Another year has passed, 2011 was filled with major change around the world. Here is my personal look back at 2011, and the changes that took place in my own life:

Personal Growth

A big investment this year was taking the highly regarded Co-Active Coach Training Program. I felt it was time to bring in professional coaching skills to my work as an Agile coach and consultant. The training has expanded my coaching range, allowing me to go farther, more powerfully, in service to my clients. I’ve also started coaching one-on-one, with a focus on magnifying the efforts of other change agents.

After a couple of years of using Innovation Games® with teams, organizations and communities, I finally made it to one of Luke Hohmann’s excellent Innovation Games for Customer Understanding classes, so now I can slap on the IG Trained Facilitator badge to my web site.

Community Building / Citizen Engagement

Community building is a core passion of mine. I love applying the skills and knowledge gained in the workplace to the wider world of citizen engagement. Last January, I participated as a facilitator at the San Jose Citizen Budget Games, a truly unique event where citizens worked collaboratively to purchase items for the upcoming budget. The results were so compelling that in 2012 the city of San Jose plans to invite thousands to play in person and online. If politics were always this fun and engaging, we’d all be taking part.

At a local level, I had the privilege of working with the Sault Ste. Marie Council in a kickstart session designed to provide a foundation for working effectively together. I also designed and facilitated a Youth Forum for the Sault Youth Association using Innovation Games® to deliver compelling results for their strategic plan.

Ignite Sault continues to bring a diverse crowd together, with #4 (recap) and #5 (recap) near sell outs to hear local citizens share their ideas and passions in 5 minute talks.

My latest and most ambitious project is getting a collaborative workspace off the ground. Modelled on the highly successful Gangplank in Chandler, Arizona, Gangplank Sault aims to be THE go to place for creative, innovative work, where entrepreneurial types work together to build a new economic engine in Sault Ste. Marie. Through a series of events including Agility Cafes and Tuesday coworking meetups, momentum is building towards an official launch in early 2012.

Scaling Down

During those Agility Cafes, the same topics kept coming up. People were feeling stressed, overwhelmed, struggling to stay on top of things. That led me to co-create a workshop focused on personal performance, centred on the book Personal Kanban. The pilot workshop was a huge success. With demand high, plans are in the works to do a series of workshops with Jim Benson, friend and co-author. I’m really excited about impacting people’s lives through this simple yet profound way of working.

Another experiment, based on feedback I’ve received is the first of a series of online courses on productivity tools. I believe I’ve found a sweet spot of tools to help any consultant / solopreneur. The first one is on the dreaded expense filing, with plans for managing contacts, e-newsletters, social media and more.

Scaling Up

Another stretch for me came in working with large enterprises for the first time. Through partner consulting agreements with renowned Agile companies Enthiosys and Rally, I’ve had the opportunity to engage with the likes of Rackspace and Bank of America. One highlight for me was learning from Luke Hohmann himself how to build effective product road maps.Well, at least a starting point. Product management is a weak spot in the Agile landscape, one that I’m interested in addressing more.

wRap Up

I’m grateful for a year filled with new beginnings, with foundations set for greater things to come. We all have inspiring stories to share. What were your satisfying moments of 2011? Please share them below in the comments or link to a post elsewhere. May 2012 be a year filled with hope, joy and passion for what you love to do.

My kids and I prepared this little Christmas ditty for some holiday fun. Watch and enjoy!

Looking for the crowd-sourced mind map of the session? You can view/edit/copy/export it here.

Empowered individuals. Creative, participatory decision making. Connectedness and care for each other. These words apply equally to an Agile organization as to a healthy community. What might happen if we applied Agile values and methods to transform communities? I will share my experiences over the past year and up to Agile 2011 to nurture engaged community in my home town and beyond – tools and methods, trials and triumphs, how Agile applied to community differs from organization. This is bleeding edge stuff, an area of opportunity for Agile consultants to do work that transforms the world. My hope is to inspire and encourage others to join me in these efforts, and to meet others already on this journey.

