TL;DR: I’m crowdsourcing what I blog about next. Behold, 44 ideas.
As I take another crack at focusing on fewer things, and getting better at each of them (will address this more in a future post on ‘minimalism’), I come back to this blog.
I’ve added the ability to comment on posts, then quickly nixed that. How do I want to connect with folks curious about this blog and the ScrumOfOne meme? Well, moderating comments is not an activity I enjoy, but I can handle tweets & email, so I set up notifications & forwarding so I can be better at responding when you contact me using those two links at the top of the column on the right.
The right column also sees a collapse of the ‘Archives’ links and the display of a more useful set of links: Categories. I think of these as tags, which is actually another thing in WordPress, but I don’t think they were around when I started the blog, so I’m sticking with what I started ’cause it works well enough.
So what do I write about next? I have a section in the right column now to answer this, mostly for myself 🙂 ; however, I realized that I’ve started 44 posts over the past 6 years, some of which are relevant to where I want to go next, some of which I’ll find a way to pull from, and some that I’ll dump. And because a purpose of this blog is to bring you along for the ride, I’m sharing those 44 snippets! (And because I am an adult, I can choose to start a sentence with ‘and’.)
Find something below that speaks to you? Holla at your goy!
(By the way, go Google, “holla at your goy”. Y’know the number of hits you’ll get? Y’can count’em on one hand. Maybe with this post, there’ll be six.)
…
ScrumOfCrumb
ScrumOfCrumb or [small Sprint Goal] tale of the little goal that could
Once upon a time, [[in the land of funk]], a stork did fly, holding in
her beak a bundle of, well, we’ll get to that.
Oh how this flappy bird did calmly glide on a reverent mission,
delivering from the highest plateaus of the Product Backlog
unto bustling glenn of the Sprint Backlog one singular, well, we’ll
get to that.
Somebody Stop Me
[tactic when running meetings, just to keep things moving]
[tactic for how I ask if any body wants to stop me or violently opposes an idea: way to get movement when communication is difficult because via conference call]
Living The Agile Values
[go over the Agile Values]
[analyze how that intersects with Scrum & SOO]
If Not Now, Then In Two Weeks
[I’m struggling – 3rd team is in India, so an early morning call, 6:30am Scrum every morning, and it’s hurting – I haven’t found my stride, will ask team to change it to 7am, which is 4:30pm, which is still respecting the 9-5 idea]
[Also struggling with sudden stuff becoming priority – a product of internal customers hearing what we can do and wanting a proof of concept, like, now, and the Product Owner giving in – can plan a buffer into the velocity, which I’ve done to myself… can do a 1 week Sprint, which I’ve done to myself… I’m hoping some motivation to NOT let/have this happen will come from within – the team members, since I can kind of feel it sucks to start something and then suddenly have to put it aside, so we have waste due to WIP, we don’t complete the Sprint due to WIP, we can’t figure out a neat velocity due to these interruptions which makes release planning more challenging, it lessens the significance of ME asking each team member to commit do a planned Sprint Backlog if there is a constant history of that backlog being uprooted, defeating the purpose of a Sprint: a time-box of solid contents, where the rest of the backlog is fluid contents.]
Of Mice And Meetings
[I recently became in charge of a meeting, so I asked the group if this meeting was useful. I also said that this is OUR meeting, so we have the opportunity to make it serve us, ’cause honestly, I don’t want to be associated with a meeting that sucks and is a waste of time.]
The System Is Dead, Long Live The System
[add adaptations to System, each artifact and event]
[add one more: s-u += look over pBL visions, since not already an adaptation]
[apply everything I’ve learned and relearned as transparently as can, by respinning the System page to share not just the how, but also the why, with links to posts for more]
[also organize relevant pieces into another page where one can do their own ScrumOfOne From Scratch / Square One / Launch, again with the how and why, with links to posts for more]
Analyzing Blog For Tactics
[analyze this similarly to how I did the ‘adaptation’ posts]
[next’ll be strategic stuff: direction & path series]
Analyzing Blog For Path Series
[how this differs from the posts tagged ‘direction’]
Distractions Are Efficient
[Am reading through three years of posts to categorize them and the first non-yay-I’m-starting-this post is about dealing with distractions.]
