Have you struggled to convince the ‘powers that be’ that your organization should make the move to agile? While the benefits seem obvious to ‘us’, it often seems like ‘they’ just don’t get it. Are our business leaders stupid? Usually, the answer is no. They simply have a different perspective, language, and set of values.
On Wednesday, I’m doing a presentation on doing presentations. One of the little gems that I was looking forward to passing on was Lucky Oliver. It has been my favorite source for images for presentations and the web. The quality and variety of the images has been consistently great, and the prices were more than affordable. Today I discovered that Lucky Oliver will be closing down on May 15th. I’m sad to be losing this source for great photos, and sad to see the business fail. Best of luck to Bryan, and everyone else at Lucky Oliver.
Now where am I going to get my images? Any suggestions?
Cheers,
Greetings!
I’m back home, in the San Francisco Bay Area, after a couple of weeks on the road. I went to Chicago for the Scrum Gathering, where I presented Agile 101, and What Makes Agile Projects Succeed (or Fail)? I also facilitated a couple of open space sessions. Notes from one of those, Let’s Practice Agile Estimation, can be found here on the Agile Alliance Wiki.
OK, this isn’t really from the Technical Management Institute (now Agile Learning Labs), but I think it sets a high bar for computer-based learning.
Cheers,
Greetings from the 2008 Chicago Scrum Gathering! On Monday I led two sessions: Agile 101, and What Makes Agile Projects Succeed (or Fail)? I also led a session on agile estimation in the open space portion of the conference.
Almost 50 people gathered to consider the question: What Makes Agile Projects Succeed (or Fail)? In under an hour and a half, we generated and ranked about 50 ideas. Here, in order, are the things that this group felt had the biggest impact on the success of the agile projects that they have been involved with. You can compare this list with generated by previous groups here, here, and here.
Greetings from the 2008 Scum Gathering!
At 9:00 AM this morning I was surprised to see about 25 more-or-less bright shinny faces in the room for Agile 101. I was even more surprised as people continued to trickle in until the room, setup for 50, was at capacity. Wow!
Many thanks to all who came out and participated.
Cheers,
I promised more detail about One-on-Ones. Over time, I’m planning to cover each item on my One-on-One agenda. As a refresher, here is my agenda for a half-hour One-on-One meeting:
I am finally getting around to doing my taxes. I went out and bought Turbo Tax Home and Business, installed it, and started working. At a certain point in the process, Turbo Tax crashes. Bleh! I fire it back up and try again, same crash same place. I click the “Tell Intuit about this problem” button. It comes back with a link to a ‘fix’.
When people are talking to you, are you really listening? Or are you starting to think about what you are going to say next? Are you sure you understand their meaning when you hear their words? Language lends itself to misunderstanding as easily as understanding. This makes for great comedy, unless the joke is at the expense of you and your team.
The Engineering Managers Support Group is meeting tonight!
Our topic: Active Listening.
Of course, we will also have our round-table discussion session, where you can get input from your peers on the challenges you are facing managing engineers. There will be yummy Thai food, and the usual assortment of beverages. All this, and it’s still free!