Below is a copy of the experience report, best viewed in full screen mode.

Going to Agile 2011? There are two opportunities in the program to connect with me and other like-minded change agents:

1. Thursday, 9 am – 30 minute experience report interactive presentation.
2. Thursday, 11 am – 60 minute Open Jam event titled “Whatever the problem, community is the answer”. This was a proposed 90 minute session originally. I haven’t thought how I’ll modify the format for an Open Jam yet, though will likely shorten to one hour, depending on interest level. Space will be less than a dedicated room so not sure if World Cafe still best format. Ideas welcome.

Scrum, the most widely used Agile development framework got some major praise recently from outside its software origins from Steve Denning, a thought leader in leadership, management, innovation, and organizational storytelling:

If there was a Nobel Prize for management, and if there was any justice in the world, I believe that the prize would be awarded, among others, to Jeff Sutherland, Ken Schwaber and Mike Cohn for their contributions to the invention of Scrum.

Why such high praise? For Steve, Scrum creates the right environment to combine “rapid innovation with disciplined execution”. Steve rightly points out that the secret to success with Scrum is recognizing that Scrum is about a change in mind shift and culture, not a process that one merely follows. He uses Salesforce’s adoption of Scrum to validate his point:

Unlike many firms that have tried to implement Scrum, the leadership at Salesforce.com saw that Scrum involved not just the adoption of a new business process, or a framework for managing software development, but rather as a fundamental transformation of the way work was managed in the company. They realized that they were introducing a new  way of thinking, speaking and acting in the workplace for both managers and workers. They committed to it boldly and the results have been extraordinary.

Read more: Scrum is a Major Management Discovery [Forbes]

If you are wondering “What’s an Agility Café?” then read this.

We welcomed two new people to the café, Birgit Kroll who owns Personal Fit Meal Catering and Sandra Hodge, owner of Sandra Hodge Studio. Regulars Robert Bonell of Bonell & Associates and Cindy Crawford, our host from Sault Downtown Association were also there.

Agility Cafe participants: Birgit, Bob, Sandra, Cindy (and me, Gerry)

Proposed topics:

Proposed topics

Topic map, what we discussed, learned, and will act upon:

Topic map (click to view in larger size)

Topic: What should I name my business?

Action for this week: decide whether or not to go with personal name as company name (at least for now)

Topic: How can I better manage my time?

Action for this week: make work to do visible by setting up a task board flip chart with columns To Do, In Progress, Done. Put all tasks on stickies and use board to track and prioritize work.

Topic: How can I get started video blogging?

Action for this week: set up a YouTube account and try uploading a test video recorded using camera.

Satisfaction scores

Satisfaction scores (out of 10)

The Café continues to resonate well as-is. In Sandra’s words, “I’ve been looking for something like this.”

Experiments for next time:

• start session at 12:05, so people should arrive no later than 12:00
• Birgit to brainstorm some ideas for shared lunch (who better?)

If you are wondering “What’s an Agility Café?” then read this to learn more and register for the next one.

Resort Brochure sample

How would you introduce Agile/Scrum to participants of a Tourism conference in 2 hours? For me, the Tourism Brochure game seemed like a natural fit. Participants get a chance to experience the entire Scrum process, from feature brainstorming and prioritization to product demo and retrospective.

All was well, until I discovered later that there might be 70 participants at the session (note to self: inquire about session size when making proposal). Yikes! I then went to work on ways to scale the game with just one facilitator aka my plan to keep my sanity intact.

