What makes your teammates lose sleep at night? The best way to find out is simple, but not always easy: ask them! In this post, I’ll be presenting a technique — suitable for a retrospective or a lift-off — that opens up channels of communication about the topics of fear…

It’s amazing we get anything right. When surveyed, 80% of software developers reported they believed their skills were above average. Overestimating one’s desirable qualities (and underestimating undesirable qualities) relative to other people is known as the Illusory Superiority Bias, aka the Lake Wobegon effect, one of many cognitive biases. What exactly is a cognitive bias? …

Ever since the dawn of our species, we’ve told stories. We’ve sung them, told them around campfires, painted them on cave walls, drew them on clay pots and canvases, woven them in tapestries, and carved them into stone. Eventually, we wrote them down. Today, we share stories via sticky notes…

Bring up the topic of “technical debt” to a software engineer, a product owner, a stakeholder, or heavens above, the gold owner. What happens? Do you get frowns? Smiles? Nervous fidgeting? Technical Debt is such a loaded, misused, and misunderstood term. I imagine in most conversations when the topic comes…

Make Deeper Connections by Getting a Little Bit Awkward at Your 1:1 Meetings Catalyzing high-performance teams means more than just working with the right people. It’s more than skill and attitude. These days, more than ever, we need to build and nurture resilience. That means getting to know each individual more deeply than we did yesterday. One on ones are all about your…

All systems have waste. (See the 3M’s of Waste). It’s because of those dang laws of the universe, sometimes known collectively as “There Ain’t No Free Lunch.” I coach teams to practice the art of Kaizen — to become aware of the drag in their systems and address things incrementally…

This is an open invitation to participate in an Agile Uprising (soon to be established) tradition of closing out each year with a series. In 2017 the Agile Uprising released the 12 Days of Agile — a dozen podcasts, each chatting about one of the Agile Manifesto Principles (clever, ay?) …

There are three parts to making a commitment and maintaining accountability: Say How we say (or write) things makes a difference. Both for the listener and the speaker. Non-commitment sounds like this: “I hope to finish it this week.” “Let’s set up a meeting.” “We should take care of that.” “I…

This is the second in a series of conversations that explored effective leadership from a number of different viewpoints. Podcast: https://agileuprising.libsyn.com/intent-based-leadership-with-l-david-marquet-and-andy-worshek Panelists were Andy Worshek and L. David Marquet both with Intent-Based Leadership. Expert on leadership, former submarine commander, and author of Amazon #1 Best Seller: Turn the Ship Around!, Captain David Marquet imagines a workplace where everyone engages and contributes their full intellectual capacity, where people are healthier and happier because they have more control over their work, and where everyone is a leader.