Archives for the ‘Agile Adventures’ Category

Eat Pray Love

Superheroes

Pure Inspiration

One of the ways I listen to Ted talks is on a Sunday afternoon as I do my weekly ironing. And so it was, one Sunday evening around 6 years ago that I first stumbled upon Elizabeth Gilbert’s talk “Your elusive creative genius“.

The talk was so inspiring, in fact, it awakened my long slumbering dragon of a wish to write a novel of my own one day. A book that would be published through a reputable publisher and inspire its readers.

A Dragon of a Wish

Ever since I can remember, I’ve always wanted to be a writer. Of course, I didn’t really understand what that meant until I was much older, so old and weary from Life’s distractions, threats and challenges that I almost stayed away instead of confront and befriend my dragon of a wish.

One of the most important things I learned was “to be a writer, you have to write“. While that seems like common sense, it’s anything but easy or straightforward. Just because you know what to do, doesn’t make it easier to do. Especially when it’s tied up with the hopes, fears and anxieties that come with realising a lifelong dream.

Along the way, I came across many personal gremlins, some nastier than others. Such an undertaking forced me to dig deep and I got cleverer with each encounter. With each gremlin’s put-down or criticism, I would take a deep breath, smile then say, “To be a writer, I have to write and so I write. Goodbye!”

Dreams Do Come True

Thanks to Elizabeth Gilbert’s inspirational talk, I’ve written and published my first novel “The Dream Team Nightmare – Boost Team Productivity Using Agile Techniques” (also available on Amazon) and presented my first TedX talk about my concept on “Enterprise Gardening: Transforming workplaces into somewhere we belong”.

Time to Awaken Another Dragon

Last weekend, I discovered Elizabeth Gilbert’s just given her second Ted talk about “Success, failure and the drive to keep creating”. Here’s to awaking and befriending more dragons!

 

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Coaches – Habit 1: Lead by Example

Stuff in Your Head

Habit 1: Lead by Example

A coach doesn’t just talk the talk, they walk the walk. This means living by the values and principles they espouse as well as applying the tools and techniques they know to themselves and to their work. They know when they’ve failed to lead by example and always strive to get themselves back on track. A coach knows their limits and asks others for help. A coach appreciates when others stretch their knowledge, skills, and experience beyond their comfort zone because they know that’s where the real learning happens.

Exercise: The Flaw Workout

No one’s perfect. Everyone has at least one flaw. Share one of your personal flaws with someone you’re coaching. Ask them for ideas on how you can address that flaw in order to improve yourself. Commit to actively improve regarding that particular flaw over a certain time period of your choice. After that time has passed, ask that other person to rate your behaviour before you tried to improve. Then ask them to rate your behaviour after a period of attempting to improve. Inquire about the person’s thinking behind the ratings to come up with more ideas for improving yourself.

When rating, I suggest using a range of 0-10 where “0” means “There’s plenty of room for improvement” and “10” means “What flaw? You’re already behaving perfectly!”

For more information, see: “What Got You Here Won’t Get You There” by Marshall Goldsmith where he provides similar exercises for personal and professional development for highly successful individuals.

For more ideas on personal and team improvement, why not read “The Dream Team Nightmare” and go on an Agile Adventure?

Write or Wrong

Hope Lives

To be a writer you have to write

To celebrate National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), I’d like to share some hard-earned insights from writing my first ever novel, “The Dream Team Nightmare: Boost Team Productivity Using Agile Techniques“. In my experience, these insights apply to any creative endeavour, not just to novel writing alone.

1. Write daily
Bring your project to life then keep it going by working on it little and often. After all, you’re the sole caretaker of your creation. Its existence depends wholly on you. By “write daily”, I mean work on your project every day for at least 30 minutes. Why wouldn’t you do this if it really matters to you? Activities like brainstorming ideas or doing a simple sketch all count. If you get stuck, write about what’s stopping you from writing. It’s a surprisingly effective way of unblocking a gnarly case of writer’s block.

2. Rest one day a week
Take a day off every 6 days or when you feel you need to. If you take a break at the right time, you’ll want to get back to writing after the break. Imagine yourself as a vessel, a coffee mug or a tea cup or something more novel. Whatever works for you. By taking a break, you allow yourself to re-charge so that you have a full cup to work from or at least a new idea to get you writing again.

3. Clear your mind
Most creatives I know have many ideas buzzing in their heads at any one time. This makes getting things done really hard. The secret to focus is to empty your brain of all ideas so that you can focus more effectively on one idea at a time. Jot down all your ideas via brainstorming or make a simple list. Then pick one and focus on only that idea until you get as much written about it as possible right now. You can always add to the content relating to that one idea later on when, no doubt, more ideas will be jostled into existence by your busy imagination.

