It’s 2012, everyone is back in the groove after December holidays, so it’s time to get the circles going again. We will be kicking off on Monday 13 February, atLots are people are asking me about coaching circles. How was the retro, when are they starting up again, can they join, etc. I though it might be time for a post.

Retrospective

Last year ended with a great retrospective on the final round of coaching circles, facilitated by Cara Turner. This was the first round of circles where we split into 3 types: mentoring, coaching and dojo. It seems the end result was very positive. People loved the new circle types! See the photo’s below for the outcomes of the retro.

 

 

 

First we made some posters about the sessions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then we talked about things we didn’t like (burnt toast), things we loved (ice cream) and things we’d like to try (experiments)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the end we had some suggestions and next steps actions

 

Onwards and upwards

It’s 2012, everyone is back in the groove after December holidays, so it’s time to get the circles going again. We will be kicking off on Monday 13 February, at 6pm. Please signup if you will attend. If you are keen to join a circle or even just find out more about them to decide if they are right for you, then make sure you get yourself to the kickoff. As always those who can’t attend the kickoff may still join circles by adding their details to the coaching circles google doc. However please note, those at the kickoff get first preference for circles of their choosing. Also for newbie, it’s highly recommended you come to the kick off to get an idea of what’s involved and how it works. Remember we will need hosts who can offer venues, signup in the google doc if you can offer one.

Signup for the kickoff here!

 

First of all, the fact that I am only blogging about last months event, a mere two hours from the start of this months event, is definite grounds for an apology! Better late than never they say?

The first Thursday in December. Four confident looking presenters got themselves geared up. No walk in the park this. Each presenter had only 6 minutes to get their message across. Each slide had to be no longer than 20 seconds. What I didn’t know, until that evening, was that each slide had to automatically be set to transition after 20 seconds. No pressure!

First up was Sheetal Gordhan. Scrum is not for the faint hearted was her topic!

I’m looking at my notes now, and I see the Ken Schwaber quote: “Scrum is hard”. And right next to that I have Sheetal paraphase: “This kak is hard”. I like Sheetal’s version I remember us all having a good chuckle, leaned back in our seats and took in a nice big gulp on our drinks. Our evening was set, we were here to have some fun!

Sheetal’s presentation reminded us that only a small percentage of teams are actually successful in Scrum. It’s really not easy and we need to prepare ourselves when we embark on this journey. Even though there are 1,000′s of articles online, it’s still not enough to prepare us for what lies ahead.

I can honestly say that I, in 6 minutes, had learned more about what a newbie organisation to Scrum should expect than I have in any course attended or article read.

My favourite slide of Sheetal’s. Hmmm, this is a tough one, there are so many. I liked the Google statistics of how many results one can expect when searching for Scrum information. But one that really stood out for me was the All Blacks doing the haka. Titled ‘Scrum Rituals’.( Remember, this event was in early December, only a few weeks after the All Blacks were crowned World Champs!). What are your development teams rituals? The usual stand-up and retrospective, or do you have something unique?

Next up was Meloné van Heerden, with her presentation entitled, What makes a great leader. Meloné had recently attended a course on this subject, and used the opportunity to apply her learning’s into the software development, in particular, Scrum, environment. One could see that the learning’s had a big impact of her, as her talk was passionate and energetic.

The subject of an ‘authentic leader’. What is an authentic leader? Or rather, what makes a leader authentic? Mel took us through the 6 step of process of discovering the authentic ‘you’. A necessary self-awareness process. A look at intrinsic and extrinsic motivators.

My favourite slide of Meloné’s. I personally liked the way in which she modelled the need to effectively set a leadership example, with well-known figures. Nelson Mandela and Barrack Obama featured, with Obama’s family an example of how important it is to build a support network. But my favourite would have to be a slide which represented who we sometimes don’t change. Any guess who features? Have a look at the photo below.

Next up, the good man David Campey. David had an interesting approach. Each of his slides represented a photo he had taken of his agile working environment. We got to meet his team. His manager. His Product Owner.

It told a story of a project. Starting from a photo of his Product Owner, looking very visionary in a room with blue-sky type walls, through to photo’s of his team hard at planning, and ending with his team out on a boat trip

I’ve always found it fascinating to see how other organisations work. How they approach their Scrum repertoire. Especially local companies.

David’s presentation was recorded, so please have a look for yourself. I’ve already sent this out to my development teams. Motivational stuff!

And finally, Karen Greaves, who needed little introduction off course! Her talk was titled: “Agile Management: How to create a culture to help your team succeed.” It was awesome! Need I say more. Who thought a talk about management could be fun

Thank you to everyone that attended. And a big thank you to our four brave presenters. You were all superstars!

We are a middle-sized organization of coaches, consultants and developers – and we see ourselves Agile and Lean through and through, to the core, dyed-in-the-wool, born-and-bread. Well, to be honest, we might be not. Or at least not from the beginning. Over the years, we learned a lot: * How to have self-organizing teams * How to manage our acquisitions and changes with Kanban boards * How to improve our communication with social media * How to distribute power and responsibility in a company owned by their employees And we’re not done learning yet. ...

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Daniel Greening, former Director of Engineering Productivity and User Experience at Citrix, will be delivering Scrum.org's second Agile Webcast Series event on Tuesday, February 7th, 11:00am-12:00pm, completely free to you.

In Release Duration and Enterprise Agility, Daniel explores how the adoption of Scrum and Agile by the example company, Citrix Online, drove release duration down from a peak of 41 months to less than 4, better than what it had as a small startup. Its market share rose during the same period.

Data from another company, PatientKeeper, also seems to indicate that short release durations correlate with more profitable outcomes. Learn about all the benefits of short release durations in this free webcast.

Space is limited. Register soon.

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The new version v6.50 of freeware tool Sprintometer for Scrum and XP project management has been released on Jabuary 21, 2012. Everybody knows Sprint Burn down chart used in Scrum projects but very often managers need to know situation with the whole agile project and specifically they are interested in Project Burn down chart. New version of Sprintometer allows this! How it works: go to tab called ‘Scope Chart’ on project level and enter percentage for already estimated sprints in relation to the whole project scope. Sprintometer will automatically generate Burn down ...

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