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All of this content used to be spread over three different blogs at three different domains and it's now been merged into one. Why was it ever three? Because at the time it seemed reasonable that each of them was for a different audiences, and yet over time I've found that the lines between topic areas got blurrier and tended to overlap. So now they're all together in one place.
If you encounter things that seem broken, let me know and I'll get them fixed.
Browse by topic area:
| Category | Formerly found at |
|---|---|
| Psychology & Behaviour | UnconsciousAgile.com |
| Flow, Kanban, Scrum | ImprovingFlow.com |
| Metrics and Forecasting | ImprovingFlow.com & MikesHardMetrics.com |
| Technical Practices | AgileTechnicalExcellence.com |
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!
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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, default mode network, systems 1 & 2 and neurotransmitters (chemicals) that drive behaviour.
- Language patterns: Why language is so important, and Clean Language, a specific language pattern that has excellent application for coaching.
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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".
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Flow of value
- 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, and ensemble programming.
- 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, and inattentional blindness.
- Recommended reading: I'm often asked for book recommendationsbook recommendations.
Start and end points for flow metrics
If we want to be tracking flow metrics, we need clearly defined start and stop points. When we’re talking at a team level, these are often described as Definition of Ready (DoR) for the start point and Definition of Done (DoD) for the stop point.
Goodharts Law
Goodhart’s Law says that “when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”
The first problem is rarely the problem
Years ago at a client, I recall being asked how they could change the browser timeout to make it longer. They explained that what they were doing was taking too long, the browser was timing out, and users weren’t happy.
Does a mature scrum team need a facilitator for their daily scrum?
A question came up this week that seems simple on the surface but got interesting as we started to unpack it. The question was “does a mature scrum team need a facilitator for their daily scrum?”
Craving certainty - why we distrust probabilistic forecasts
When faced with the question of “when will we be done?”, the most factually accurate answer we can give is one from a probabilistic forecast. Yet counter-intuitively, despite being the most correct answer, it’s usually not the one many people want. What they want is a deterministic answer, even if it’s less accurate.
Growth vs Fixed mindsets and the influence of AI
In her book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, Carol Dweck talks about the difference between the Growth and Fixed mindsets. I’d encourage you to read her words on this, but in a nutshell, people with a growth mindset believe that their intelligence can expand and develop, whereas people with a fixed mindset believe that intelligence is fixed and what you’ve got now is all you’re getting.
Collecting metrics for no reason
I’ve worked in many places where an edict has come down from senior management to start collecting metrics, without any direction. While usually well intentioned, these requests are frequently poorly considered and poorly implemented. Many times I’ve asked “what decisions are going to be made from these” and nobody knows.
Tacit knowledge
When I was a teenager, I read a book called Juggling for the Complete Klutz, which seemed just perfect for me. It came with three bean bag balls, and instructions on how to use them.
Stalled work
I talked recently about how many items in progress (WIP) we have and how lower is better. That’s absolutely true, and yet it’s not the whole picture. Of the items that are started, how many of those are actually being worked on?
Work in Progress (WIP) for a team
I’m frequently asked what is the optimal amount of work in progress (WIP) for a team, and everyone is disappointed to hear that there isn’t one.