Personal Thoughts
Robert Galen
We've Moved
We've Moved
Walking Their Talk, Sustainability, Inspiration
Robert Galen
Sustainability

I saw this wonderfully courageous and informative post by Sabine Canditt the other day where she wrote about Sustainable Scrum. 

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/sustainable-scrum-responsible-choice-sabine-canditt-x0gef

After just completing a The Week program facilitated by the amazing Ann-Marie Kong, it touched my heart.

That said, I wanted to highlight one comment reaction/interaction between Sabine and Erich Bühler 

Erich said—

Thank you for bringing this approach into the world! Scrum does provide an iterative approach for teams to create value, but its scope is limited to the product level and struggles with dynamics across the whole organization for several reasons.
Without updating the underlying business and financial model at a strategic level, Scrum alone cannot transform organization-wide sustainability.

Sustainability
Short-takes, Inspiration
Robert Galen
Sandy’s Take
Sandy’s Take
Short-takes, Personal Thoughts
Robert Galen
The Human Aspects of Agile Coaching
The Human Aspects of Agile Coaching
Coaching, ACGW, Personal Thoughts
Robert Galen
Keys to Building your Coaching Relationships

I talk a lot about the first step in coaching any client (individual, system, team, etc.) is to build a relationship, gain empathy and understanding, and then gain an idea of where/how to help initially. So, do NOT start to coach until you’ve done some relationship-building. 

But what does a coaching relationship, or a professional relationship in general, look like? What are aspects of that? Here are a few things that come to my mind—

  • Making + taking the time.

  • Explaining what you do—what is Agile Coaching.

  • Building some empathy; walking in their shoes; understanding where they are coming from.

  • Meeting them where they are.

  • Listening; reflective listening; building metaphors together.

  • Connecting with their language, not yours.

Keys to Building your Coaching Relationships

Diversity

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Finding a job as a Scrum Master without Experience

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Finding a job as a Scrum Master without Experience

I agreed to speak at a Scrum Masters of African Descent meetup group yesterday (Sunday, February 21st) in an Ask Me Anything / Fireside Chat format. One of the questions (and some of the reactions) has stayed with me. So, I thought I’d write this post to share some additional thoughts on one of the questions. Here’s the question—

If you don’t have any prior Scrum experience on your resume, how can you show companies that you are capable of doing the job?

My First Reaction

Let me start by saying this.

Finding and landing ANY job without direct experience is hard. Heck, looking for work WITH experience is hard. So, the first thing to think about in addressing this question is—it’s not going to be easy. And, you will get a lot of rejections. So,

  • Get your courage up;

  • Get your persistence up;

  • Get ready to work really hard at it…really hard;

  • And thicken your skin a bit.

Because it will be a bumpy ride. I’m not joking or trying to make it seem unattainable. It isn’t. It IS attainable, but it won’t be EASY!

Diversity & Inclusion – A Financial Decision?

I tossed whether to respond to this post or not because I know Perry Riggs and know how incredibly thoughtful and well-intentioned he is. But I kept coming back to wanting to respond, so here I am…

Perry shared this great post entitled—The Financial Imperative of Diversity & Inclusion.

It’s well written and makes a very good point. However, it inspired me to make another point. A “Yes, and…” to Perry’s, if you will.

Why don’t we simply consider Diversity & Inclusion to be—

  • A moral imperative?

  • The right and proper thing to do?

  • Long overdue?

  • A societal obligation?

  • Just plain, normal?

Regardless of the financial implications…

That’s how I see it.

Stay agile my friends,

Bob.

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Mad Scientist Diversity

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Mad Scientist Diversity

We were having a discussion in my Moose Herd the other day about aspects of diversity in constructing your agile organizations and teams. And there were three key themes that came out of the discussions that I’d like to share.

Teams are where the magic happens

I mentioned the work of the team is the value proposition. Leaders need to serve the teams and that includes how they recruit, hire, and onboard folks into the culture.

The true magic of agile teams is NOT in the organizational structure, or the leadership experience level, or in the detail of your project plans, or whether they’re practicing Scrum or Kanban.

Instead, it’s pulling together an empowered, cross-functional team that—

  • Has a focused mission or goal;

  • Have matured their agile mindset;

  • Have intentionally formed and established itself as a team;

  • Has a diversity of skills & experience to deliver on their mission;

  • Is strongly connected to the customer;

  • Has the organizational trust to meet their commitments.

Then create the cultural ecosystem where they are supported, trusted, challenged, mentored, and encouraged to succeed.

If you get the balance right between leadership and team accountability, then magic can happen.

Did we need a more diverse Agile Manifesto?

Did we need a more diverse Agile Manifesto?

My daughter Rhiannon is a social worker. And I’ve learned from her that my definition of diversity is much shallower than hers. She has a broad, deep, and nuanced view of it and I’m learning to appreciate hers and broaden my own. 

It’s just part of my ongoing efforts to challenge myself and learn.

That being said, it made me think differently the other day when I was reading the Agile Manifesto again. And it dawned on me that –

  • There are 17 signatories to the Manifesto

  • All 17 were men

  • All seemed to be at or approaching middle age at the time (probably well beyond by now)

  • All were white

  • All were software developers with the possible exception of Brian Marick (was he the token tester ;-)