Rethinking New Year’s Resolutions for 2018
“This year,” says your friend (who’s never run a 5K), “I’m going to do a marathon.”
“Yeah? How are you going to do that?” you inquire, trying to sound polite and curious rather than incredulous.
“Well, I haven’t figured that out yet…but I’m looking at maybe Chicago or
Story Splitting in Hungarian (or, Hogyan daraboljuk a User Story-kat)
Thanks to Janos Facsko, Istvan Margetin, and Andrea Török of Sprint Consulting, my story splitting poster is now available in
“Growing Your Facilitation Skills” Slides
For those who were in my recent Agile Boulder or Agile Arizona sessions on “Growing Your Facilitation Skills,” here are the slides and handout to download.
How to Give Clear Instructions When Facilitating
It’s a classic facilitation blunder: You start giving instructions for an activity, and as you’re talking, people begin the activity. You try to reel in those eager participants so you can get the rest of your instructions out. Then, as everyone starts, you realize you forgot something important and need to get the group back
Ask A4A: Long-running Stories
Hi Richard,
My Scrum team has been working on a particular service for over a year. It’s been 20+ Sprints. I’m concerned about the deliverables and the rate at which we deliver. I have just put together some material for my stakeholders. I am pasting those slides here for your review. Do you mind reviewing
Making Info Visible for Better Decisions
A key part of the ScrumMaster’s or Product Owner’s job is making information visible.* Whether that’s a product backlog, taskboard, cumulative flow diagram, or a one-off visual for a specific need, good visuals lead to better decisions. Here are four principles for doing it
Talking About Our Feelings—Potentially Awkward, Definitely Important
Last week, I described how to do the observation step of Focused Conversation without having to talk about all the details. At this point, many facilitators would naturally want to guide the group through interpreting the data. But the Focused Conversation method prescribes another step in between:
Ask A4A: When the Observation Part of Focused Conversation Gets Boring
The Focused Conversation method asks us to start with observations before assigning labels – good, bad, effective, worthwhile, motivating, etc. In real-life facilitation, it can feel a little slow to start a retrospective with a simple “What happened this