionate about agile coaching. Agile coaches are in the perfect spot to either uphold the broken systems that waste our human potential or liberate people from those same systems. I’m for the latter. I work hard to give agile coaches the skills they need to liberate!

What is your biggest achievement?
“Waking up” enough to see that my dear friend was also my life partner. I credit agile with this, too. When I stopped being a project manager and (nicely) bossing everyone around, I learned that it’s essential to slow down and get genuinely interested in people. So many discoveries awaited me when I started to really *see* people! And, it allowed me to really see him, the man who was right by my side already. We’ll be married 6 years this next April and I am thankful every day that agile helped me wake up.

What is the last book you have read?
OK…I have to admit it. Summer is trash novel time. I just finished the entire Black Dagger Brotherhood series, including the “Insider’s Guide.” That’s how hooked I got. The novels are about a group of warrior vampires and their mates. I have a new bookshelf in my room because my husband was getting tired of the stacks of books on the floor. It’s full of all the books I have in progress. The shelves are overflowing.

What question do you think I should also ask and what is the answer?
What’s next?

What’s next for me is to continue to pay attention and sense what the agile coaching community needs most next. And, then work with whomever I need to so that we can provide that thing – whatever it is. The important part is sensing what’s really trying to happen rather than simply having my own path and foisting my ideas on the community. This is a wonderfully creative and illuminating place to work from. And, it’s the source of creativity that allows me to join my whole life together – work, family, play, learning – all of it.

Who do you think I should ask next?
Bent Myllerup

What is a coach retreat?

4 comments | Posted on Sunday, January 22nd, 2012 | Read more articles about 'Checkin, Click, coach-retreat, FLS, mindset, PairCoaching'

Yesterday Oana Juncu and me organized a Coach Retreat in Paris. Lots of people asked me about the format. This is version 2 of the Coach Retreat format. I expect it to change a lot the coming years, only step by step. We have already lost of idea’s and the trick will be to be patient and only change in small steps.

In agile we use a lot of double loop learning. While writing this up I realize that CoachRetreat is quadrupple loop learning. Not because I want mine to be bigger/better etc, it’s because I stand on the shoulders of giants.

Rachel Davies invented Coaching Dojo.

Coray Haines co-creator of Code Retreat.

Coach Retreat = Coaching Dojo + Code Retreat
(Oana invented this tag line, did I mention already I love working with people smarter then me?)

Very nice yves, could you know become a little more practical?

Yes: 1 hard rule, at coach retreat we speak the local language. (In this case French)

We started with a group Check-in

We had 6 situation agile coaches encounter at clients. These 6 situation we put on the walls of our retreat center. We asked our coaches to DotVote on the situations. The winning situation we worked on the whole day.
Really? Work the whole day on one situation?
yes, one situation. That works fine for code retreat, so we do the same.
Well you don’t have to copy everything from Corey do you?
True, but we should not reject anything without trying too. Actually the coaches in Paris initially had the same reaction you had. Yet we stuck to our plan.
That does not sounds really agile…
I actually think it was, read on and then judge.
Just like CodeRetreat we work on the same story but with different techniques.

 

We experiment with one technique during 65 Minutes.

5 minutes explaining the problem
10 minutes of working
5 minutes local debrief
10 min replay with the same actors
5 min local debrief
10 min replay with the same actors
5 min local debrief

15 min of group debrief (retrospective)

>> this is the first learning loop (actually the second but that will become clear later)

Then we redo the story with another coaching technique.
In total we do 4 to 5 different coaching techniques==> this is the second/Third learning loop.

His were the coaching techniques we used this CoachRetreat

 

We ended the day with a Circle of Questions

The click rewind is where the first learning loop comes into play. Because anyone can stop what is gong on, while it is going on and people replay what they did, you have a learning loop right in the action.

The fourth learning loop is when we will have more CoachRetreats. Then we loop at CoachRetreat level.

Already after the second sessions, people that said that they did not wanted to replay the same story the whole day had changed their mind. Participants found lots of value in the replaying of the story and experimenting with coaching styles.

One of the places were people did coach, we asked everyone (even observers) to paint.

