I'm just back from a wonderful time in Taos NM and ready to focus on my professional life again. It's time to send a reminder about a terrific conference coming up later this month.
Agile Open Northwest, an alliance of agile practitioners in the U.S. Pacific Northwest, presents "Agile Open Northwest 2007: Agile for Real" January 30-31, 2007 in Portland, Oregon at McMenamins'
Kennedy School, one of my favorite places.
This conference is for you. We invite 100 experienced, collaborative, committed agile practitioners from the Northwest and beyond to join us in tackling issues around the theme of agile development in the...
As someone who thinks and writes about retrospectives, I sometimes find myself musing on the other half of the bookend...what about at the beginning of things? I think about chartering projects, and project kickoffs and iteration/release planning activities. How can we use what we've learned in our retrospectives to get the next project or increment of work off to the best start.
Today I saw a post on the Open Space mailing list that pointed me to the Anecdote blog from a group in Australia. Shawn writes about Pre-Mortems. It's an unfortunate name ("before death"), but the intent...
I must admit, it's exciting to wake up one day and find our book on the Best of 2006 books list.
Esther and I had a great time this evening fielding questions about retrospectives at the Richmond Virginia APLN chapter meeting. We asked those present to create a backlog of their burning questions, then we answered those that table groups said were their highest priorities. The questions ranged from best/worst retrospectives to how to convince managers of ROI to how to handle "prisoner" participants. We had a lot of fun, renewed acquaintances, and met interesting new people. I hope...
I'm at home for a brief stop between two events that I've anticipated all year.
The Consultants' Retreat and Network (founded in 1997 by my friend Norm K.) celebrated its 10th anniversary year this week. We gathered in Newport, Oregon, USA, once again for a week of unexpected surprises, generous idea-sharing, and the kind of insights into my practice that I've come to expect from the event. Charlie Poole convened it this year.
As time passes, I will discover more benefits from attending, but so far I have a very cool new sweatshirt and a terrific quote from Rosabeth Moss Kanter, "Everything...
I read Garr Reynolds' blog, "Presentation Zen," on presentation design and skills.
Today, it features an excerpt from Bill Clinton's recent speech at Georgetown University.
Reynolds highlights two paragraphs from Clinton's speech.
"We believe in a politics...dominated by evidence and argument. There is a big difference between a philosophy and an ideology, on the right or the left. If you have a philosophy, it generally pushes you in a certain direction or another. But like all philosophers, you want to engage in discussion and argument. You are open to evidence, to new learning. And you are certainly...