Category: personal touch

Bias to Inquiry is Hard

I’ve got a Bias to Action. My wife will call me a Fact Finder, which is true, and at some point… I do make a move.

I recently learned the phrase “Bias to Inquiry”, which is useful in the world of an Agile Coach: you run across a behaviour you deem odd, and instead of wanting to act on it, you first seek to learn about it. Context is key. History can be insightful. Figure out why there’s a fence across the road before trying to tear it down. It’s the fifth Habit.

This Bias to Inquiry is something I do at work – I get paid to be diplomatic.

This blog post is to acknowledge aloud that Bias to Inquiry at home is hard.

Let’s take a benign example:

Oh, lookie here! Clothes strewn in the hallway. I’m going to make a quick decision and either kick it aside or take a detour to throw ’em in the hamper.

Then there’s a more contentious example:

Oh, lookie here! You believe some fantastical conspiracy theory about the election or vaccines. I… don’t even know where to begin.

I don’t always have the time or energy to first seek to understand bullshit. Maybe I should be more open-minded. Maybe I should have more grains of salt with what information I consume in general. Being open to learning is generally good for one’s survival, so why not apply that in these cases?

I’m just saying it’s hard.

My Approach to the Daily Scrum

It’s simple… We walk the board, address 4 questions, then refine 1 ticket, all in 15 mins.

I mean… I could end this post right here.

But I won’t… As I chat up more Agilists, I realize that after 6 years of being a Scrum Master or Agile Coach full-time, and after almost 10 years of engaging in my own ScrumOfOne adventure, I’ve developed a few practices that are well received upon me sharing ’em verbally. So I figure I’ll share ’em here, bloggally.

Ya’ani… This reflects an internal shift I’m trying (ooh, a forelog), where I see a lack of clear & solid support for newer Scrum Masters, so I’m quietly working on a product & service to address this (yep, a backlog), through experimenting with newer approaches on myself (aha, a frontlog) (BINGO!). Thus, I see this blog shifting from present-day journaling to documenting ideas & practices from my recent past, plus playing with ideas & practices for a future I’d like to create: lowering the barrier to becoming a Daily Agilist. You don’t need a damn certificate (caveat: I have 3) to start playing this Agile game: this isn’t secret knowledge, nor should it be. And yes, certification was borne out of a desire to standardize after the organic spread of Scrum, to improve marketing (“hold up, this is Scrum”) and to reduce anti-patterns (“hold up, this is good Scrum”), but embarking on your own Agility, and then benefiting from it, shouldn’t require a big bang. There’s got to be a better way. Anyway, this paragraph is way too long, and you’re here for my “at-least-ha” take on the stand-up.

Maybe… I should’ve ended this post back there.

Continue reading My Approach to the Daily Scrum

Guardrails for Glee

I blog twice a week. To me, that’s impressive. Yes, I’m impressed with myself, and every once in a while, I pat myself on the back, which is akin to the Self–Five. (They’re not all quality.) (That’s besides the point.)

In reality, I blog in spurts, creating content in batches, scheduling their release on a schedule. So, technically, I publish twice a week. (Big whoop.) (Still proud.)

You may ask yourself, though, how one drums up enough content to blog about. (I wasn’t asking that.) (Dude. Chill.)

  • Sometimes, I share what I’m learning as I learn it, whether it’s from painstakingly analyzing a larger work, like a book, or from gradually building up a larger idea, like what feels like more of an original contribution.
  • Sometimes, I’m inspired by the YouTube videos I listen to as I do dishes, realizing they may loosely relate to something I’ve already blogged about.

This post is from the former. I’ll start with five lines. (Wow, you’re not even going to hide it.) (Yep. I’m embracing the process, sharing that process along the way, all meta-like, and I’ll save smooth blog post introductions for another time.)

  • from MVP post: Will this be an audio platform for the music I want to make that I keep kicking myself for not doing? How convenient. Will this be fun? You betcha.
  • from MVP post: To get to that vision, though, you need to take a step, which means embracing the phrase, “This is enough for now.“
  • from Side Hustling post: get to regularly releasing, focusing in the short-term on improving quality of style and quality of content
  • from Side Hustling post: I believe if I “do a variety of fun & interesting things, with my skills & passions, every day,” then I won’t hate myself as I work towards other revenue streams
  • glee definition: great delight

I feel like I’ve lowered the barrier to outputting blog posts (…after 9 years… geez) (after… 9 years… wow), and I’d like to do the same for the podcast. And I’ve got a couple of things in my favour.

  • passion: I feel a sense of glee when I think about the serious & silly musical possibilities from this audio platform.
  • skill: I look forward to the challenge of learning a platform (GarageBand for iOS) because editing & producing from anywhere feels bad-ass.

The vision is so grand that it’s intimidating, and that’s what’s impeding me. Thus, this blog post is mostly to remind myself to take a step, and much like the blog in its early days, take a small step, embracing the phrase, “This is enough for now.”

So with these next few episodes, I’m folding in a new styling, like voice alteration for the evil-Merrill antagonistic voice you occasionally see here, in italics, and in parentheses (Who, me?), or somehow conveying content where I added an unnecessary but lightly comical alternative a strikethrough, or doing justice to lengthier sections that describe an alternate scene. These are all aspects of my playful style, my steez, which I’ve grown comfortable with for this blog medium, and I’ve grown curiosity for in how I can get them to translate to a podcast. Yes, I’m sure I’ll find other stylings that are podcast-specific, but I’m starting somewhere, in the spirit of embracing the phrase, “This is enough for now.”

(So what are these guardrails?)

To better enjoy this podcasting journey of passion (glee!) and skill (challenge!), I’ve got to take a small step in styling, through a small step in content, embracing the phrase, “This is enough for now.”

(Kinda overkill with that phrase, wouldn’t ya say?)

(Dude. Chill. That is enough.)

(…For now? 😉)

(For now. 😎)

How to Measure Agile Coaching

Carrying on from the “value is sustained change in behaviour” opinion I shared previously, allow me to humbly submit my idea (a strong opinion, loosely held) for how to measure how we are doing as Agile Coaches.

Agile Coaches (plural!) are usually brought on because some company (BIG!!) wants to go through an Agile Transformation (ZOINKS!!!). The word “transformation” means, to me, a change in state, thus this company has made a determination:

change to a better state… an “Agile” one, whatever the heck that means.

Continue reading How to Measure Agile Coaching

Scrum At Hail

I’m starting this post with a pun of a title…. hopefully I can weave one together so that this title makes sense…

Let’s say you have an Agile team. You probably call it a Squad, admit it. Let’s also say this team is running Scrum, and because this is all hypothetical, let’s finally say it’s doing Scrum well.

Well done. ‘Twas all you. Give yourself a… self-five.

Let’s now say you have more than one Agile team Squad, at varying levels of Agile maturity at different stages on their Agile journey, and their work is either related to or dependent on each other no, wait, that was right, let’s keep it… and their work is either related to or dependent on each other.

Well, crap. It’s all on you. Pick a scaling framework… from five.

Let’s celebratorily say you’ve picked one. Now you can have focused conversations around ‘the now’ and ‘the next’, incorporating more aspects of the business, and hopefully addressing impediments quickly, even with as many Squads as you have.

Well, there you have it: Scrum, at scale.

This does not make sense when you’re a ScrumOfOne. Or does it? No, it doesn’t. Continue reading Scrum At Hail