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

Moose on Writing

The "Moose" on Writing, part-1

The "Moose" on Writing, part-1

I remember is as if it was yesterday. It was 2000 – 2001. I was working at Lucent (Bell Labs) at the time when the telecommunications bubble burst and I was laid off from my job. Along with thousands of others across the industry. 

Lucent had a development center on the campus of NC State here in Raleigh, NC. There were ~300 folks that worked there and we were all let go.

But it was a protracted departure, as the process took about 3-months for everyone to pack up and leave the building in waves. I was one of the leaders who stayed until the very end and turned off the lights. Lucky me.

I had a lot of idle time and I started to write a book to fill that space. It wasn’t something I’d planned, but it was a topic that I had some passion around (and thoughts to share). The book became Software Endgames, which was eventually published by Dorset House in 2004.

Since then, I’ve self-published three books related to agile topics. One of them, Scrum Product Ownership, is in it’s 3’rd Edition.  

People often ask me for advice around writing. Usually, it’s related to how to get started. Sometimes the discussion is around their ambition to write a book. While I don’t consider myself an expert in either space, I decided to share my learnings in this 3-part article series. I hope you find some value in it.