The Volcano Principle
(n.b. Back in 2011, I was asked to write an article for a German magazine for their special issue celebrating the 10 year anniversary of the Agile Manifesto. I wasn’t too happy with the direction their editors pushed the article in, and since a lot has happened since then, here’s a new, English version).
Responding to [...]
Thoughts on motivation
One of the big challenges of being a Scrum Product Owner (or boss, or trainer, or parent) is motivating people to take responsibility for doing things. Telling them what to do, and how to do it, never really works, because there is no identification with the work to be done that inspires people to take [...]
Reading up for CALM-Alpha
I’m really looking forward to the CALM-Alpha event next month. In preparation for it, I’m going through our tentative reading list. The faculty members suggest that attendees read the following books as preparation for the event:
Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
Ursula leGuin, The Dispossessed
Dava Sobel, Longitude
In addition, it would be [...]
Thoughts on priority poker
Many years ago, I took part in one of the first Certified Scrum Product Owner courses ever held by Ken Schwaber and Mike Cohn. One of my favourite exercises from that course, and one I’ve often used since, was priority poker. Priority poker is a method for assigning relative priority, or weight, to items, and [...]
1st International Workshop on Complexity and Real-World Applications, Day 1
Yesterday was the first day of the 1st International Workshop on Complexity and Real-World Applications , an invitation-only event held in Southampton. Set in a scenic venue, the conference was organised in a loveably sloppy way by Andrew Tait and Kurt Richardson. The two of them are doing an admirable job, but the scenic venue [...]