Talent + Technology

Cynefin’s Obvious Context

Early on in my career, I landed a job working in a mail room for a major law firm. Nothing glamorous, to be sure. But for a college drop-out of 20-something with a new wife and a baby, steady pay and covering our bills were high on my list of priorities. Glamour, on the other hand…

A blank wall and a fist full of index cards

I’m occasionally asked, “Doc, we’re looking at product X, Y, and Z, but we just can’t decide which is the best one for our project. What do you recommend?”

Naming Teams

I was recently contacted by a colleague looking for a bit of advice.

C: “We are thinking about merging two teams together and we’re not sure how to message the change.”

D: “What do you think will be your biggest challenges?”

Create a Culture of Integrity

A friend once asked me if I knew the key distinction between Accountability and Integrity. I said I did, but then found myself struggling for an answer.

Today, I think I get it. Perhaps I should check with my friend.

Coaching Anti-Patterns : Shock and Awe

I often find myself talking to people who are in the midst of a switch to agile and who find the change very difficult to get used to. They may be strong advocates, but their team just “doesn’t get it”. Through discussion, I find that many of them are attempting…

Coaching Anti-Patterns: Prescriptive Agile

I saw a tweet this morning that got me thinking about a coaching anti-pattern I frequently see:

Without knowing you, your Agile coach knows you use should start using stand ups, TDD and pair programming, etc.
Taylor would be proud.

Estimating our Work

I’ve been thinking quite a bit about estimations and our general obsession with getting them “right”. After all, we need to know when the project will be done. And we need accuracy. Knowing the entire project will be done before the end of the third quarter isn’t good enough. We need to know…