Agile Otter Blog

I was telling Esther Derby about a little trick I worked out some time ago at one of my clients. The retrospectives had gone stale, with team members offering the same "we should..." list iteration after iteration.  I suspected that they didn't feel that they really had the authority or permission to change their process for the better. I had a good relationship with the CIO and wandered into his office. I said, "we have some changes we want to make, and they won't really cost any money or affect other departments, and I just wondered if you think it would be okay to do them."  The CIO looked at me incredulously, "Of course. That's a silly question to ask." "Alright, then there is this other change.  It might take a few man days out of each iteration, but it will be helpful for the team.  Would that be okay?"  He sighed, "If it's a few man days per iteration, we can afford that. Go ahead and take that time. You don'...

They're here! Now that I have extra decks of Agile In A Flash ,  I want to give them away in person as a door prize or in a contest of some sort.  The problem is that I'm located in the far NW 'burbs of Chicagoland.  I can get to Chicago or I can get to Milwaukee, maybe out to Rockland or some points in-between.  Invite me, and I'll see what I can do! I love hanging out with software developers of all types but prefer the meetings to be about agile, some programming language, or Linux.  I might even score some other goodies to hand out. Talk to me. If you want to talk to me about coaching your team, I might bring a copy to the interview, but I want the community to have dibs.