Agile Coaching

Learning with Fist of Five Voting

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Fist of Five Voting is a deceivingly simple process you can use to check-in, learn, gain consensus, and/or vote to understand where people stand on an issue or idea.  I say deceivingly, because there is so much more you can learn about what is really happening in a team if you are paying attention.

I find there are many tools I (and others) use without being entirely sure of the idea’s origin. As I work on other articles, I realize some people may not be familiar with concepts such as Fist of Five Voting. So I’m working on building these ideas out to fill in those gaps. The source of Fist of Five is sometimes attributed to American Youth Foundation, however I can’t find a reference on their website.

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Lessons-Learned vs Project Retrospectives

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I wrote about agile team retrospectives in a recent article and find that the term retrospective can be used in many different ways. I’ve heard people ask, “Did you just change the name from lessons-learned to retrospective?” Although there are similarities, there are some key differences. Let’s review a few types and consider the issues with most lessons-learned meeting.

Release and Project Retrospectives

While agile team retrospectives  have a team focus on celebrating, learning, and improving their relationship on a regular basis, there are other types of retrospectives.

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Agile Area Rugs- Covering Opportunities with Longer Sprints?

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Will longer agile sprints or iterations cover up opportunities to improve and cause you to view these opportunities as unsolvable problems?

scrum masters with agile area rug

The typical agile sprint size is 2 weeks. What percentage of teams use 2 weeks?  I don’t have statistics on it, but I’d guess over 90%.  I’m working on a product where we are doing 1 week sprints.  It’s a startup and things are changing a lot so 1 week works well.  I also know some teams that use 3 week sprints and it is working for them.  I’m not saying it has to be a certain number of weeks – but please don’t kid yourself with what length will actually work for you.

I’ve seen situations where people are doing 3 week sprints, but then have a 1 week “hardening” sprint.  Personally, I’m not a big fan of hardening sprints.  I can see many “logical” arguments on why people need them, but in the 3+1 week sprints – I’d say stop kidding yourself.  You have a 4 week sprint!  Maybe that is the best you can do right now and you are ACTIVELY working to eliminate the hardening sprint – but if you believe you will always need one you are likely stuck.

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Thoughts on Professional Coaching

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I get a lot of questions about coaching – what is it, what do you mean by the word ‘coach’, is it the same as mentoring, is coaching just asking questions… and many more.

Who do you coach?

I coach people.  🙂   These may be individuals, pairs, couples, teams, organizations, or systems.

Can you tell me more about what the word Coach means to you? 

Professional Coaching is the Key to Learning and Finding New InformationThe word ‘Coach’  tends to have a lot of different uses.  When I talk about coaching, I am referring to professional coaching, which in the US, tends to be associated with standards laid out by the International Coaching Federation (ICF).  I view coaching as helping people find the internal wisdom to achieve their goals by moving beyond whatever is stopping them or slowing them down.  Coaching is NOT about telling people what to do or judging them – the coach may be an expert on “coaching” but is not the expert on the person or the goals they have.  This is concept is misunderstood by a lot of people.  A coach is not the person who says “do this” or “don’t do that”!  Coaching is always about the clients agenda – NOT the coach’s!   The coach relies on the client being fabulous, amazing, and wanting to move forward toward a goal!  That sounds over the top to some, but it really isn’t, it’s about having faith in the person!   The key is that as a coach, I need to fully believe that the person (or people or system) I am coaching has the wisdom to solve their challenges.  They might need some help in finding or accessing that wisdom or working through different options, but they can access the information to let them move forward!  This is not always an easy place to stand, but believing in the client is a fundamental part of professional coaching. It does not work without it.

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Overcoming Team Toxins – Agile Mile High 2013

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Thanks to everyone who attended Overcoming Team Toxins at Agile Mile High 2013 in Denver, Colorado yesterday! Co-presenting with Erin Beierwaltes from Skipstone Consulting was a blast!

For those of you who could not attend, our team toxin presentation is based on work by John Gottman Phd. He refers to the toxins as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse because of their ability to wreak havoc on relationships (teams, groups, pairs)! The Center for Right Relationships built on these ideas with a focus on a team based exercise to physically and visually interact with the toxins.

The four team toxins are:

  • Blaming
  • Defensiveness
  • Stonewalling
  • Contempt

Here is a workshop overview:

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Metaskills Wheel

Embrace Your Agile Superpowers

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Looking forward to presenting Stop Gambling, Embrace Your Agile Superpowers!

You can find a lot more about Agile Superpowers in this detailed article: Agile Superpowers – Being Agile.

The presentation was co-developed with myself and Stephen Starkey. We will be presenting at the Scrum Gathering in Las Vegas in May. For anyone not heading to the Scrum Gathering in Vegas, I’ll be presenting at the Agile Denver Coaching SIG on 2/21. Stephen may also be presenting in the Chicago area.

Here is the overview of the workshop:

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