I have also created a google group for CoachRetreat:
https://groups.google.com/group/coachretreat

something I forgot:

  • use #MyDailyThankYou
  • mention I give FLS (Free Lifetime Support) on everything I do.
  • mention that I’m writing the Who Are agilist book with answers from Oana, Rachel & me (together with already 27 others..)

I already received a request for a CoachRetreat in Bordeaux & Lille, Montpellier. Where do you want to organize one?

Who Is Dennis Stevens

one comment | Posted on Tuesday, January 17th, 2012 | Read more articles about 'Agile, BookList, Who is ?'

This weeks Who Is is Dennis Stevens. Dennis was proposed by Don Gray. I personally don’t know anything about Dennis (which makes it exiting to have him in Who Is).
On his websits I find a few intriguing things about Dennis, one he combines PMI & agile and he did Lean Value Stream mappings in 1994. They year I started to work…

This is what Don said about him:  I like Dennis approach to introducing managers to both the benefits of improving their work systems and the practical approach of continuous improvement.

Announcement: the Who is Series will be turned into a book, pre-register at Leanpub

What is something people usually don’t know about you but has influenced you in who you are?

I played the violin in high school. I was a four time all-state violin player and a National Scholastic Orchestra Award Winner as a senior. I was also the student conductor of the high school orchestra for two years. Then I was a music major at Florida State University where I learned more about conducting and performing. Although I wasn’t talented enough to be successful in a performance career, my experiences had two huge influences on me. First, I learned to balance individual preparation with the teamwork of performing as part of an ensemble. Second, I learned that every role in a production has a high level of craft to it. What looks easy from the outside is very challenging to perform at a high level. I carry the lessons I learned with me into my coaching and consulting interactions.

If you would not have been in IT, what would have become of you?

I would have been a high school teacher and baseball coach. I love baseball and I find creating a passion for performance and teaching solid fundamentals a successful and rewarding strategy.

What is your biggest challenge and why is it a good thing for you?

I am actually an introvert. This leads me to be very prepared when I get in front of a group of people to teach and interact from a coaching standpoint. It also allows me to step back and observe the interactions of the people around me because I don’t need to be in the center of it.

What drives you ?

Learning how to improve the situations and challenges I see around me.  From Business Analysis, Project Management, Product Development, Testing, and Organizational Leadership I try to understand why non-productive behavior makes sense and try to find better ways to do the work and ways to communicate the better ways. People shouldn’t have to live and work under unreasonable circumstances when healthier and more productive ways are within reach.

What is your biggest achievement?

Raising my children.

What is the last book you have read?

Gerald Weinberg‘s Perfect Software and Gojko Adzic’s Specification by Example. Probably written 30 years apart, both contain an awful lot of pragmatic and useful information regarding testing software.

What question do you think I should also ask and what is the answer?

Where will you be in 10 years? I will be working in organization’s trying to understand why they operate the way they do and hopefully leading efforts to improve performance. I will also be coaching young kids in basketball or baseball.

Who do you think I should ask next?

Shane Hastie

Who Is Vickie Gray

one comment | Posted on Tuesday, January 10th, 2012 | Read more articles about 'Agile, Ask For Help, BookList, BootCamp, Who is ?, WorkLifeBalance'

The next person on the WhoIs list is Vickie Gray. I met Vickie when I went to Texas for my first McCarthy Bootcamp. She was one of my five trainers. Although she technically is not part of THE agile community, I think her mindset is more agile then most of us. She is one of the persons I will ask for help without hesitation. When she does not have time, she will flatout say, without making drama. For that alone I dare to ask her for help more then anyone else. When I asked Jim & Michele over for the first European bootcamp she and her partner Paul helped me out when Jim was prevented from coming.  I was again amazed by her use of the Investigate protocol. As our own personal “Wood Come Story” (inside joke for bootcampers) her book Creating Time was released just in time…

What is something people usually don’t know about you but has influenced you in who you are?