4. Separate writing from editing
There’s a time and place for everything. When you’re writing, be sure to focus on getting words down on paper. Write freely to achieve flow. Send your inner critic on holiday. Only when you’re editing do you invite them to the party.

5. Have fun!
This is absolutely essential if you wish to create something you love instead of resent. Play gets us moving and keeps us going. I get tedious or tough going tasks done by making it fun. It was really tough, at first, to sit down and work on my project for 30 minutes a day. So I treated myself to some really beautiful stickers and awarded myself one per day on my physical calendar. I figured that if it works for children, why not me? I only needed to do this for 10 days before working on my book took on a momentum of its own and the daily 30-minute timebox became a habit!

6. Stay fit and healthy
A healthy body begets a healthy mind and vice-versa. Go for walks or to the gym to give all your muscles a workout. This time doubles up as a break and a way to stay fit. Bonus!

7. Never give up
You can probably come up with a million reasons why your project won’t succeed and why you should stop right now. In fact, there are plenty of people out there ready to pat you on the back for giving up on an impossible dream. Only you can write your novel. “Just keep writing, just keep writing…”

Happy NaNoWriMo!

Labour of Love

The Dream Team Nightmare Paperback

On Wednesday, 20 November 2013, I held my second newborn child in my arms for the first time. I am, of course, referring to my first ever novel in print, “The Dream Team Nightmare – Boost Team Productivity Using Agile Techniques“.

I start by counting all the fingers and toes. Then I slowly study this printed creation, one feature at a time. Even though I’ve spent the past two years painstakingly breathing life into the book – writing, editing, rewriting and tweaking – I’m astounded by the stranger before me. It’s like meeting a penpal in person for the first time after having corresponded with them for years. And now that I can actually flick through physical pages, reading the gamebook is as much fun as I’d hoped it would be when I first decided on using the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure style format for this business novel.

My greatest hope is that you, as Jim Hopper, an agile coach, and me can help make the world of work a better place, one baby step at a time.

The book is now on sale from the Pragmatic Bookshelf and amazon.com. It will be available in a couple of weeks on amazon.co.uk and other amazon sites.

Happy Agile Adventure!

The Dream Team Nightmare Available in Beta

Are you ready for the latest Agile Adventure?

Management is ready to disband your new agile team and outsource your project. Can you save The Dream Team?

The Dream Team started their journey 18 months ago. Since then, life has become a nightmare. Progress has ground to a halt. Morale is low. Quality has become taboo. You have five days to figure out how to get the team back on track. There will be conflict and maybe tears. One thing is for sure: there will be plenty of tough decisions to make.

Inspired by a classic gamebook series, this fun and interactive story has eight different endings designed to enrich and put your agile development knowledge and experience to the test. Packed with familiar scenarios an agile team faces every day, The Dream Team Nightmare offers you the chance to see what would happen if you could do things differently so you can change the way you do things for real with confidence.

Combining practical team-building exercises with effective facilitation and Systems Thinking, by the end of the book you’ll be ready to rescue projects in trouble, and get new projects off to a better start.

What reviewers are saying…

Victoria Morgan-Smith, Scrum Master, says: “Engaging and fun to read, The Dream Team Nightmare is jam-packed with fresh ideas and techniques that are easy to adopt. It’s also a great springboard for follow-up reading on the bigger ideas such as systems thinking. I would heartily recommend it to everyone to share with their teams.”

James Major, Project Manager at Network Rail, says, “The Dream Team Nightmare is a breath of fresh air in comparison to other books on project theory and process out there. It provides you with a wealth of information to make better decisions on your project.”

Dyan Corutiu, Software Developer, says: “The Dream Team Nightmare is a crash course in Agile. I strongly recommend it to all readers involved in building software products, from technical to product people.”

Karl Scotland, Agile Coach at Rally Software, says: “The Dream Team Nightmare is an innovative and entertaining read that helped me learn some new ideas and techniques, had me thinking about how I work, and kept me wanting to continue the adventure.”

Liz Sedley, Author of Agile Coaching, says: “The Dream Team Nightmare is packed with tips and concrete techniques for how to do just about everything an Agile Coach does. Portia’s entertaining book is totally unlike any other Agile book you’ve ever read.”

Matt Gelbwalks, Transformation Coach at North Main, LLC, says: “This is the most fun read I’ve had in a long time. I anticipate that it will have the same dramatic effect for Agile methods as The Goal did for Systems Thinking. You should read it at least twice, once for enjoyment and a second time for deeper learning.”

Sandro Mancuso, Founder of the London Software Craftsmanship, says: “Portia shows, in a very engaging, unique, and fun way, how a sequence of small decisions and the way we interact with people can determine the success (or failure) of a project.”

