Walking Their Talk, Sustainability, Inspiration
Robert Galen
Sustainability

I saw this wonderfully courageous and informative post by Sabine Canditt the other day where she wrote about Sustainable Scrum. 

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/sustainable-scrum-responsible-choice-sabine-canditt-x0gef

After just completing a The Week program facilitated by the amazing Ann-Marie Kong, it touched my heart.

That said, I wanted to highlight one comment reaction/interaction between Sabine and Erich Bühler 

Erich said—

Thank you for bringing this approach into the world! Scrum does provide an iterative approach for teams to create value, but its scope is limited to the product level and struggles with dynamics across the whole organization for several reasons.
Without updating the underlying business and financial model at a strategic level, Scrum alone cannot transform organization-wide sustainability.

Sustainability
Short-takes, Inspiration
Robert Galen
Sandy’s Take
Sandy’s Take
Short-takes, Personal Thoughts
Robert Galen
The Human Aspects of Agile Coaching
The Human Aspects of Agile Coaching
Coaching, ACGW, Personal Thoughts
Robert Galen
Keys to Building your Coaching Relationships

I talk a lot about the first step in coaching any client (individual, system, team, etc.) is to build a relationship, gain empathy and understanding, and then gain an idea of where/how to help initially. So, do NOT start to coach until you’ve done some relationship-building. 

But what does a coaching relationship, or a professional relationship in general, look like? What are aspects of that? Here are a few things that come to my mind—

  • Making + taking the time.

  • Explaining what you do—what is Agile Coaching.

  • Building some empathy; walking in their shoes; understanding where they are coming from.

  • Meeting them where they are.

  • Listening; reflective listening; building metaphors together.

  • Connecting with their language, not yours.

Keys to Building your Coaching Relationships
Personal Thoughts, Short-takes
Robert Galen
Privilege Awareness

I recently replied to a LinkedIn post by David Pereira. It was a wonderful post, and I applaud David’s boldness and courage in sharing it. 

Here’s a post comment from Stefan Wolpers—

While I agree fully with your personal stance regarding professionalism, David Pereira, some people will shy away, given the current economic climate. Some of the previously aggravated people may seek an opportunity to settle scores.

And here’s my comment—

I love the clarity (No BS) here. Clarity for David and clarity for those who want to work with and who don't want to work with him.
That said, David has the unique privilege that allows him to adopt this clarity. Many don't.

This post is not about David per se. Instead, he inspired me to write it.

Privilege Awareness

Public Speaking

Conference Submissions: Lessons I’ve learned the hard way…

Conference Submissions: Lessons I’ve learned the hard way…

Lately, I’ve been asked by quite a few people to help them craft a proposal or abstract submission for an agile conference.

I’m lucky in that I’ve been doing this for a while, probably twenty or more years. So, I have a fair amount of experience and success. I’ve also been a program chair in local and national conferences, so I understand what folks are generally looking for in the submission process.

Given that I’ve been repeating myself a lot, I’ve decided to share some lessons in this post so that I can simply reference it when asked. I’m not sharing all of my secrets, but enough to get you going in the right direction.

Kudos to Lee Copeland

But first, I want to say thank you to Lee Copeland. Lee was the program chair for the SQE / TechWell series of conferences (StarEast & West; Better Software, AgileDev, and others) that have been running since the 1990s.

Early on, I was a fledgling speaker and Lee took the time to help me craft my submissions, talks, and speaking abilities. More than that, he showed me patience and had confidence in me. For that, I will be forever grateful and I’m hopeful that he is proud of my journey.