Scaling the resort brochure game

Preparation was key. I spent an inordinate amount of time creating supplementary material:

• sample brochure to see what the final destination will look like
• task boards and progress charts drawn up for each team
• pre-made backlog of stickies for each team (thanks Don for the feature suggestions!)
• slides (see below) to indicate at every step what we are doing, how much time we have and when to stop current activity
• music to play during activities, with the end of the music signalling end of activity. My iPod came in handy for this.
• material kits for each table, with plenty of fun stuff to keep the spirits up
• a concept map to fill in the Scrum Framework and a sample note taking sheet

Insights from facilitating

• Provide clear instructions for people to understand concepts, which includes multiple learning methods. This workshop in some ways ran smoother than some smaller ones I’ve facilitated. There was less confusion, increased flow of activity. You can scale much better with the right supports in place.
• Keep steps as simple as possible. Each step in the process was kept small and focused, making it easier to follow.
• Demonstrate by example. For the product review/demo, I helped one team do their demo while the other groups watched. That gave me a chance to go through what needed to be done and why. It produced several teaching moments, and increased the value of the other group’s product review sessions.
• Keep the fun and energy levels up to make everything go smoother. The music and materials added a sense of play and excitement to the game.
• 8 teams need more than one facilitator. Had there been one more person, teams could have had questions answered more quickly, or gone less astray during an activity. To compensate, I added time to some activities in order to get around to tables.
• Sharon Bowman‘s Training from the Back of the Room continues to yield excellent results for me. I had plenty of energy left, even after a hectic two hours because the participants, not me, were the centre of attention. Opening and closing discussions, small table activities kept them busy and learning together, with me as their ‘guide on the side’ as Sharon likes to say.

If you are wondering “What’s an Agility Café?” then read this.

Downtown Association back door

We welcomed two new people to the café, Trevor Swenson and a co-owner of Scripture Gift and Book shop, whose name I’ve sadly forgotten. I haven’t forgotten the amazing brownies she brought however.

Cindy had lots to update us on since our last session, she is really on fire. The other half of the session was spent pondering the feasibility / desirability of a co-working space in Sault Ste. Marie. The idea resonated with everyone present, with a number of ideas for how to keep building momentum. Andrew Ross, expect some emails from us. Darryl Buck from RBB Innovations is keen on the idea as well, so we’ll continue to discuss this with him.

Mind map of conversation (click on photo to view in larger size)

Overall rating this time: 7

Likes:

• venue
• open discussion
• rich update from Cindy
• silent brainstorming

Improve:

• time was short for topic discussions
• interruptions by people coming in late

Experiments for next time:

• time box updates
• expand Agility Café overview online so newbies can become more familiar with format before attending
• pull out mind map from last session for during the update

If you are wondering “What’s an Agility Café?” then read this to learn more and register for the next one.

Agility Café Topic / Action Mind Map (click image to see larger version)

We met for the first time at the Downtown Association, in their spacious board room overlooking Queen St, the sunlight pouring in. Combined with the quiet and large table for note taking, this created an ideal space for rich discussion. This was the best café yet, just keeps getting better.

See the mind map for most of the details. Note that:

1. Each topic is listed, with the challenges, observations and ideas captured.
2. Each person whose topic is discussed selects one or more actions to take in the next week. Those action steps are circled in red.
3. We also check in at the start. Cindy had a lot of exciting breakthroughs to share (highlighted in yellow). That’s what makes this all worthwhile, seeing people get excited, moving past obstacles and closer to their goals.

Topic: Creativity in the Workplace

Darren gives a one minute summary of what we discussed and action steps he plans to take:

Overall scores out of 10:

• 9, 9, 8, 10
• we liked: no noise, sun, focus and flow of conversation

Improvements to get a perfect score:

1. better parking
2. more people for next session

Want to know more about Agility Cafés? Read when they happen, what you’ll get out of them, and how to register.

Why go to an agility café? People keep coming back because it’s

• a chance to connect and collaborate with a diverse group of people
• get useful, practical tips and support to apply immediately
• fun

Next café is on Feb 25 @ the Downtown Association. Read more and register.

Topics from the last two sessions:

1. End of road discussions – requests for assistance outside of our capacity
2. How to create more chances between each other to collaborate?
3. How to handle marketing multiple services?
4. How to prioritize projects?
5. How to manage committees as clients?

