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

Fixed Time & Scope

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You’re WRONG, Jeff!

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You’re WRONG, Jeff!

I saw this post from Jeff Gothelf.

https://medium.com/@jboogie/fixed-time-fixed-scope-projects-always-end-in-1-of-3-ways-none-of-them-good-9fa66e7d129e 

In which he says that Fixed Time & Scope projects end in one of 3-ways:

  1. We move the deadline

  2. We reduce scope

  3. We implement “crunch mode”, everybody puts in 80-hour weeks till the deadline, burns out, quits and goes to work somewhere else.

I want to respond to Jeff’s thoughts…

First, option #3 is was coined by Ed Yourdon as a Death March. I personally like the imagery that inspires.

Second, I agree 100% with his 3-alternatives. They seem almost as absolute as gravity in software projects.

But he goes on in the article to make the point that Product Management is primarily responsible for these problems.