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

Hero

My Heroes: Henrik Kniberg

My Heroes: Henrik Kniberg

It’s been a while (October 2018) since I’ve written about one of my heroes. I started that series in 2017 and I think it’s worth continuing. So, I wanted to get at least one “out there” in 2019. And I can’t think of a better person to highlight in that capacity than Henrik Kniberg.

I’ve never met Henrik and that’s one of the great gaps or regrets in my agile career. I’m quite hopeful that one day I’ll get the chance to meet him, face-to-face, and simply thank him for the influence that he’s had on my journey.

I remember when I was a much younger coach. There weren’t a whole lot of useful agile references around to help me in my coaching. I forget exactly when it was, but a young man wrote a book called Scrum and XP from the Trenches and he made the PDF of that book freely available.

I grabbed a copy and was astounded. It was in a word:

  • Short, Practical, Pragmatic

  • Visual, Useful, Real-world

  • Experiential, Understandable, and Approachable

And I made it a part of my coaching practice. I think the year was ~2005 when it first surfaced. He published it on InfoQ in 2007, and there is now a 2’nd Edition of it available.