I teach yoga. The whole person approach of yoga changed how I saw myself in the world and influences how I see others, especially my clients. It’s so easy in IT to become just a head, all logic and curiosity, with an occasionally distracting body we drag around. That’s how I lived for years – completely in my head. Finally I was experiencing enough physical problems I couldn’t ignore it any more. Over the years I’ve tried all kinds of approaches to keep my body reasonably healthy and have settled on yoga. And when I teach it keeps me moving forward with my own practice.

If you would not have been in IT, what would have become of you?
I may have become a university professor or writer

What is your biggest challenge and why is it a good thing for you?
Not being distracted by interesting new things. Innovation is important working with IT and people, and keeping the balance between bleeding edge and patience keeps me focused on what’s important for me and my clients.

What drives you ?
A sense of justice and optimism. I believe we are all capable of so much more than we believe ourselves to be, and we have everything we need right now to be awesome. I’m also attracted to new and shiny things. I’m not afraid of being an early adopter. It’s fascinating to get glimpses of what is possible as it’s emerging.

What is your biggest achievement?
Learning to love someone without reserve.

What is the last book you have read?
More Time to Think from Nancy Kline

What question do you think I should also ask and what is the answer?
Sneaky! That’s my question! How about “How will the world be different because you’re in it?”
And the answer is, the people I touch, and the people they touch, will have an experience of their real potential for greatness, and real, tangible evidence that they can accomplish what they want to. Unequivocally. Every time.

Who do you think I should ask next?
Glenda Eoyang

ATQ: the agile manifesto, the monday answers.

no comments | Posted on Monday, January 9th, 2012 | Read more articles about 'Agile, mindset, Quiz'

The answers of last weeks ATQ, can be found on the Agile Manifesto page

I on purpose don’t copy them as the page contains a lot of detail about what these statements mean.

I mixed the answers with some statements of the Software Craftmanship manifesto

Another agile related manifestos is the Declaration of interdependance

 

Maria Joao Pires – expecting another Mozart concerto

no comments | Posted on Friday, January 6th, 2012 | Read more articles about 'Agile, Iterations, mindset'


This video is a nice example of a person who is better prepared then she knows.
Maria Joao Pires was expecting another Mozart concerto. You can see that from the moment she realizes this, she is blocked. Then Ricardo Chailly – while conducting his orchestra- convinced her she could do it. My guess is, his trust was enough for her to try.

The Agile Thursday Quiz: the agile manifesto

19 comments | Posted on Thursday, January 5th, 2012 | Read more articles about 'Agile, mindset, Quiz'

For todays ATQ I did not receive any quiz about agile. One of the things I do as a coach (I did not learn it from Lyssa Adkins but she made me aware of it.) is when a teams is stuck, I ask them to go back to  the agile manifesto. Read the first page and read principle page and see if we can find an answer in there for our problems.

So I thought why don’t I do the same thing for my problem here. Why don’t I open the mainfesto and see if I see a sentence about which I can create 4 questions.
I looked. And I saw 4 statements.

Do I(we) really know the statements that well?  Try to select the right 4 sentences without going back to the manifesto.

  • Statement 1:

1) Individuals and processes over interactions and tools
2) Interactions and processes over individuals and tools
3) Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
4) Individuals and tools over processes and interactions
5) Processes and tools over individuals and interactions
6) Interactions and tools over individuals and processes

  • Statement 2:

1) Working software with lots of documentation
2) Working software over comprehensive documentation
3) Working software with as little documentation as possible
4) Working software without documentation
5) Well-crafted software over comprehensive documentation
6) Well-crafted software over working software

  • Statement 3:

1) Productive partnerships over customer collaboration
2) customer collaboration over contract negotiation
3) Productive partnerships over contract negotiation
4) customer partnerships over contract collaboration
5) customer partnerships over contract negotiation
6) Productive contracts over negotiation collaboration

  • Statement 4:

1) Creating a plan over following a plan
2) Following a plan over constant changes
3) Responding to change over following a plan
4) Steadily adding value over responding to change
5) Responsive changes over perfect plans
6) Planning for changes over following responsivenes

 

Do you have a perfection ghost?