[When –engaging in– enjoying a distraction, there’s usually some associated level of excitement, or at least desire, if for nothing other than it is a more fun thing to do than the often more ‘responsible’ alternative.]
[It’s being done efficiently… efficient/effectiveness discussion]
Toaster Tester
[how I answer the question, and why I answer it the way I do]
Ode To Croix
[Crossing things off]
[In that spirit, get one thing crossed off that completes a piece of functionality: resettling the nest after a room switch to accommodate our AirBnB venture.]
[from CPO class NTS: reduce input, then fix impediment, slowly increase input, fix next impediment, repeat]
I Don’t Tell Jokes – I Exist
[Comedy at Harvard Square (link) – this guy says I look like the bad guy from Kindergarten Cop (link) – Chris Coxen (link) – Barry Tattle (link) – his line]
[his line has stuck with me]
[Wei Wu Wei]
How I Bought Nothing
[Bitcoin/Litecoin latest efforts]
How Doth Thy Bed
[Go through different methods, lots of detail, get angry, mention thought about this gradual anger as a cute literary device, get angry about that being the focus, meta angry, ask the question last.]
Class of 2005 Commencement Speech
[what it’d be like almost a decade into the future]
Art is Making Decisions
When you’re doing creative work, you have to make lots of decisions, pretty much constantly. That’s what it means to make art…art is making creative decisions for a particular reason. And each person only has the willpower to make so many decisions per day before we start phoning it in and making bad decisions. So normally, your “best time” is going to be earlier in the day, rather than later, after you’ve been refreshed by sleep.
https://medium.com/world-of-music/ff403fbc859
A Hedgehog By Any Other Name
[tale of the fox and the hedgehog]
[Hedgehog Concept by Jim Collins, point to video, summarize]
[compare with 4HW, 1DS]
Even In Business
[that Business Insider article, bookmarked on Desmond, about how the best management is down to one thing: find ppl’s strengths and capitalize on them]
What ScrumOfOne Does Not Do
[Personal Development is a super-set of SOO]
[SOO does not get the PO to figuring out what he/she wants]
[SOO does not address limiting beliefs]
Like A House
There was an article in the New York Times…
“What matters for our happiness,” Dr. Dunn said, “is what we do in the minutes and hours of our day.” When shopping for a home, she recommends asking yourself, “How will this purchase change the way I spend my time next Tuesday?”
some guy said, “things give us more joy when they are first acquired than over time, as we adapt to them.” Based on this principle, to remain happy with your home you need to move periodically.
Buying a home is still considered an important step on the ladder to personal fulfillment. But Dr. Dunn isn’t convinced ownership is all it’s cracked up to be. “A very robust finding in psychology is poeple are highly motivated to justify their own choices,” she said. “It’s very hard to get people to admit they spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in a way not optimal for their happiness.”
3a Always And Often
[step through CPO NTS]
[7% and 13%, making up 80%]
Creative People Say No
[https://medium.com/thoughts-on-creativity/bad7c34842a2]
[neat story]
[doing your life’s work means shutting out almost everything else]
[you are working most effectively, for sure, and most efficiently]
[surely there’s another post like this that I’ve written]
2b Change For Free
[step through CPO NTS]
3b Money For Nothing
[step through CPO NTS]
2a Sprint Backlogs Need A Buffer
[Pattern: Interrupt Pattern – JS loves this pattern: powerful]
[- deal with the unexpected]
[- have a BUFFER of some points in sBL]
[- {Support, Management, Sales} issues filters through PO, o/ps those issues to {low priority, later, now (:buffer)}]
[- if buffer overflows, then abort, replan, dates slip]
dBL
[share the list of things I do/say/think as I start my day]
CPO Over CSM
[of the 4 Martha Beck squares, the first two seem to talk about the CPO stuff / the what, and the second two seem to talk about the CSM stuff / the how]
[do I have a blog post on Effective or Efficient by 4HW? point to it]
[my blog is turning more into the direction piece, how to find THAT, else the how is like being a bigger caterpillar, rather than a butterfly]
The Party Continues
[This is what I say before I walk into work.]