And… the results:

End of road discussions – requests for assistance outside of our capacity

Key takeaways:

• Make it clear what can and can’t be done, in a friendly way. FAQs are useful, provide information in form of scenario/response.
• Not all customers can be served and satisfied. It’s ok to choose who your customers are.
• Choose not to listen to ongoing complaints – set boundaries

How to create more chances between each other to collaborate

How to manage marketing multiple services (or, how to gain focus and traction when dealing with many choices)

How to prioritize

Attributes to prioritize on

Key takeaways:

• Decide on the prioritization attributes that matter, and use those to compare options. Profit, capacity, deadlines are a few examples.
• Give yourself breathing room to be able to make choices, to re-prioritize as needed
• Don’t try to please everyone! Making choices means choosing not to do some things, or to delay responding to requests until more important stuff is taken care of.

How to work with clients who decide everything by committee

Ideas for working with committees

Problem: committees taking too long to make decisions, or re-visiting decisions again and again, thus delaying project and value, increasing cost.

Ideas:

• Find a lever to motivate decisive action: project cost, schedule, or scope reduction due to increase costs and delays.
• Set up contracts to provide incentive to collaborate. There are examples of Agile contracts that do this, encouraging both sides to work as a team to deliver faster, reduce cost and increase value.

At this café, we came up with 3 topics, and got through two:

Bill Murphy shared his situation, with sales agents working individually in various parts of Canada, and a desire to have them as a group better share ideas, build camaraderie and feel connected. Listen to his 1 minute video summary for what we came up with:

About Agility Café

The Agility Café happens every Friday at Dish, 12 – 1:15 pm. Register here to get one of the limited seats. Drop-ins welcome too.

We eat business obstacles for lunch. What’s in your way of delivering more value, at higher quality, with wayyyy more fun?

Format is simple. Come with a topic or two in mind or just an open mind. We’ll brainstorm at the beginning all the topics people want to discuss, then prioritize them. We’ll try and get through as many as we can. Learn from each other, and get your caffeine fix. When it’s over, it’s over.

This is a free event, an experiment in informal coaching and mentoring, and building community.

Agility Café has found its home! Fridays at noon at the Dish. Last week we tackled two issues raised at the café:

• how to avoid becoming too overwhelmed
• how to nurture the creative process (though we discovered a deeper underlying need)

You can watch short 2 min summaries of both discussions below, starring the lovely Darren Jorgensen.

The café this Friday is the last one this month, sadly as I will be away the following two Fridays. If you have something you want help with, or just want to get out of the office, then come out and join us this week.

RSVP for Café #4 on Friday, Jan 14 @ 12 pm, or just show up.

Jessica and Darren

Jennifer Wendling from Fuzed Notions and Darren Jorgensen with his partner from Molly Media Studios joined me last Friday for warm eats and dialogue at the 2nd ever Business Agility Café. It was as fun as productive since Jennifer and Darren know each other so well. Darren was beaming at how reducing multitasking is helping Molly Media get more stuff done, something he learned about at the Business Agility workshop a couple of weeks ago.

Topics we covered:

1. From Jennifer: how to decrease time from completing projects to getting invoices out? Some of Jennifer’s projects take one or even two months before the invoice goes out, creating cash flow issues and awkwardness asking for payments well after the project is done. We quickly recognized that there are many steps in the process, with Jen involved in most of them, leading to delays. I left Jen with the task of documenting the workflow from project completion to invoice sent to see visually what is happening and how long each step takes. A favourite quote of mine is you can’t manage what you can’t see.
2. From Darren: using a task board for video production projects. We discussed adding checklists for each status of a task, so that a task cannot move from one status to another. Looking forward to seeing photos!
3. From Darren: how to find a sustainable pace – too much work leading to burnout. Darren’s new studio will be ready in then new year (yay!) making it less tempting to do work from home (when the equipment isn’t there). I talked about how time boxes and Scrum can create a rhythm and flow that provides the confidence to know when things will get done, lessening the need to work around the clock due to worry about uncertainty.
4. From Darren and Jennifer: how to reduce feast or famine cycles. Jennifer made some excellent points about nurturing relationships on an ongoing basis, keeping in contact with people so they think of you when a need for your services arises. Most of all Jennifer drove home the need for a marketing plan, so these activities align with company goals and are baked into the work plan instead of being starved for time. Good points that I took home with me!

