Why we don’t have negative experience reports at agile conferences.

Last year at a number of agile conferences I had similar conversations were I wondered why we had so little negative experience reports at agile conferences.
I know that there are agile projects that are failing. I’m convinced that when you do an agile project, you will see problems earlier. Some companies might decide at that [...]

Guest blogging @ 5 why’s

Roy Osherove has asked me if I wanted to blog some guest posts on his 5 why’s blog on the Core protocols.

my introduction 
my first post on the check-in protocol.

This link should give you all the post’s I’m blogging there.
I  am Yves Hanoulle, your virtual Project coach and you can reach [...]

The Fun Factor

This video shows how you can change people’s behavior when you make them have fun.
 

I’m just back from Toronto where I did two workshops next to AgileTourToronto. Last day was AgileGameDay. A whole day of playing games to learn serious stuff.
The reasons for me behind these [...]

Tired of long meetings without decisions?

Have you ever been in a meeting that seems to go on for hours? Where some people talk like this:
BlahBlahBlah, BlahBlahBlah, I don’t have anything to add to this conversation, but I want to make sure that everyone hears my voice, BlahBlahBlah, so that I’m sure that they value me, BlahBlahBlah, and [...]

10+ Deploys Per Day: Dev and Ops Cooperation at Flickr"

I have been talking about real life deployment at Flickr for a few years. People have been asking me numbers or places where they could verify what I said. Problem was I did not remember where I read that Flickr deployed every 3 hours.
Here are the slides.
[...]

The power of the junior on the team

I know some senior developers that don’t like PairProgram with juniors as they slow them down. First of all, the speed of the team (and thus the velocity of the team) is determent by the slowest on the team, not by the fastest. First reaction could be: let’s throw out these juniors. [...]

Facilitating: the skill of multiple partiality

As an agile coach I do quite some retrospectives. My partner asked me a few days ago how it was possible that a team that did not know me, trusted me to do their retrospective.
What I told her was that it goes much better then when I do a retrospective for a team I’m [...]

Announcing courses in Toronto

After my successful sessions @ Agile2009 & AgileEE, I’m also doing a talk at some of the Agile Tour events:
Agile Tour Geneve (12 october) http://www.agiletour.org/fr/at2009_geneve.html Agile Tour Toronto (20 october) http://www.agiletour.org/fr/at2009_toronto.html Agile Tour Bordeaux (29 October) http://agiletour.org/fr/at2009_bordeaux.html
XP Days Benelux (23-24November – Benelux) [...]

How to work with a whiteboard with a distributed team?

On agile conferences and on agile mailing list every once in a while the same question pop’s up:
"What tool should I use to keep track of my team."
I answer this every time again with a question: what are you using right now.I want to know why people want to use a tool. These days there [...]

I propose we replace Best Practise by great practise

It all started with this tweet from J.B. Rainsberger:
jbrains I consider never using the phrase "best practice" a best practice. #wcr09
 
 
I RT this, just like many other people.
I like to think I immediately understood what JB mend. For me it what it means is that, from the moment people start to call [...]

The slides of my talk at AgileEE: Tips for creating a self-organizing team

 
As I had a problem with my timer, I skipped the video of Agile Hitler during my talk. For the people that saw my talk,it should have come before the slide with the responsibility of Christopher Avery. (I wanted people to realize they saw examples of the not taking responsibility in the video).
For the [...]

Apple’s view of the future as seen in the 8o’ties

At the Agile 2009 conference, Jared M. Spool used this video during his keynote.
It was how Apple envisioned the future in the 1980’s.

Jared said Apple used that video internally to take decisions.
Remember this was invisioned before the internet existed, even before cellphone’s.
I  am Yves Hanoulle, your virtual Project coach and you can reach me at [...]

Upcoming agile conferences 2009

While I’m missing  Agile Open Holland today, time to reflect on the Conferences I do go to.
I will be talking at Agile Eastern Europe about leadership (18-20 Sep 2009 Kiev) http://www.agileee.org/
The same talk I will be giving on the Agile Tour in Geneve (12 october 2009) http://www.agiletour.org/fr/at2009_geneve.html
Agile Tour TorontoI get a lot of mails from [...]

Leadership Game @ Agile2009 Chicago

On the last day of Agile 2009 in Chicago I played the leader game in Open Jam. This was the first time I played it in Open Space.
I was afraid that people would not show up or walk away. They did show up and instead of people walking of, more people joined.
(To be exact [...]

Rally Chalk Talk: The daily meeting

My three questions:
1 What have I finished yesterday.
2 What do I commit to finish today
3 Where do I need help?
==>So these are a little bit different as the ones from Jean.
I don’t make the link between what I promised yesterday and what I have done yesterday. Because it might be that [...]

Daniel Pink on intrinsic & extrinsic motivation

Esther Derby gave a great presentation @ Agile 2009 called Performance without Appraisals: what to do about performance reviews.
In this TED talk, Daniel Pink quote’s some research that proves why appraisals don’t work for Information Workers.

 
Vera Peters and myself gave a workshop in London on the same topic. You can find [...]

A new BootCamp is on it’s way

Almost a year after the last European BootCamp I’m organizing another one.
In my (obviously biased) opinion, BootCamp is the best way to learn how to create team’s.Jim & Michele McCarthy started doing Bootcamps when they left Microsoft, now 15 years ago.
The idea was to create a course were people would learn how to create a [...]

Agile conferences

To my big surprise I have not been blogging about the upcoming Agile conferences.
I’ll be going to Agile 2009 in Chicago. This is the agile conference to be. Neatly organized by different stages like festivals.
Unfortunately this year non of my sessions got accepted; Oh well leave’s me more time to follow other sessions and [...]

Fix price project in trouble…

Yesterday I receive this e-mail:
Dear friends,
Sorry to bother you, but I’m asking for your advice on the followingmatter.  My company is engaged in a project that is losing money.It’s a fixed-scope, fixed-money and we’ve badly underestimated theeffort required.  For the record, we started in May last year, and weestimated it would be over in a [...]

The downfall of Agile Hitler

I’m prepping a FishBowl about leadership for XP Day France 2009.
This video is a perfect example of the kind of controversial statements I want the participants to discuss about.
Yves Hanoulle