Marco Abis had a great post on retrospectives back in May. In case you haven’t seen it, I’ll quote part of the post here:First of all why do I value retrospectives? Many different reasons but mainly because they let’s you:learn from experience bridge...
A reader asked what he could do to inject some life into his sprint retrospectives. He’d been using two questions “What did we do well?” and “What could we do better?” for several sprint retrospectives with the general goal of improving performance. Nothing really...
Diana Larsen pointed me to a recent issue of Fortune: There are lots of interesting observations in the article about what have been unchallenged assumptions about business. I’m particularly interested in the comments on the sort of forced ranking that Jack...
One of the participants in my session (the session Diana and I did together) on Agile Retrospectives at Agile2006 asked how a retrospective differs from a sprint review where the team demonstrates working software.Demonstrating working software to the customer (in...
Johanna has a post about feedback on her blog…based on a feedback practice from our recent Managing One-on-One workshop.In her post, a feedback giver hints and talks all around the situation, rather than respectfully but directly describing the situation and the...
Yesterday I talked to a friend of mine who was disenchanted with work…which is a new development for her. Up until now, she’s been very positive about her work environment. “What happened?” I asked. Turns out that the manager of her group looked at her team and...
When I teach about feedback, I make a distinction between change-focused feedback, reinforcing feedback, appreciation/gratitude, and encouragement. Feedback is information that we hope will influence future behavior. Change-focused feedback is information about a...
On his consulting blog, Jerry Weinberg says: “Anger, for a consultant, is a costly luxury, and I am by nature somewhat of a cheapskate. By eliminating there-then-them anger, I cut my angry outbursts in half. By noticing my pattern of anger escalation, I dampen...
I found this snippet by Dick Dauphinais of the Herman Group via the Dear Workforce email newsletter: Compensation experts for years have preached that discussions on performance with employees should not be linked to pay discussions, although most companies ignore...
I recently talked to a person who billed himself as a coach. Here’s how he expained what he does: “I explain the obvious to the stupid.” Oh, my. It isn’t very helpful to dismiss the people as stupid. They may not know as much, or have as much...
I hear a lot of managers worry about how to motivate people. I don’t think you can motivate people… people create their own motivation. But you can de-motivate people and unfortunately, too many managers do. Here are some of the de-motivators I see:...
A while I go I pointed out the reasons *not* to have a retrospective. There are plenty of reasons *in favor* of having retrospectives (after every iteration): A well run retrospective enables the team to:step back and take a “whole system” view of their methods and...
I attended a short presentation on listening the other day. It was an interesting experience. In the first segment, the presenter demonstrated a listening technique. He listened to a guy talk for about 3 minutes, and then mirrored back what he’d said. He didn’t use...
A friend of mine is being wooed by a potential employer. She told the hiring manager she couldn’t start a new job for 3 months. He asked for reasons. For each reason she gave, he had an excellent and logical reason for the opposite position. The more reasons she gave,...
I had a conversation recently with a guy who was concerned about the level of “commitment” in his group. “It’s always the same people staying late,” he said. “The others just aren’t committed. We can’t accomplish everything we need to unless these other people step up...
In BCD, Johanna and I wrote a section “Setup for Successful Delegation.” We wanted to help managers think through the boundaries of a task they’re delegating and be clear—with themselves and the other person—about requirements, unacceptable solutions, progress...
On Friday I gave my talk, The Value-added Manager: 5 Pragmatic Practices at the SQUAD Conference in Denver. I had a great time. One of the practices I cover in my talk is making a to-do list and a not-to-do list and getting clear on priorities. A woman in the audience...
Retrospectives are a great way for teams to inspect and adapt their methods and teamwork after each iteration and release. And they’re a great way for teams to build on success, learn from hard times, or bring closure when a project ends. But they’re not for good for...