Having done two of these cafés now, in the spirit of inspect and adapt, I’m planning to make the following improvements for future cafés:

1. At the start, give returning participants a brief chance to update others on their experiments since the last café. Participants can use the Business Agility group to provide more-indepth information if they want to.
2. Provide concept maps for people to jot down information as it’s discussed. Concept maps are a visual tool useful for capturing small bits of information in relation to each other. Writing down helps to retain learned information.
3. Record and publish a video summary of each topic discussed, with new insights gained and planned next steps.
4. Use the last 10 minutes to reflect on what we learned, the format and next steps for each participant.

Would you like to join us for the next Business Agility Café? Join the Business Agility group to be notified when the next one will be scheduled in the new year. It’s a low-volume email list for sharing and supporting each other in our experiments to increase value for our clients, our teams, ourselves and the world. What more reasons do you need?

Today a few of us from last week’s Business Agility workshop gathered at Dish to tackle issues getting in our way to delivering more value for ourselves, our companies and the clients we serve.

The format is simple: bring a topic or two you want help with, together we’ll prioritize them and tackle them in order of importance to the group. When the owner of the topic is satisfied with the response, we move on to the next one.

For our first gathering, we had 3 excellent topics:

At the end, everyone rated the hour from 1 to 10 on a value received scale and shared what would have garnered a perfect score. Everyone scored high. The only improvement offered was one person’s wish to be more prepared with questions. All in all, a great first experiment.

Want to come to the weekly Agility Café? Contact Gerry to be put on the mailing list.

Food tip: the eggplant peanut soup at Dish pure awesomesauce

Reposted from the Sault Ste. Marie Innovation Centre web site:

Join the Sault Ste. Marie Innovation Centre on Monday  November 29, 2010 for the Business Agility Workshop. This full-day workshop will be held at the Algoma Water Town Inn from 9:00 am until 4:30 pm. The cost to attend is $100, however if you register by November 17 you can take advantage of our early-bird discount and pay just $50.

Learn how to accelerate business performance by:

• Eliminating bottlenecks to increase productivity
• Embracing change for competitive advantage in an increasingly fast-paced world
• Fostering creativity and innovation in the workplace
• Delivering higher value faster by focusing on what is most important
• Cultivating a motivated and happy workforce.

The workshop will feature interactive and hands-on learning exercises, focused instruction on techniques, time to discuss unique challenges, and practical tools and knowledge that you can begin using in your workplace immediately.

This workshop normally has a value of $400, but is being made available here for $100.
Register by November 17 – You can save even more with our early-bird discount and pay just $50.

Download the registration form here

OR

Register by contacting:

Angie Wagner: (705)942-7927 ext. 3133 or awagner@ssmic.com

Workshop facilitators:

Gerry Kirk helps organizations and groups self-organize to generate creative and innovative work spaces for higher productivity and happier environments. He works as a coach, trainer and consultant, specializing with small medium enterprises and distributed environments. Before coaching Gerry spent 10 years as a developer, QA manager, then project manager. His passion is building a community where everyone can reach their true potential and together create astonishing results. Locally, that includes Ignite Sault, Soo Podcamp and on a bigger scale Change Camp Sault.

Selena Delesie: Selena Delesie is a coach, trainer and consultant who runs her own company, Delesie Solutions. She has more than 10 years of experience in the software industry, primarily coaching, leading and managing for a broad-range of leading-edge technologies. Selena facilitates the evolution of good teams and organizations into great ones, using individualized and team-based coaching and interactive training experiences. She is an active speaker, participant and leader in a variety of software associations and conferences. Links to Selena’s published works, blog, website and contact information can be found at www.selenadelesie.com.

Agile 2010 is just around the corner, and I’m doing a little happy dance as this is the first time I’m leading a session at a major conference. Yeah, that rocks, and I’m team up with the talented and equally good looking Michael Sahota.

