Browse by topic area:
There's a lot here and if you're not sure where to start, here are some popular starting points. From these, you'll find crosslinks to even more topics. Enjoy!
-
Neuroscience / Psychology
- Psychological Safety: An overview. For the science, see the SAFETY model. For Google's research into why it's important for high performing teams, see Project Aristotle. What happens when we don't have that safety?
- Anxiety and Stress: For the science, see Polyvagal Theory or a description of some neuroscience, illustrated with a bear encounter. To let go of that anxiety, see the Anti-Anxiety toolkit.
- Generally more about the brain: Cognitive bias, motivation, amotivation, why your brain needs idle time for powerful insights, systems 1 & 2 and neurotransmitters (chemicals) that drive behaviour.
- Language patterns: Logical Levels, a powerful framework for understanding why people behave the way they do. Why language is so important, and Clean Language, a specific language pattern that has excellent application for coaching.
- Leadership: The Ladder of Leadership — a framework for getting people to take more initiative. Autonomy and why it matters. And the problem of hero culture — revisited and covered in a recent book.
-
How to improve...
- Meetings: The common problems with meetings. Improving the standup / daily coordination meeting. Retrospectives are covered in my popular video course Retrospective Magic. Then what if your people won't participate?
- Improving learning: with neuroscience and LEGO.
- Improvement: Continuous improvement in general. Understanding the metaphor of "lowering the water level".
-
Flow of value
- Blocked column: Should you have one? The case for and against.
- Classes of service: Understanding how different work items should flow differently.
- Metrics: Flow metrics, probabilistic forecasting.
- Waste: Overview of waste. Understanding the cost of interruptions, and the kinds of waste that gets in the way of flow.
- Work in progress (WIP): Setting initial WIP limits. What to do when we're overwhelmed with WIP
- Metrics and Forecasting: All of these have their own category now.
- Technical practices: Continuous integration, TDD as design, ensemble programming, and poor code and the RAS.
- Ensuring we're building the right thing: Slicing stories and epics. Understanding the context of what we're building. Knowing how to prioritize that work.
- Something fun: The millennial whoop (includes a great video), and inattentional blindness — a video that will make you doubt your own perception.
- Recommended reading: I'm often asked for book recommendations.
Critical thinking and the headlines we share
Yesterday, I kept seeing this story repeated about Stripe and the new AI model from Anthropic. The claim is the AI was able to do in one day what it would have taken months for the existing teams to do.
The people I’ve been warned about
When I first arrive in a new engagement, it’s not uncommon to be warned about specific people. “Bob will push back on everything you say” or “Janet just won’t play along”. The warnings are usually well-intentioned, with helpful colleagues trying to prepare me for what’s ahead.
The month they worked on nothing
I once had a client that decided to cancel a project before they had anything prepared for the team to work on next. This was actually a great opportunity; the team could have spent that time improving their own skills, paying back some technical debt, or catching up on the thousands of things that normally don’t get attention.
Why Agile’s early feedback signal keeps getting ignored
Agile made a specific promise: you’ll know about problems early enough to do something about them. Not after the deadline passes, but early enough to make a difference. That promise starts with working, tested software on frequent intervals so you can see what’s actually done, not just what’s reported. It’s also why the agile community embraced probabilistic forecasting; rolling Monte Carlo simulations that tell you weeks or months in advance whether you’re on track.
AI shifted your bottleneck. Do you know where it went?
Recently I ran a session at Okanagan Agile, our local agile meetup, on what happens to a development team when AI makes coding dramatically faster. Before we got into the theory, I wrote each step of a typical delivery workflow on paper cards and laid them end to end on the table. It sounds simple, and it is. But being able to point at a card and say “this is where things are piling up” changes the conversation from abstract to concrete in a way that a slide never does.
The vacation test
I once worked for a manager who never made a decision. He was thoughtful, well-intentioned, and completely committed to having all the right information before doing anything. I’d suggest a change and he’d say “let me think about that”, and then nothing would happen.
The team that wrote perfect code
A while back I was brought in to teach TDD to a team. I started the way I usually do, by explaining that TDD is a quality activity, not a testing activity. The goal is higher quality, both in the design and in the actual code and the tests are largely just a side-effect, albeit a very useful one.
Neuroception: Why knowing you’re safe isn’t enough
A few years ago I was asked to facilitate a multi-team retrospective across a department. It had been previously noted that there seemed to be a psychological safety problem across this department and I was asked to address that specifically, so I did. I introduced the topic, provided some context around psychological safety, and we started to explore what people were noticing and how they felt.
Tacit knowledge and hiking
Recently, I’ve done a number of hikes on very steep trails with lots of loose shale. What that really means is that the surface is very unstable and at any moment your feet can slide out from underneath you.
Agile is more than just meetings
Somehow the perception has built over time that Agile is just about meetings. It’s not. It’s about the entire system and how we deliver value to our clients.