I was working for a small company that was acquired a few years ago. Soon after the acquisition was finalized, our senior VP invited his new boss to come visit us and meet with some of the leaders of our organization. I was invited to that meeting and introduced as someone who had been leading the agile transformation within our group. I remember shaking this guys hand and thinking he was probably some sort of ex-college football player. He was enormous, sporting a giant smil

One of the things that has challenged me the most working with groups of people is the following statement from the Agile Manifesto: We have come to value individuals and interactions over processes and tools. You see, the reality is that when I’m consulting, I almost always seem to end up talking about processes and tools. I talk to teams about scrum (process). I talk to teams about kanban (process). I talk about task boards (tools) and facilitation techniques (tools). I tal

What kind of environment would best suit a swarming team? I just stumbled across something called the SOLE toolkit while researching this topic. SOLE stands for Self-Organized Learning Environment. It’s designed for children (start ’em young) and provides instructions for setting up this special learning environment. The kit recommends the following: One computer per 4 kids A whiteboard Paper and Pens A name tag I love this! So our self organizing work environment is configur

No one wants advice, only collaboration. – John Steinbeck Imagine you are working as part of a team on a project. One day your manager approaches you and says, “There is this really high priority project that has come up and we need you and your expertise on it. We are going to move you onto that team for the duration of the project. Is that OK with you?” How would you feel about that? I know how I would feel. I would feel jerked around. I would not feel in control or part of

What would make a project beautiful? What sort of aesthetic would we seek? Would would make a beautiful plan? What would make a beautiful backlog? What would make a beautiful team? What would make a beautiful delivery? I imagine it might be different for everyone… The Plan For me, a beautiful plan would be something that covers a wall of a team or war room. It would have requirements, wireframes, architectures, acceptance criteria, impediments. It would tell a graphic story o

I’m getting another lesson in “being present” with people. Specifically my 3 year old daughter. When I’m playing with her, she demands my absolute, complete and undivided attention. Any distraction on my part is a punishable offense – usually by a rather irritated, “HELLO Daddy!” As a part time geek and full time father, I find this requirement to be completely “present and in the moment” often hard to satisfy. You see I’m really the typical introvert – often imagining I’m so

I’ve been dabbling with the idea of swarming and how it might relate to team organization in software development for a couple of years now. There are some great resources out there that provide tantalizing hints toward how we might create self organizing teams that are capable of “swarming” and solving problems rapidly.  After a while I realized that I wanted to find a way to create one of these self-organizing teams using principles similar to those we find in nature. What

At work everyone on the team have their own offices. It’s a pretty nice setup: lot’s of space, privacy – in short, it really doesn’t get much better in terms of individual space. However, the offices are scattered about the building and they definitely create barriers to certain kinds of communication. It has all sorts of interesting side effects. For example: currently, people will call into a meeting from their office, even if the meeting room is 10 feet down the hall. I ha