9 comments | Posted on Wednesday, January 4th, 2012 | Read more articles about 'Children, mindset'

My brother once told me that a teacher he had 6 years after me, told him, I was the worst student in her drawing class. I took me year to realize how much (negative) impact she had on my creativity.

I had the feelings for years I could not make drawings or make paintings. And yes I am a bad painter and I always had the feeling I should not have passed kindergarten, as hardly can draw in the lines… Yet the message I heard was: you are not a creative person.

When I write these words now down, they make me smile, no they make me laugh, laugh loud. Me, I am not creative? I am a very creative person. yes, my creativity does not show as some of my classmates. That does not mean I am not creative and it surely does not mean I don’t care about quality.

In my writing I have the same “problem”, I have always been very bad in language. I speak Dutch, French & English. I read all three. Yet I am unable to write any of these perfectly.

I make lots of mistakes when I write. I have some friends who go crazy when I write a DT mistake in Dutch. Some of them have tried to teach me for at least 15 years. The result of their teaching was that I felt bad and I started to avoid interacting with them in writing.

These days I stopped feeling bad about it. Yes I know I write mistakes. Yes I know it makes most people crazy. yes I want to write better, I know I can’t and don’t bother teaching, I have been trying for 33 years, I can’t. Please accept me as I am.

Now make no mistake, I do care about quality. I do care about getting my message across. Yet when I notice that I keep myself from writing because I don’t see my mistakes the first 3 months after I wrote them, or I stop interacting with people because they care more about their language then me, when I noticed that, that is when I am in trouble.

I ‘m convinced I have something to add to this world. I am very much aware that I am more popular as a speaker then as a writer. And that is fine with me; but I it won’t stop me from writing.

If you think my idea’s are wurth nothing because I am not able to write a perfect sentence, then I think you have as much to learn from me as you think I have to learn from you.

Last year I worked in Bordeaux. Although I speak French much better then I read or write (Guess why I don’t write French…) I do make mistakes. And some of the French I am using (“a tantôt”) turns out to be more Belgium French as real French (what ever that means.)

It took me a few months to realize that “the state of my french” was actually an asset for my work as a coach. I was working for a company were lots of people suffer from perfectionism. They all dreamed of the blue sky scenario. And yes they were great at explaining what the perfect world would be. They knew their problems so well. They knew what had to be done; And yet nothing happened. Is that something you recognize?

I bet you do. A lot of companies suffer from this. Hell lots of coaches and consultants suffer from this.
They block themselves from doing anything, because they can only imagine the perfect world.

I’m in favor of starting. Any progress is better then what you had before. And by making mistakes in my language I showed the people I coached I was serious about it. The fact I let them correct me all the time I also showed them I cared about quality.

y

Who is Linda Rising

4 comments | Posted on Tuesday, January 3rd, 2012 | Read more articles about 'Agile, Agile20xx, Ask For Help, BookList, Who is ?, WorkLifeBalance'

The first person of the year 2012 to reply to the Who Is questions is Linda Rising . Linda was invited by Michele Sliger & Elisabeth Hendrikson. Linda wrote one of the few books that I think everyone can use no matter what job or function she has. (I use it in my personal life as well). (She actually wrote 4 books, but this one had most impact on me.) Also check out the Fearless Journey game that Deborah Preuss created based on the book.
The reactions to Linda’s keynote at agile 2011 are the only reason I regret that I was not there. She says that her  job is to give the weird talk at conferences. I always tell my kids, it’s better to be weird, then to be boring. Linda’s talks are NEVER boring. Although I only met her a few times, I think it’s safe to say that Linda is never borring.

What is something people usually don’t know about you but has influenced you in who you are?

Most people don’t know that I started my professional life as a chemist, actually a biochemist. I have a B.A. in chemistry from the University of Kansas with a minor in biochemistry. The reason why I only have a minor in biochemistry is — there weren’t enough courses at the time to make up a major :-) ! I graduated in 1963. Watson and Crick were awarded the Nobel prize for identifying the double helix structure of DNA in 1962 :-) ! I spent a short time as a research assistant in a pharmacology lab and learned many ways to kill rats. It was a revelation for me — biochemistry is the chemistry of living cells and researchers in that field kill (the technical term is “sacrifice”) a lot of animals. I couldn’t continue to do that day after day after day. Another day another rat :-( ! In the last ten years I have made a return to the biological sciences after I re-discovered the domain in a slightly different form –neuroscience, cognitive science. I am still fascinated by it, but I don’t have to kill any animals :-) !