Agile 2010 Session: Look before you leap – Agile readiness assessments done right
When: Thursday, 1:30 pm (90 minutes)
Level: Expert
Who should come: Geared to experienced coaches hired to help new clients transition to Agile

Why attend?

A common approach to help get clients started with Agile is to undertake a readiness assessment to:

1. Understand current challenges and goals
2. Understand the environment and technical practices
3. Decide what techniques (Scrum, Kanban, collocation, pairing, etc) might be suitable
4. Build a plan with them of what a transition to Agile might look like

Unfortunately there is very little written about how to go about this. Hence, this knowledge-sharing workshop to define this better.

The workshop involves active participation so come ready to share your experiences and learn from others.

Workshop road-tested

We’ve overhauled the session twice, after taking it on the road to Agile CoachCamp Canada and running a condensed online session. We’ve discovered that what coaches like more than anything else is a chance to connect and share stories, so we’ll provide ample opportunity for that, and the connections to keep the conversation going afterwards.

The photos are from the online workshop. The final product was a collection of specific activities coaches are already using. Given how much was done in a short time virtually, we’re anticipating a huge wall of collected wisdom at the conference!

Reasons given why coaches conduct readiness assessments (click to view larger)

Assembled bag of tips and tricks for assessments (click to view larger)

Learning Outcomes

• Have a clear understanding of assessment objectives and purpose
• Leave with a variety of experienced-based approaches to assessments, understanding strengths and weaknesses of each, as determined by participants
• Become aware of challenges and pitfalls, and steps to mitigate them
• Have greater confidence in conducting your next assessment
• Expand your connections with others doing assessments

There are lots of great sessions in the program on agile adoption, ranging from specific approaches to case studies. This workshop is the only one specifically on how to get started with an engagement by using an Agile assessment.

We do plan to post the results of the workshop, possibly in an e-book, so come contribute your knowledge and become famous.

P.S. This post is also on the Agile 2010 Community web site, which I put together to help people share, connect, organize. You can promote your session there too.

Community and Sacred Spaces within the Agile community. This is a topic close to my heart and one that I am considering proposing for the Agile 2010 conference. I don’t have a format figured out yet. I’m looking for like-minded souls to say a) this is a good idea and b) help me flesh out the concept. I’m open to co-presenting with anyone.

Yves Hanoulle is asking a question each day for people to think about, through his @Retroflection Twitter account. Each day someone is invited to respond, and today I have been asked to answer:

What does being a team really mean (as opposed to the way the word is often misapplied)

To “be a team” in my experience, means to:

• Share goal(s), to have a common purpose for working together
• Commit collectively to getting work done, in a spirit of collaboration
• Respect each other’s differences
• Trust that each person is competent, will raise issues and follow through on commitments
• Have the courage to remove obstacles in the team’s path, including resolving conflicts within the team

Those familiar with Scrum will notice my team attributes are based on the 5 core Scrum values.

These attributes are not easy to attain. It takes time to become a team, and a lot of hard work. Just ask my wife.

Now it is your turn to answer: what does being a team mean to you?

Look around you. Things don’t have to be this way. – Jerry Weinberg, session leader at AYE

Relaxing. Welcoming. Insightful. Practical. Intimate. Grounded. Those were a few of the words uttered last night by some first-time participants at the AYE conference. One person remarked, “[At the end of the conference] I woke up late for my taxi ride to the airport, and was in danger of missing my flight. Normally that would have upset me, but strangely I remained calm.”

AYE is an interactive, small conference focused on people skills and human dynamics (my words). To learn more, I decided to interview myself on the trip home. Here is the (mock) transcript:

Q. Why did you decide to attend AYE Gerry?

I attended the pre-conference session, where I had to answer that question with a drawing, so here it is. Before the conference, I chose a Frisbee to represent who I wanted to be at the conference: active, engaged, giving and taking, being open to wherever I’m directed, having fun. My hope was to be changed personally, to grow in people skills, and in turn impact myself, family, teams and the world. I’m at the point in my Agile coach journey where I realize practices only get teams and individuals so far. Hyper productivity comes not through better processes and tools, but through changed minds and hearts. My logic-driven, analytical mind needs a counterpart to work effectively with people.

