Category: outside resource

Home Is Where The Results Don’t Matter

Elizabeth Gilbert wrote “Eat, Pray, Love”, which became a bestseller. In a TED Talk she gave recently, she talks through how she struggled with the task of writing again, post-success, by looking back at how she kept writing post-failure. She called it “going home”.

And you have to understand that for me, going home did not mean returning to my family’s farm. For me, going home meant returning to the work of writing because writing was my home, because I loved writing more than I hated failing at writing, which is to say that I loved writing more than I loved my own ego, which is ultimately to say that I loved writing more than I loved myself. And that’s how I pushed through it.

…

your home is that thing to which you can dedicate your energies with such singular devotion that the ultimate results become inconsequential.

I think that’s beautiful, from the personal development Product Owner perspective.

What is your home?

There Are No Rules

I was chatting with an artist buddy yesterday about his craft. After making and selling for a few years, he took a class where the biggest thing he took out of it came from a discussion on technique.

He was stepping through how to set up to do this one thing, and his teacher asked why, and he said he had always done it that way. She asked again, “Why?” He stammered and repeated that he had always done it that way. That’s when she said there are no rules – do it differently, who cares, you’re still making art.

I’m still sitting with that, digesting it.

Quirktastic or Corporate Bingo

Ever read a passage from an article on a lazy Sunday afternoon while sipping a cappuccino, and say, “Man, I totally gotta lift that and make that the basis of my next blog post?”

Nope, me neither.

I also remember watching my dad speak to everyone in the town square on the Fourth of July. He was up in this little white gazebo, and he was talking about the state of the city. He used the word “ain’t” at least a dozen times, so afterward I gave him the gift of feedback. He looked me straight in the eye and said, “Are you really trying to help me get better or are you embarrassed?”

I said, “Honestly, a little bit of both.”

He said: “Son, this is who I am. And look out there. This is who they are. And if they can see me be imperfect and be the mayor, then one of them will aspire to be the mayor, too. People prefer their leaders with flaws because it makes these positions more attainable for the rest of us.“

Here, Brad Smith, CEO of Intuit, in an interview by Adam Bryant for yesterday’s ‘Corner Office’ column of the SundayBusiness section of The New York Times, talks about his parents. In the process, he talks about the benefits of appearing human when in a position of leadership. Sure, the mayorship appears more attainable, and I would argue that is because the mayor appears more relatable.

Ever listen to a public relations message or a corporate pep talk and it is littered with stuffy-sounding jargon? “At the end of the day”, “Productize”, “Quality Initiative”, “Deliverable”, “Going Forward”, “Opportunity For Improvement”, some buzzphrases sound self-aggrandizing, some of these come off as adding no value, some do both, and man do these really grind my gears. They are very effective at being incredibly impersonal. Don’t use them.

Be relatable.

Hell, I’m trying, but that’s because I’m really a robot.

A handsome, charming, Spanish, sword-fighting robot. Don’t tell my wife.

What Are Days?

You ever notice that sudden plans are usually fun? For me, sure, what’s cool is the thing that is planned, but it’s equally neat how, like, 2 hours ago, this idea of a plan wasn’t out there, and then, all of the sudden, somebody came up with it and then it was acted upon.

Wham – you blink.

Bam – you enjoy.

If I could only remember that the days were not bricks to be laid row on row, to be build into a solid house, where one might dwell in safety and peace, but only food for the fires of the heart.
– Edmund Wilson, Critic and Writer (1895-1972)

This is my way of saying that this last Sprint, I’ve had an extraordinarily large number of emergent stories, and I’ve gone along with them. Dinner here. Movie there. Oscar-watching party somewhere around the corner. Sprint Goal nowhere close to being accomplished.

Yet – and I think that as you get older you become more OK with things like this – I’m more OK with things like this. I’m trying to remember that our days are indeed meant to be gut-level exciting.

Tornadee

Thinking back, the concept was a little trippy. There was this cartoon about a couple of tornadoes: a mama tornado and a baby tornado. The baby tornado is a little messy, yet definitely not as destructive as the mama tornado, and some cartoon character isn’t so appreciative of the little one’s Midas touch, so he tries to capture and put an end to the baby tornado. Luckily, the mama tornado swoops in at the nick of time and ‘saves the day’. My brother and I would call that baby tornado a “tornadee”. (The actual cartoon differs slightly from my recollection.)

When a team is created, there is a usual progression of development that moves from forming, to storming, to norming, and finally to performing.

Regarding my ScrumOfOne team… of one… I’ve already formed. (I’ve met myself. I’ve shaken my own hand. I did the trust fall exercise. It was embarrassing.) Before I get to performing, where I’m reliably completing ScrumOfOne stories with a sustainable and improving velocity, which is after I get to norming, where I’m completing ScrumOfOne stories with some consistency and smoothness in ‘working mode’ (living mode?), I would have to get through storming. This is where the different aspects and members of #TeamMerrill are still figuring out how to play well with one another, so beyond sounding schizophrenic, it can look a little messy.

Thus, lately, I’ve been a tornadee. (It’s a stretch, I know.)

Standard Scrum practice says to get through three Sprints before determining an average velocity one can work with, particularly for planning scope per release. Until velocity stabilizes (things are smooth), I think it’s fair to say the team is storming (things are rocky); a low-varying velocity is indicative of a well-oiled machine of a team.

As I enter Sprint #3 of restarting ScrumOfOne (Sprint 143), man am I seeing how I am not yet sustainably developing. And this is fine. I’ll get there. Sprint 142 had a velocity of 45 points, which is more than Sprint 141’s 37 points, but I’m still not getting all of my committed Sprint Backlog complete, which means a lot of my story points are coming from emergent stories. This is something I’ve been blogging about for the past two posts, which, besides being a fun brain dump, is most likely a subconscious suggestion to do something about it.

The Kaizen Story for Sprint 143 is thus to monitor which stories get implemented that are emergent and not related to my Sprint Goal. I’m setting up a relevant buffer of 13 points, which is about a third of my Sprint Backlog. This should help me get to norming then performing. I’m kinda doing being a tornadee. It’s 2014 already.