Tag: Agile

#9 Facilitating Retrospectives with Aino Vonge Corry

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Aino Vonge Corry

I first met Aino at a conference in London. I was late into a session and she graciously signalled that the seat next to her was free. Being the under educated man that I am, I had no idea that I was now sitting next to the day’s keynote speaker, a fact that didn’t reveal itself even when we were paired up for an exercise that involved sharing our earliest memories of soft toys. (Yes, really!)

(If you’re interested: my first memory is with a teddy bear called ‘Growl’ – the fantastically and originally named blue bear that someone had given to me on the momentous occasion of my birth. Growl would ‘growl’ when he moved forward and also stood at double my height – I think you can picture why I came to remember him!)

It wasn’t until the keynote session itself that I found out that Aino was the keynote speaker. To the delight of the audience she gave a speech on the importance of being funny within the workplace, which was in fact, very funny!

In this podcast episode we talk about retrospectives and how to maximise their value.

Aino has appeared on the conference circuit since 2001 and has presented across the world. If you want to see Aino talking about retrospectives and being funny then she’ll be giving another keynote at GOTO Amsterdam 2020 on the 8th-11th June (pending current global circumstances).

I hope you enjoy the show and if you have any comments or suggestions please write to me at: [email protected].

Enjoy,

Toby

About Aino

Aino Vonge Corry is a teacher, a technical conference editor and retrospectives facilitator. She holds a masters degree and a ph.d. in computer science. She has 12 years of experience with Patterns in Software Development, and 10+ years’ experience with facilitation of retrospectives.

For the past 5 years she has been focused on facilitating the agile journey for several companies in Denmark. She also teaches how to teach Computer Science to teachers, and thus lives up to the name of her company; Metadeveloper. 

In her spare time, she runs and sings (but not at the same time).

Aino’s Links

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#8 Project Myopia with Allan Kelly

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Allan Kelly

Allan Kelly was an early exponent of the #NoProjects movement, one of whose key tenets is:

“If you want to start a project, you’ve already failed”

Allan runs workshops on fresh thinking (thought leadership) and Agile team trainings He is also an Agile coach, speaks at conferences and events and spends a great deal of time at ‘Agile on the beach’.

Somewhere in amongst all of this, Allan finds the time to write some excellent books such as:

  • Project Myopia
  • Continuous Digital
  • The Little Book of User Stories FAQ

(links below)

This episode may appear to tilt toward the software and digital spaces, but regular listeners will be aware that here at Wicked Problems I encourage listeners who are involved in other fields to think about how the concepts being discussed might also be applied to help them too, as many of these concepts cross pollinate.

Remember – a Wicked Problem is, amongst other things, a problem with no obvious stopping condition.

Lastly – can you spot where the technical glitch in recording this episode took place? (We did our best to smooth over it!)

I hope you enjoy the show. If you have any comments or suggestions please write to me at:

[email protected]

Enjoy,

Toby

About Allan

Allan Kelly helps software development and other digital delivery teams to effectively deliver products using agile approaches.

He provides inspiring Agile training to teams and advice for leaders. He works across technology and business teams, both being part of the solution; something he calls call #BizTech. He was an early, and vigorous, exponent of the #NoProjects movement.

Allan’s Links

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#7 Work Death! From Kaizen to Karoshi with John Clapham

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Work Death! From Kaizen to Karoshi with John Clapham

In this episode I talk to John Clapham, a professional coach and Agile consultant who works predominantly with I.T and digital services organisations.

John helps leaders and individuals develop, teams to build great products, and organisations learn to be more effective, productive and enjoyable to work in. He is also a frequent speaker at conferences around the UK.

With the advent of cloud technology and fast paced Agile project delivery methodologies such as Scrum & Kanban, come concepts such as Kaisen.

In Japanese, Kaisen merely gives us the principle of change for the better or an improvement, be that one-off or continuous.

In the world of Agile and lead methodologies it has been adopted as a word for continuous improvement, itself often used merely as a synonym for working at pace.

However, no one can work at pace all the time and it is perhaps perilous to forget that burnout does not lead to improvement but rather a reduction in productivity. Here we might do well to keep another Japanese term, Karoshi, in mind. Translated as ‘overwork death’, Karoshi is a term that refers to occupational sudden mortality.

This is not to suggest that the Japanese are working their population to death, but simply that in learning to work at pace we should ensure we don’t overwork our teams to their death.

In this episode John and I explore this concept with questions such as “how to deliver at pace whilst maintaining a healthy work life balance.”

Enjoy.

About John

John Clapham is an independent Agile consultant and professional coach. He helps individuals develop, teams build great products, and organisations learn to be more effective, productive and enjoyable to work in. His broad experience ranges from start-up to enterprise scale, formed in the publishing, telecommunications, commerce, defence and public sector arenas.

John is also often asked to talk at conferences and says “Nothing focuses the mind, or encourages thorough research like presenting ideas in front of hundreds of experts in the field.”

John has a secret passion for DevOps and Continuous Delivery. His forays into coaching, lean and Agile are fuelled by coffee, lego and Bristol’s frequent inclement weather.

Johns’s Links

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