Q. What resonated most with you?

Systems thinking

Esther Derby’s systems thinking simulation. This helped me gain a better understanding of the environment teams work in, and what might be impediments / opportunities to bring about desired change. Through a simple scenario of a company making pinwheels, we uncovered many levers for change. Levers come in 3 flavours: containers, differences and exchanges. Borrowing from the HSD Institute definitions

• A container holds a system together as its parts interact to form system-wide patterns. Containers can be physical (team room, office), organizational (departments), or pyschological.
• The significant differences within the container focus the resources of the system and establish the emerging patterns. Some differences matter, some do not. Hair colour probably not that important. Focus on the ones that matter. Look at
• Exchanges among the agents within the container allow for individual and system-wide evolution of new learnings and patterns. Translation: look at the flow of things: resources, language (written/verbal), energy, knowledge, ideas, authority, responsibility, within and between containers.

Building rapport: structuring your conversations

On Tuesday night I had felt some disappointment that I hadn’t had more in-depth conversations with people at the conference. This is partly my own personality weaknesses, so I resolved to work on that for the remainder of the conference. Wouldn’t you know it, the next morning I wandered into Johanna’s structured conversations session, heard her 3 minute what-you’ll-learn pitch and it was as if she was talking directly to me.

I learned the value of building rapport, of connecting on a personal level with someone. Without rapport, you’ll struggle to get to more substantive discussion. My tendency is to want to dive in right away.

People come in many flavours, 16 actually

Underpinning the conference sessions are the work of Virginia Satir, and the Myers-Briggs personality types. Types describe people’s preferences in

• where they get their energy from (extrovert / introvert)
• how they gather information (sensing / intuiting)
• how they evaluate information (thinking / feeling)
• and how they act (judging / perceiving)

My wife will benefit more than anyone from my greater appreciation and respect for people whose preferences are different than mine. I’d like to think I will be more accepting of those differences now. Time will tell.

Meeting Jerry

Two months ago I didn’t know who Jerry Weinberg was. Since then, people have shared how much his writings and workshops have influenced their lives. I valued Jerry Weinberg’s words of wisdom, his challenging questions and quick wit humour. His sessions were shaped more like counseling sessions between himself and a willing participant, with the rest of us listening in, like a reality TV therapy episode. Perhaps the lack of full group engagement was due to his weakening health.

Q. What surprised you?

Most of the participants came from Europe, or so it seemed. Majority of people were there to experience Jerry Weinberg, someone I didn’t know about two months ago. I’m glad I had the chance to be touched by his presence and wise words.

No one except big hotels and fancy homes have green grass. Yards consist of dirt, rocks and cacti.

You can see dry desert, canyons, mountains, forest and snow within 2 hours’ drive of Phoenix.

Q. Was it all good or were some parts meh?

Some simulations felt too abstract to teach me anything. The Satir congruence model didn’t resonate, nor did the session on the Satir change model, which turned into a mini rumble. Felt too meta. Saddened fancy hotels don’t know what vegetarian means, no different than every other non-vegetarian place. When I organize my first conference lentils, beans and tofu shall rule.

Q. Gerry, is there anything else you would like the world to know?

Thank-you to Esther, Steve, Don, Jerry and Johanna (wherever you are standing) for having the courage to be the change you wanted to see 10 years ago by creating AYE. This will not be my last AYE experience.

Everyone at the conference who expressed interest in couch surfing should go there RIGHT NOW and sign up. No excuses. I had a great time staying with Joel and his family, including taking a tour of the country side.

Last Sunday, I had one of my most rewarding experiences as an agile coach. This wasn’t with a software team, as I normally work with, but with a small group of adult friends longing to belong to a vibrant faith community.

