According to management theory, we all do a better job if we have a clear understanding of our role and what value it is adding to the team and the organisation. We also find work more satisfying when this is the case.
But quite often the role profile, position description and annual performance agreement become more of a burden than a source of job satisfaction.
Today I ran a workshop on workshops and predictably one of the things we did was brainstorming. But one of the participants was a little bit bored with putting post-it notes on the wall, so we replaced our standard brainstorming with “what would someone else do””. This approach can work really well in either a coaching session or a workshop. The idea is that if we already knew what to do about something there would be no issue and no need for coaching or a workshop. So rather than asking “what can we do” and being stuck with our usual thinking … Continue reading The “what would someone else suggest” technique
I am running a workshop workshop today – a workshop on workshops. Actually I am running a training course for some experienced facilitators and the course is about how to run workshops better. So I have been reviewing conflict management techniques, ways of engaging un-engaged participants and issue resolution techniques. Interestingly I have just noticed (yet again) that some of the workshop techniques (affinity diagrams and speed dating for example) work for both mitigating “strong personalities” and influencing the “passengers” to stop sitting back and start contributing. Then I decided to throw in the question compass some abstract/concrete thinking and … Continue reading How do you mean?
There are now three versions of my agile release planning game so I thought I would add them to the site so people can download them directly: The original version The basic game covers release planning and also the challenge of planning for new features, fixing defects and being impacted by technical debt. It works well when leading discussions about velocity charts, replanning and technical debt. The latest version The game has evolved as people play it and redesign it. This is probably the most playable and latest version of the full game … with thanks to Philippe Krutchen https://philippe.kruchten.com/articles/mtm/ … Continue reading Agile release planning game downloads
James King 