[point to lecture by Alan Watts]
Go Away, Right Here
Looking up, I saw the silhouette of a guy in a window a block away. He was looking right at me. I mean, logically, he must have been, I don’t blame him, he couldn’t’ve helped it – I was silently jamming out really really loudly. I had my headphones on and was swaying, like when marimba rhythms start to play, and hitting things in the air, like Mario. I looked like one of those iPod commercials.
Don’t look at me like that – you know what I’m talkin’bout, Willis. Bruce Springsteen sang it best in ‘Born in the U.S.A.’:
So I put my hands up,
They’re playing my song,
And the butterflies fly away,
Noddin’ my head like, yeah,
Movin’ my hips like, yeah.
Hmm… maybe that was ‘Party in the U.S.A.’ by Miley Cyrus. Whatevs; like, yeah.
You’ve been there. You’ve been train spotted transported.
[David Elsewhere]
Not Yet Is OK
[take from Tribes /B, contra it]
Planning And The Now
[Planning and the now – Steve Pavlina]
Crafting Manifestos
[about manifestos and crafting them]
Co-Create With Reality
[Steve Pavlina’s blog: purpose: you co-create with reality]
[cf EatPrayLove’s author’s TED Talk about ‘genius’]å
What Is Te?
[I’m sensing a convergence after reading ‘Te of Piglet’… this idea of individual/unique virtue and how we’re supposed to find it, get out of its way, and enhance it’s expression/being seem to be put in so many forms of quotes that all seem to point to this idea – at least that’s how I’m analyzing it]
[Gets to a discussion of actively planning, like Scrum, or passively acting, acting without acting, like Te, but that’s the next post.]
Reconciling Taoism and Scrum
[Scrum’s proactivity (proactiveness?) and Taoism’s letting go]
[my conflict of these two models]
[am looking for a model of how they live together]
[how to reconcile]
[‘Tao of Scrum (complete)’ link doesn’t really mention Taoism, except for a couple a sentences]
[mention previous post of Gandhi and ScrumMaster]
[not a lot online relating the two]
Good Enough Is Great
[from ending of my ‘Good Enough’ post, the Taoist revelation]
[loving what you have, that appreciation is healthy]
[what do you love MOST about what you have]
[…got a few qualities? How do we emphasize those?]
[…sound like evolution/growth? Calls for a set of stories! (A natural start down ScrumOfOne.)]
[all starts by being conscious of and focusing on the present, then loving the present]
Judo Solution
[from Rework: one that delivers maximum efficiency with minimum effort – remember can usually later turn good enough into great]
[talk about what IS Judo]
[stress the ‘minimum effort’ part]
[carry this line of thinking and possible paths, you create flow, specifically one characterized by least resistance… be like water]
Do It Later
[Is it a great idea? Awesome! Get to done your work in progress, and then dedicate your full attention to it.]
Embracing Seasons
[37signals blog post covers this somewhat]
Pogonomics
[reference: http://www.context.org/iclib/ic26/domnguez/]
Importance of Rituals
[Rituals / Traditions – importance as noted by Joseph Campbell]
[Scrum & morning routine, including self-affirmations]
[Daily & Sprintly lists]
Not Here to Pay Bills
[You are not here to pay bills… that quote via Tricia]
notes to read before writing a post
A live cookbook.
A plan for the fearful.
Be vulnerable.
Make it about me.
ideas: review posts from other blogs
ideas: themes from retrospectives
ideas: one implementable action/habit/suggestion, with a result – a prescription – one problem with one solution
transparency & new section: track M3’s growth
[Talk about tracking M3. Introduce a new section on the site/blog that actually publishes burn-down charts each sprint – yikes!]