I led a session on Universal Value Proposition this time, since I’m developing a class around that and wanted the opportunity to practice on people. Having learned from last month, I’d done absolutely no special session preparation whatsoever. This proved
The Lean Startup Circle Rides Again!
Last night I attended the first monthly meeting of the San Francisco Lean Startup Circle. Actually, I attended the first meeting of the San Francisco Lean Startup Circle reboot. The community had lain fallow for a couple of years, after
Agile as a Contemplative Discipline
I’ve been an Agile practioner for 13 years. Like many Agilists, I began using the tools and techniques from my work as a Scrum Master at home as well as at work. There are already quite a few well written
The Basics: Iteration
Iteration is the act of a repeated process, or the result of that process. In Scrum, the time dedicated to an iteration is called a Sprint, and I’ll cover that in another article. Today, I’m going to describe a Lean
Your Operating System
Think about the last time you had to learn something entirely new, which is now part of your daily routine. Maybe it was navigating the commute between home and work. Or coding, or maybe even learning to type. Remember how
Agile for Life (video)
This is a talk I gave at a Quantified Self meetup describing how I used Agile to transform two areas in my life: personal productivity and a crisis about money in my marriage.
The Me/not-Me Barometer (Part 2)
At its heart, Agile is a very simple inspect-and-adapt process. The problem is that simple measures often aren’t comfortable or easy.
In my last post, I talked about that moment when a person, team, or even company is confronted with collected data (the inspect phase) that is challenging to their self image and – instead of adapting – decides to ignore the information, therefore sabotaging their progress.
To understand why and how that can happen, we need to first take into consideration two factors governing our behavior…
It’s Really Hard to Look at Yourself (Part 1)
Today I replayed the video of a learning group that I was running. It was painful. I saw so many flaws in how I had led the meeting. I saw people confused by the opening statements. I saw where I
Using Agile to Teach Agile
By Cindy Solomon, from her blog on Startup Product The first Startup Product Academy stand-alone, full day course was Intro to Agile on December 16, 2013 in Oakland, CA. Startup Product Academy is a product of the Startup Product
Mob Apprenticeships?
I volunteered heavily for Railsbridge from about 2009 to 2011, and intermittently since then when I had time between projects. When I “tuned in” again in fall of 2013, I found the organization has been tremendously successful: over 70