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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.
Hero culture
It’s fairly common to have a junior team of people, with one far more senior person leading them. This can be an effective way to grow skill across the org.
Mental Health and GenAI
I’m seeing more and more stories about people having mental health conversations with various GenAI tools.
Wait states
The metrics covered in our Flow Metrics Basics class show how to measure different aspects of flow, but those metrics don’t in themselves, show how to improve the flow. We’ll look at one way to improve now.
Playing the long game
If I was planning to disband my team this week and I only cared about what they could deliver in a couple of days then I’d be focused on making sure that everyone was doing that piece of work that they were most skilled at.
What aren’t we hearing?
A few nights ago, my son and I went for a walk at Dilworth Mountain Park to admire the sunset. At one point, I noticed that he had his hands covering his ears and I asked him why.
Cross training
When we see “fractional people”, people who are spread across teams, the most common reason is that they’re one of a limited number of people with a specific skill. There is a real cost to having fractional people in the environment, so when we consider how we could make the overall teams better, “cross training” is often brought up as an action. Let’s hold a training session or write up some documentation so that other people can learn.
Getting out in nature
There are real neurological benefits to getting out in nature. Let’s look at four of those.
Building the right thing
When I’m working with a development team, I’ll often start by having them walk me through what business need they’re solving for. I’m less interested in the code or the architecture until I’ve first understood what problem we’re trying to solve.
Using dates to motivate
I sometimes see teams that make up arbitrary dates to “motivate” the teams to get work done faster. Not only does this not work over the long term, it often makes things worse.
No single right answer
All too often we focus on a single problem and make statements as if solving this one thing will solve everything. While that one thing might certainly make things better, it’s never the only answer. Everything we do is within the context of a complex adaptive system and changing any one thing will have ripple effects everywhere else in the system.