Disclaimer: this is not a post specifically about agile. Please feel guilt-free in skipping bits (or all) if you're not interested in Emotional Intelligence or the EQ Summit. (If you are interested, but need a grounding in what I;m talking about, try this article...
Keep It Simple – the unexpected joy of less
Subscribers to the (somewhat erratic) fluidworking newsletter already know my story of "The Great Wardrobe Simplification". If you don't, stay with me here, I promise this is not a post about fashion! Actually, this is an article about simplicity. It all started with...
Perspective on the Inspiration and Perspiration of Writing
I did a series of individual goal-setting with each of the NewVoiceMedia Scrum Masters last month. Whilst it isn't quite the same as the holy seal of the confessional, they are still personal & private, so I can't share them. Yet I learned so much! There were...
How To Do A Goal Setting Exercise
I am currently working though goal setting sessions with each of the Scrum Masters at NewVoiceMedia. As a foundation for this, we ran a personal retrospective for each of our Scrum Masters at NewVoiceMedia during December. Part of the reason was simply that it's...
5 Productivity Hacks You Need To Be Doing This Year
Ah: productivity. The answer to all of my 'not enough hours in the day' type woes. A holy grail of sorts. If I could just work smarter, not harder. If I could just be more efficient with my time. The Productivity Problem The problem with taking this approach to...
52 Little Things I Learned This Year
This post was inspired by a blog post I read around this time last year. In that post (long since lost in time I'm afraid) the author kept track of a number of things he had done over the previous year. I enjoyed the article so much I thought I might do a similar...
How to Do Your Personal Retrospective for the End of Year
In January, along with millions of other people, I intend to set myself some goals to achieve before the end of the year. I know that many people go through this exercise of goal setting, and not always for the same reasons. For me, I've found that aiming big and...
How to Use a Bullet Journal to be a Better Scrum Master
Some time ago I mentioned in passing that I was experimenting with a Bullet Journal. I have had some personal success with it, and several colleagues have asked me to talk them though what I've done. My usual heuristic is that if someone else finds what I am doing...
How to Have Nothing Bad to Say, Even to Yourself
Coaching can be a tough gig. There are so many pitfalls, so many opportunities to make things worse not better. I am often irritated when I see a coach or Scrum Master mistakenly offer empathy when they should offer sympathy. That is, they offer soothing platitudes...
What is it like transitioning to be a Scrum Master?
Some time ago, the Scrum Master Community at NewVoiceMedia played about a bit with some podcast ideas. It was more about learning how to do it, rather than actually setting up a regular podcast in any way. I was reminded of this recently when I stumbled on the mini...