For a long time I have been disappointed and discouraged at the lost potential within church congregations, at the hunger for real community left unsatisfied. Most people attending church are not active nor engaged. A few people are doing a lot of work, much of which is not resonating and thrilling. It’s time to re-imagine how we in a faith community want to be in relation to one another, what we want to strive for together. We must take responsibility to create a healthy, vibrant community. For those who gathered on Sunday, this was the first tiny step on that journey.

Agile thinking and the Scrum framework have shown me that the processes and control structures we use greatly influence the values embraced and outcomes achieved. For our session I wanted to avoid it turning into a long rant of everything that is perceived wrong with the current situation. For me the goals of the session were:

1. to find common ground across our individual experiences
2. to establish a vision for the faith community experience we long for
3. and to identify some steps needed to work towards that vision

After a hearty potluck meal, we began by sharing in a few words why we came and what we hoped to get out of our session. I then introduced the Remember the Future game, one of Enthiosys‘ Innovation Games. The game helps people to define an end ‘product’ by looking at the steps in reverse. As humans we find it easier to understand and describe a future event from the past tense over a possible future event, even if neither even has occurred.

I asked everyone to pretend it’s a year from now, October 2010. were part of a vibrant faith community. Describe what it looks like. Jot down steps that were needed to get there. Each item was written on a separate sticky note. After 10 min of brainstorming we posted our stickies on flip chart paper and looked for emerging themes. From that process, four groups emerged. Taking the time to label each group brought deeper awareness of what matters to us in a vibrant faith community.

People became more comfortable sharing and participating as the evening progressed. I had hoped to continue the evening with the Sailboat game, a variation of the Speed Boat Innovation Game. This exercise would help us identify obstacles and opportunities towards reaching our goal of a vibrant community. Since time was running out and our kids were no longer interested in the movie they were watching, we skipped that and finished with an exercise to determine what to do next.

Circle of Questions is a retrospective activity from the book Agile Retrospectives by Diana Larsen and Esther Derby. In this activity, the group sits in a circle, and going around the circle, each person takes a turn asking a question to the person on their immediate left. The question can be about anything they like (barring anything offensive or attacking). The person to the left answers the question to the best of their ability, and then they ask the person to their left any other question (or the same question if they feel they’d like a better answer). This continues until the allotted time is up, or until you have gone around the entire circle twice, whichever comes last. (Thanks to John Wilger for the writeup)

The goal for our activity was to decide what to do next. What transpired was a deep sharing of desires, needs, struggles and hopes. Four guys being vulnerable to one another, listening attentively as each person took their turn. No fluffy stuff, no lighthearted chit-chat. This was a taste of that vibrant community we seek.

So what’s next? I plan to invite another group of people to go through the same exercises, and slowly build a group motivated and empowered to reach our goal. We’ll gather everyone together in about a month, again around a shared meal, and start to discuss community models already out there. Hopefully each gathering will contain the elements of lives connected, spiritual partnership, bonding mission and positive power.

This small experiment was a moving, powerful experience and we were only a group of 4. Imagine if this was done on a big scale with a congregation. We might find the shared vision and motivation to make a vibrant community a reality. I remain hopeful and determined, feeling called to use the gifts from Agile coaching to transform both places of work and worship.

Nurse, what am I supposed to remove again?

A recent study shows that surgical errors are reduced by a whopping 40% by using a simple tool: the checklist. The checklists focus on what to do before, during and after the surgery.

The state of Michigan alone reckons they save 1,500 lives a year and $200 million (in malpractice suits – joke).

I’ve found that teams also forget some of the little but essential steps which creates waste through increased mistakes and delays. Lists are especially helpful for teams and product owners who are transitioning to the Agile process. So today I created some Scrum ceremony reminder lists to help the team I am coaching and I’m making them available for anyone to use under a Creative Commons license. Let me know how they can be made better.

View and download Scrum ceremony reminder lists

Update Sept 29: Reformatted lists to print on 3 sheets of paper, 0.5″ top and bottom margins. You can print all your check lists for one sprint except for the stand up meeting on one double-sided sheet of paper.