2008: A Retrospective
Things I’m most grateful for:

My first Agile deathmarch with a casualty of 1. Me. Lesson Learnt: Always agree on Acceptance Criteria before doing anything.
Learning from a diverse bunch of people: my fellow Exxies (folks from Exoftware), my client teams and especially Agilistas such as TJ, Pascal Van Cauwenberghe, Vera Peeters, Duncan Pierce, David [...]

Congratulations! THE BIG DAY you’ve been training for for the past 364 days will soon by upon us. It’s time to cash in on the benefit of the thousands of Agility exercises you’ve been putting into practice at work. Let’s hope all the agile flexing of both brain and brawn pays off. 
Ho! Ho! Ho! Contenders [...]

The first and most important thing I share with any team I work with are the Agile Values, also known the XP Values from Kent Beck and Cynthia Andres.
The Five Agile Values
1. Communication is a two way thing. It’s about talking and listening.
2. Simplicity is about simple solutions that do what’s required, no more, no [...]

As an Agile Coach, the greatest challenge for me on any Agile Enablement gig is The Wall. And I don’t mean the Project Wall (aka Kanban Board), the one with the iteration backlog on display for all to see, where stories and tasks take their turn journeying across the columns of TODO and In Progress [...]

New Kids on the Block
My first ever commercial IT project was to tweak an existing application that sent out financial news by email. I remember really enjoying the challenge. I learned how to set up my local dev environment. I learned about the release process using foil packs of tea as release tokens (creativity was [...]

Writer to Reader
P.: I compare Agile to a pair of socks.
J.: I know, I read your blog.
P: What do you think of it?
J.: I like it. It’s quirky. And it’s based on genuine coaching experience. (Pause) I’ve often thought of writing my own.
P.: That’s a great idea! For years, I didn’t think I had anything [...]

‘To some, responsibility is a burden. To others, responsibility is a reward. For many, responsibility means having someone to point to.’
- Christopher Avery
It was great to finally meet Christopher Avery at the Agile Business Conference this Wednesday. His presentation on the Responsibility Model, delivered in person, was every bit as insightful and entertaining as I [...]

Adopting Agile brings out the best in people, it brings out the worst in people. That’s because Agile is a challenge for change: for the individual, for the team and, above all, for the organisation.
For many people, Agile evokes fear. Fear of uncertainty, fear of looking foolish, fear of being held accountable, fear of the [...]

One Agile coach says to another, ‘How do you find the strength to carry on?’
The other coach replies, ‘I believe in “happily ever after“‘.
Going Off the Rails
In my experience, the toughest period on any Agile Enablement gig is the first two iterations. Some have described it as a rollercoaster ride - the corkscrew-space-mountain type where [...]

If Agile were a food (instead of a project delivery methodology focussed on people and collaboration), it would be Marmite.
Marmite is a savoury black spread made out of yeast extract. Yes, that’s right: extract of yeast. To some it’s taste-bud tingling good while to others it’s more revolting than three-day old roadkill on a hot [...]