Safe to fail, naughty or just a mistake

I am an agile guy now so I believe in things like psychological safety, “safe to fail” and trusting people. Just like all agile coaches, I am a nice guy and I believe everyone else is too. So I let people try new things, they make mistakes and we are pretty happy about it all, […]

Using the options generator for conflict resolution

The options generator is a tool that someone taught me a long time ago, to be used as an innovation idea generator. Basically you are supposed to find 2 people and have them share some things that they are good at, then you ask them to identify how they can combine their strengths to come […]

Backing away from agile, the wrong lens

I have already explored two reasons that might lead people give up on agile. The first was losing their focus on being good at what they do and the second was implementing agile approaches as a goal rather than a means to an end. This time I thought I would look at another common situation […]

Why are people backing away from agile (theory 2) – who is the tool?

I recently ran a coaching session for a team who have been adopting agile. They were struggling to gain value from some of the practices and felt a little guilty, but I was impressed with how they collaborated, focused on what mattered and took accountability for delivery. I told them that they were actually pretty […]

Agile starting in kindergarten?

Earlier this year my daughter came to work with me. Although she was only 6 years old at the time, she came to co-deliver a day in the agile coaching course that I was running. It was interesting to watch as she explained the growth mindset, “golden conversations” and the importance of mixing both persistence […]

Basic feedback

I was running a course for agile team facilitators and coaches and we discussed “giving feedback.” It turned out that everybody was giving feedback but some of the crew were not confident that they were doing it well. I mentioned this to the crew in another course and people again mentioned that this was a […]

Agile versus knowledge part one – stories are great

Last week I gave a talk for business analysts in Sydney on “documentation for agile teams” My talk did not really contain anything too radical, but it did draw a reasonable crowd, with 80 business analysts making time to come after a full day of work. So why did 80 people turn up when, being […]