Growing up, my dad used “you people” to refer to the rest of the inhabitants of the house when we’d done something he didn’t like. It was inevitably combined with “always”. “You people always leave the lights on when you leave the room!” This phrase is custom-tailored to hit just exactly wrong: “You people” excluded …
Month: June 2022
When I see an ad that encourages me to come join a young team, it negatively influences my view of that company. Best case: the person writing the ad is using “young” as a synonym for energy, enthusiasm and drive without thinking a lot about it. Usual case: the team being hired for is currently …
Those of us working in agile environments hear words like ‘sprints’, ‘scrum’ and ‘coach’ at work but probably don’t give a lot of thought to their original meaning – and today I want to ruminate about sprints. A sprint, originally, is a race over a short distance. All that matters is getting over the finish …
The prime directive of agile retrospectives: “Regardless of what we discover, we understand and truly believe that everyone did the best job they could, given what they knew at the time, their skills and abilities, the resources available, and the situation at hand.” This is supposed to create a supportive framework for a meeting where …
Some things I don’t do because, while I can produce perfectly adequate results, my results are not world-changing. I may enjoy the process of getting there, but not enough to overcome the feeling when I look at the result: yes, that’s okay, but it’s not stunning. I enjoyed drawing and painting in school and I’m …