David's Agile Juice Blender

Xpoogle, DotNoodle and Scrumoogle – Brothers in Arms

2007-06-20T20:00:00Z

Google Custom Search Google's custom search also dubbed CO-OP makes it easy to create a search engine which will only return results within a certain topic. You control which pages are included in the result-set and how they are being included. I will not bore you with details for, Goole manages to explain their service quite well. Simply follow the link posted above. The reason why Google Co-OP is mentioned in this post, is because Tim Haughton created XPoogle and DotNoodle within a few hours. While XPoogle focuses on topics related to Xtreme Programming and DotNoodle focuses on topics around .Net. Watching that development, I could not help myself but to create a custom search engine which focuses on Scrum and staying with the naming theme so well established by Tim I have dubbed it Scrumoogle... ...(read more)

General Update On Agile Events

2007-06-12T09:33:00Z

The Fall 2007 Gathering. As some of you might know the Scrumgathering in November is being organised by the Scrumalliance and Conchango agreed to help as best as possible. After some preparation time the Scrumallaiance has now released some more information on the format of the gathering. The autumn gathering will offer not only Open Spaces but also tracks of structured sessions. If you are interested in submitting a track, please read the call for papers carefully and ensure your suggestion makes...(read more)

I am tired of Scrum...

2007-04-26T10:24:00Z

I do not like to listen to the same song over and over again, especially not when I know there is a whole album, a variety of tunes I could be listening to. Recent developments in the agile community suggest that people realise more so than ever that is it time of us to start listening to those other ‘tunes’. I am tired of Scrum in a software development context. I am sick of listening to the same arguments over and over again, when history has clearly shown that Scrum is very well suited...(read more)

Pace Yourself – NLP, Agile And Retrospectives

2007-04-16T09:45:00Z

Moving from one country to another is never easy. Being confronted with a different lifestyle and different expectations make it hard at first to adapt to the new environment. Maybe that is why I underestimated how much change in my approach would be needed when I moved from Austria to the United Kingdom. Those two countries are not too far apart and in my eyes the United Kingdom is part of Europe, an environment I am very familiar with. To think so was wrong and constant change is now required to tune and match my delivery and my being to what is expected in English society, making it easier for others to interact with me.

Neuro Linguistic Programming, a fairly young branch of psychiatry and psychology, has been building up since the 1970s and describes how humans interact and change over time by better experiencing their world around them. What I described above and much more on the level of personal interaction when I coach and mentor can be described by a term called pacing.

Modern Literature suggests ⁽¹⁾ to be a successful couch or trainer one needs to learn how to gain rapport with your coachee or trainee. Rapport is the art of being able to tune yourself into the people around you and pacing is a natural step further by carefully mirroring and reflecting some of their key behaviours to make them feel save. Expected and well known behaviour offers guarantee to the observer thus allowing them to more readily accept change.
While coaching, mentoring or even training a lot of the time will be spent increasing a groups or an individuals potential by allowing them to discover different ways of changing their perception of the world around them, thus allowing them to change and realise potential that has not been touched on yet.

Pacing is the extension of a natural behaviour we all exhibit, especially with those who are close to us, those we share a deep common bond. It is a technique I have learned to treasure when being invited to facilitate retrospectives. Esther Derby and Diana Larsen’s book titled “Agile Retrospectives” devotes a tiny paragraph to it as well. Something I first over read and after revisiting finally realised. There is a simply instruction there, to count silent to a specified number in order to refrain from urging the team on during exercises and to know when it is safe to move from one stage of an exercise into another.

This clever application of pacing allows me as the facilitator to build rapport with the team which is holding their retrospective. Mirroring the teams behaviour, trying to engage in their readiness to move on by pacing myself through counting helps to be a better facilitator and build rapport with the team to ensure they are open to the remaining exercises which need to be facilitated.

Pacing, matching and mirroring can be applied to almost any situation to build rapport, whether that is when speaking with a customer or while having a chat with your best mate. Around 93% of our communication is never vocalised only around 7% are. The majority of those 93% is made up by body language and many courses can be found which teach better awareness of this form of communication. Techniques such as NLP go a step further including a more holistic view on physical and psychological interaction pattern.

Moving from country to another, getting introduced into a new environment or simply being helped in how to better facilitate retrospectives. The ideas described above can be useful in any of the scenarios described.

(1) Coaching with NLP: How to Be a Master Coach, ISBN: 0007151225; Coaching For Performance: Growing People, Performance and Purpose, ISBN: 1857883039

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Impossible - Agile Teams and the Absence of Roles

2007-03-22T11:17:00Z

Recounting the times I have heard the word impossible in the last couple of months is easy for me. I can even tell the occasion and usually when it happens. Expanding ones horizon and not limiting yourself to established and understood modus operandi is often perceived as being impossible. A scenario I am fairly familiar with. When I am asked to give our basic agile course , which covers an introduction to agile and Scrum , we sooner or later end up talking about agile teams. How they are compromised,...(read more)

Facilitation by Closing the Door

2007-02-10T18:28:00Z

Something to Consider... Before I dive into my thoughts, trying to untangle them long enough so that I may write something half decent, I would like everyone to consider the following few lines of text. These sentences have been taken from the lyrics to a song by Faithless. The song is titled To All New Arrivals and the parts I am interested in are shown below: "In our world, Malaria kills a child every 30 seconds. Eleven Million children die every year of malnutrition. In our world, 15 Million...(read more)

Common sense and all that...

2007-01-25T15:53:00Z

I am reading a book. A rather interesting book which is entitled Getting to YES . Contrary to what some might be thinking right now, it is not a guide on how to date, but rather a conglomeration of guided advice on how to be a better negotiator. While reading the first few chapters on the tube this morning I have come to the realisation that writing my blog entries is also a for of negotiation. From now on my blog posts shall be even more well considered. Finally I have had a chance to speak to Colin...(read more)

Great bag - wrong laptop - neat phone.

2007-01-22T10:47:00Z

I arrived in London on BA699 on Monday the 15th of January 2007. Of course we ended up being late so I had to rush into the Egham office. I hate nothing more than to be late and thankfully I was not. You do not want to be late for your Introduction, now do you? After having been self-employed for quite a while it is a new experience to be tied in with a single employer on a fixed basis. It is a good feeling though, especially since I got one of those really neat laptop backpack bags. That rucksack...(read more)