Agile Otter Blog

Amitai Schlier and Ryan Ripley conducted a session at Big Apple Scrum Day entitled "the care and feeding of T-shaped people" which was essentially a panel discussion taking questions from the audience. I have trouble shutting up. If you know me, you know what a struggle it is. Sometimes I have to sit on my hands to keep from over-participating in a conversation (metaphorically). Here are the questions: How do we get a developer to try something new? How do you know if you've stopped growing? How do you convince management to agree with you? Is there a stigma against T-shaped people when it comes to hiring? How do you choose a subject to go in-depth on? How do you optimize your paint-brushed-ness? How do you get team members to share knowledge? How deep do you go before it's just self-serving? How do you get a whole team to work on something that's new to all of them? How do you convince people wide is as important as deep? How do you persuade som...

Haunted?  I once knew a woman who confided that she lived with the disapproving, exhausting ghost of her long-dead mother. It was a disembodied voice in her head that wouldn't let her go to bed without the house in perfect order. All dishes, dusting, sweeping, tidying had to be done or this "spirit" would not let her rest. In fact, she confided that she didn't enjoy doing any of these things; it was a constant fear of disappointing her mother that drove her frantically through endless, joyless chores. In a rather different vein, a friend of mine tells me that whenever he even considered any misbehavior he would hear the voice of his saintly grandmother, who he loved, reminding him that he knew better than to get involved with anything shady or "wrong." Rather than being tortured by this constant presence, he was comforted and aided by it. Occasionally, it was inconvenient, but honoring his grandmother was a pleasant and rewarding behavior he willingly ...