As last year, the UK Agile Coaches Gathering was both a great community-builder, and a total ideas-fest. In particular, Tobias Mayer (Presentation is not Facilitation) helped reinforce the poverty of presentation as a training technique, and Petra Skapa’s question about what we can learn from other coaching disciplines elicited some great stories about experiences of coaching and being coached.
Read the rest of this entry »
Diana Larsen recently tweeted about an ideal team being one which everyone can be a coach — a mutually coaching team. There’s an important corollary to this: such a team must be a team of people willing and able to be coached. Often not a characteristic of software developers (and — dare I say it — not as prevalent amongst coaches as we’d like it to be). Requires humility, a willingness to accept that someone else’s way of doing things might be better than yours, a readiness to learn (yes, maybe from someone younger than you, or who you consider to be less experienced) and to change.
At ScanDev 2010 last week, Kent Beck spoke about Software G Forces (slides from an earlier version of this talk are here. Observing that the move in our world is towards more and more frequent releases to users, Kent asked the question — what does this mean for our organisations? (agile in organisations this was the focus of the track - he said he’d tackled the implications for teams and team practices in earlier versions of the talk).
Coaching doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and it isn’t purposeless. I’ve found it useful to think about coaching in terms of goals, and in particular what kinds of goals we can establish.
I spent a fair amount of time last year participating in, and running, games of one sort or another. It’s always interesting introducing games into a team or organisation: you run the risk of appearing “out to lunch”, and you can’t, in the end, force a group to have fun and learn at the same time. You need to be sensitive as to what will work with a particular team, and maybe more to the point find a context to introduce a game or simulation where it makes sense as part of a team’s practices. Retrospectives are clearly a good place to start, as are any more-or-less formal workshops or training sessions you’re running.
Read the rest of this entry »
The improv day for agile coaches was a blast - many thanks to all who came, and special thanks to Tom Salinsky for inspiring teaching, and Mike Sutton for helping organise the day.
Blogging from the Munich Scrum Gathering, so here’s a rare Scrum-focussed blog, though (of course) there’s a lot here that parallels other thinking in the Agile and Lean world. The Scrum Picture is Wrong: well, not wrong, but incomplete. Misleadingly, dangerously incomplete. It’s easier to say it’s just wrong, and this is why.
Read the rest of this entry »
As you’ll know if you’re reading here, I’ve become excited by the way theatre Improv can inspire us as agile coaches. One direct result of this is a day-long workshop I’m organising with Mike Sutton through the UK Agile Coaches Gathering, which will be run by Tom Salinsky. We’re working with Tom on structuring the day around ideas and outcomes directly relevant to coaching practice: collaboration, innovation, status and influence. It’s going to be entertaining, fun, inspiring and useful, and it’s a snip at £65.00 for the day. Saturday 21 November, Highgate, London: more details here.
This year, amongst the places I’ve eaten, two stand out for their kitchens. We’ve the impression - from the occasional glimpse through those swinging doors, or from Gordon Ramsay and his like on TV, that kitchens are noisy, busy, chaotic places, but these two restaurants (and I’m sure many others) prove that it doesn’t have to be so.
What sort of conversations can you have with your organisation about software development practice and process? By which I mean not only – what do you talk about – but just as importantly, what do you bring to the conversation that affects how you frame the discussion, and how do you improve its chances of creating lasting change?
Read the rest of this entry »
| Thursday 8 July, 1.00: Flute + Guitar recital with Mike Copperwhite, at St Mary le Bow, Cheapside, London. Tangos, American folksong, and my own Little Suite on the programme. |
| SPA2010 (London, May 16-19) was a blast - thanks to all who came, led sessions, helped organise. Some blog reflections here and here . |
| CATeams unleashed! With partners Ben Fuchs and Joseph Pelrine, I'm proud to announce the launch of CATeams, an innovative approach to improving team performance. Read more here. |