Open Space Meeting Antwerp

Open Space Meetings are meetings where there is no previously defined agenda.  The participants define the agenda as the initial starting point of the meeting.  The pictures are from an open space meeting I went to in Antwerp hosted by the Agile Consortium. I and we came there to discuss the future of the agile consortium, and my (at the time) favorite item certification got enough attention, so it worked well for me.

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Was it ever worse after agile than before?

Things can always be better

I’ve never heard or seen agile fail in the sense that it was worse after agile than before.

I have however seen it fail in the sense things did not turn our as well as I would have liked to or would think possible.

Reasons for this are:
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Open Space Meeting Antwerp

Open Space Meetings are meetings where there is no previously defined agenda.  The participants define the agenda as the initial starting point of the meeting.  The pictures are from an open space meeting I went to in Antwerp hosted by the Agile Consortium. I and we came there to discuss the future of the agile consortium, and my (at the time) favorite item certification got enough attention, so it worked well for me.

[...]

Buying buns

Buying buns for me

Every Friday it was coffee time and it was my turn to buy buns for the entire department of which our project team was a small part. I had an appointment with the dentist and forgot all about it. My team, however, rose to the challenge when they (being less forgetful than I) realised I had missed it. A couple of team members went out and bought it for me. I got no remarks, no comments, they just did it. They had accepted that I was sometimes forgetful, but had other stronger points.

What is complementary leadership and empowerment about?

Being complementary [...]

The hurry up delivery

Open and Transparent

We got new business from New-Customer. Delivering Upgraded-System was supposedly very important. Management had a strong talk with the team, and we worked like h-ll sacrificing weekends and family for the good of our little company community.

So … in the end, we delivered on time and with outward looking good quality.

Just to notice that no one seemed to care. The functionality was not picked up and delivered to production. Suddenly things were not as important as they used to be. I later realized we had been [...]

A sweaty stinking friend

Anders, a dear colleague of mine, is quite frank and outspoken. Sometime a bit harsh perhaps (to me – not to clients), but I can always trust him to speak his mind. If I have misbehaved, been too unfriendly to him or someone else, I never get feedback later than within 24 hours. This builds trust. I know I can trust him, I know I’ll never get a knife stabbed in my back. I appreciate this greatly and it makes my relationship with him safe.

In his youth, during his university years, [...]

The logic of a sincere apology

Apologies are logical

So why is a sincere apology important? Aren’t apologies just for day care children learning to behave? Why is sometimes a sincere apology all that stands between conflict or non-cooperation and reconciliation? Are there any logical reasons? Why is this important in business relations?

About apologies

First, let’s re-visit the components of a sincere apology:

• Acknowledgement of error.  This includes understanding and sympathizing with the other person’s point of view with empathy.
• The words “I am sorry” or “please forgive me”.

And let’s re-visit an insincere apology:

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My first shot at Scrum Mastering

Years ago, we had lots of projects coming in and suddenly we were out of project managers.

I had been a techie for years, coding, designing and re-factoring the SAP-like system we were delivering to our customers. But, something in me said that it was time to try new things, so I raised my hand and said “I’d like to try”.

Now, being a somewhat outspoken and sometimes obstinate nerd, anyone could have thought to themselves that sending me to face customers was a risky endeavor. In fact, my manager’s manager could probably have written a medium sized report citing eons of reasons for why giving P-M the assignment was not a good idea. On top of that, we were very different types of persons, and from his point of view I must have been from Mars.

But, he said: “Sure, give it a go”.

So, I was given a chance. One reason [...]

An Amazing Day

Amazing Day

Today something amazing happened.  Something I thought to be about as unlikely as being hit by a meteorite and winning the lottery at the same time.

So, what was that?  Well … today someone said “forgive me” to me, and not just anyone.

It was not entirely straight forward and free of hints that I was somehow wrong too, but a “forgive me”. And still astonishing. It came from someone I thought could never say the word, so even a somewhat lame “forgive me” coming from that source was amazing and should make the news. It made my day.

In all the time I’ve known this person, [...]

I recently wrote a blog post about Self-organisation and Heat, based on the session by Joseph Pelrine at the Scrum gathering in Munich 2009. After some thoughts I realised there are further dimensions with useful analogies. Please note that all indications of degrees are in Celsius.

We all know that 35 degrees can sometimes be pleasant when in a hot shower or tub or at the beach. Even 70 to 80 degrees can be pleasant for a short while in a sauna. But 30 degrees at night when you want to sleep, can be very uncomfortable. Different types of heat are also very affective in cooking. For example electrical heat, gas heat, grill or water bade have great impact on the result of your cooking. And of course we should not forget the time factor, in all cases of human appreciation and result of cooking the time has a large impact.

By saying the above I want to point out; its not only the level of heat that influences the result. There are other dimensions like time, type and [...]

Haiku is a one verse short Japanese poem. These were written at a haiku workshop at the Munich Scrum Gathering October 2009. The haikus were created using mind-mapping techniques.

multi-coloured post-its
on the wall,
chewing gum

becoming the product owner
flinching,
stepping back