If you would not have been in IT, what would have become of you?

After I left biochemistry, I returned to school to study mathematics. Moving to computer science came only after realizing that there were very few jobs in mathematics, but, again, I loved mathematics and had I not been swept up with computers I probably would have been happy as a mathematician :-) !

What is your biggest challenge and why is it a good thing for you?

I believe I have the same challenge as anyone alive today — trying to keep up. I have read that the last person to know “everything” was John Stuart Mill, who died in 1873. In those days, someone could be a scientist, a philosopher, a theologian, a poet, an economist, because the amount of information available was so limited. I have also read that most information is less than 15 years old and that in some fields the amount of information doubles every 3 years. No wonder we struggle! However, this is also exciting. Not only the amount but the accessibility of information means that all minds on the planet can share in this wealth. No matter how restricted  the environment, you can plug in to the world of information. What a wondrous, hopeful state of affairs!

What drives you ?

What drives me now might be different from what has driven me in the past. Now I know that the more I read, the more I think, the more I struggle with problems, the better it is for my brain. Not only do I benefit from the enjoyment of learning, but the cognitive scientists tell me that it is good for me. I become better at this as a result of doing it. This is not only true for intellectual endeavors but also for physical challenges as well. My husband retired at the end of 2010 and we moved to a retirement community in Nashville, TN to be closer to our daughter, Amy, our only child (check out her website prising.com :-) !). We are surrounded by very active retirees. We have more time to do long bike rides and we are learning Pickle ball — an older person’s tennis . As I make poor shots and miss serves, I know that my muscles and bones are getting stronger and my eye-hand coordination is improving.

What is your biggest achievement?

I went back to school (for the last time I assure you!) at age 46 to finally finish a Ph.D. My goal was to ”finish by 50″ — I gave my defense one month before my 50th birthday. I was not only older than all my classmates, but also older than all my professors (except for 2). I was my very young adviser’s first Ph.D. student and I discovered in our first meeting that I was older than his mother :-) ! I was lucky in manyrespects. My classmates and professors treated me respectfully and my wonderful husband moved to another state to support me while I worked full-time on my degree.

What is the last book you have read?

This is a tough question. I am usually reading several books at once — so I will just mention the last book with the most impact — Carol Dweck’s “Self-Theories” — to prepare for the keynote at Agile 2011. The research that has come out of the social psychology domain on the topic of “mindset” is astounding. I can see in myself how a change in mindset over time has allowed me to keep on learning. We might be doing our children a dis-service by telling them how smart they are. We should instead be telling them how successful their effort was or how hard they worked. The message should be: it’s about effort not about a fixed talentor ability. I hope others find the talk useful. I know pulling the research together has been very rewarding for me.

What question do you think I should also ask and what is the answer?

The question I have been asking myself a lot is “What’s next?” I’m not retired yet, but in a way I have been for 10 years. That’s when I became an independent consultant and started working for the toughest boss I’ve ever had — me!! I pretty much do what I want — and that is the definition of retirement for most people :-) ! For me, what’s next is already happening. You know that I love patterns. I have written a few pattern languages and I have been involved in helping others write patterns since the mid-90s. My husband  and I are writing a new pattern language for helping third world development. This is not software development (although it could be!) but sustainable development of under-developed countries. The U.S. has an unfortunate history of appearing in areas that need help, identifying problems, solving those problems (as *WE* see it), then disappearing. The end result is that those countries and those people are worse off than when we arrived. We estimate that writing this pattern language will take the rest of our lives — a good project :-) !You can see the latest version on my web site: lindarising.org. We are working on a web site and wiki to bring others in since we know we cannot do this alone.

Who do you think I should ask next?

The person I most admire these days is Johanna Rothman. She faces physical challenges daily in addition to the ordinary struggles the rest of us encounter. She is my hero (heroine).