Begin your Agile Adventure here.

Happy Birthday to Agile Adventures!

1 Year Old Balloon

Surprise!

The first ever Agile Adventure “The Dream Team Nightmare” is one year old today!

It’s a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure where you, the protagonist, get to play the role of Agile Coach and help out The Dream Team who are in deep trouble. Your choices steer the story and determine the outcome for the team.

About the Book

The book was self-published last year. Since then, it’s had more than 600 downloads.

To find out more about the book, visit Leanpub.com.

To find out more about the story behind the writing of the book, click here.

Last Chance to Own the First e-book Edition

The good news is that you can still get hold of the original version from Leanpub.com for a nightmarishly reasonable $6.66.

Or you can buy it as part of a great Agile bundle of books for $50 instead of the recommended price of $142.61.

But not for much longer. That’s because The Pragmatic Programmers and I are busy having fun producing the next edition which will exist as both an e-book and in hard copy. Yaay!

Fright Night Special: Scare yourself silly for free!

Enjoy a scary read for free

To celebrate this Halloween, we’re giving away free downloads of The Dream Team Nightmare, the first ever Choose-Your-Own-Adventure style story about Agile for 48 hours from 30 – 31 October inclusive.

The Dream Team Nightmare is great for ghostbusters because it’s packed full of ideas of how to make friends with the ghosties and ghoulies they meet every day. Coupon code: FrightNight.

Enjoy the scary read! Read it with friends and colleagues to trigger a conversation for daring change!

What reviewers say…

Vera Peeters, software developer and co-creator of The XP Game, says:
“Portia is trying to write down stuff from her own excperience since a long time. Now she finally found her format. It’s a great idea to make it an adventure! It is different, it is playful, it makes it fun to read and read again and to study. As always, Portia will inspire you and will challenge you to think about what you are doing.”

Steve Holyer, Agile Coach, says:
“The only way to learn Agile coaching is by doing. ‘The Dream Team Nightmare’ lets you experience a week as Agile coach for the Dream Team in a “choose-your-own- adventure” style book. It’s totally fun and surprisingly like real life.”

Staffan Noteberg, author of “Pomodoro Technique Illustrated”, says:
“The Game of life is to try, learn and adapt through small and frequent experiments. Portia’s book gives you the unique opportunity to understand Agile in an experimen- tal way. The palette of problems and creative solutions, presented in this book, will surprise experienced Agile practitioners as well as new enthusiasts.”

Olaf Lewitz, Agile Coach, says:
“‘The Dream Team Nightmare’ is the most compelling and intriguing ‘business novel’ that I have read so far. The message is so well wrought into the narrative flow that you barely notice you are learning a lot. The style of making assumptions, validating them to keep track of what you learn and plan to do is that of an effective change artist. To explicitly identify options, deferring decisions to keep options open, not only makes reading this gamebook very exciting, it is also part of the method you see applied. I highly recommend this book to agile readers of all experi- ence levels. You will learn. Let Agile Adventures entertain you!”

Somewhere Over the Rainbow

A Flash from the Past

Years ago when I was back at school, I had two very different English teachers.

The first was Ms. H, a quiet, unassuming and knowledgeable young teacher. She was my favourite teacher because she encouraged me to improve my writing through my assignments. For a long time, I wondered if she wanted to become a writer herself and just before I left school, I found out that she was writing a novel in her spare time. I remember feeling pleased upon discovering this information and secretly wished her well.

The second was Mrs. W, a very knowledgeable and exceptionally opinionated teacher. In many ways, teachers with strong views can be an inspiration and Mrs. W was exactly that to me. Mrs. W was a retired journalist who had worked at a number of the famous newspapers in London. She seemed the most worldly-wise among all the teachers at my school.

Death Sentence?

At the tender age of 15, I figured that whatever Mrs. W said was worth listening to. This rule worked well until the day I mentioned I’d like to be a writer and she replied, “Forget about becoming a writer, you’ll never be good enough.”

The rule of listening to Mrs. W had been hardcoded into my brain and what had been heard could not be unheard. At first I felt shocked then angry at the certainty with which she uttered her judgment. And when the shock and anger fizzled out, I decided I would have to find my own way. She may be right in her conviction, but I had to at least try to do my dream justice.

And so I dabbled with writing short stories for a while and, being a complete novice, quickly got lost. The next baby step I could take was a joint honours degree in English and French to keep my dream of becoming a writer alive.

Dormant Dreams

Eventually, with the distractions of life and reality, I fell asleep, along with my dream of becoming a writer, much like Dorothy did in the poppy field on her way to see the wizard.

When I awoke, I’d become an IT professional, first a developer, then a development manager then a consultant.

In the last 4 years, I’ve made at least 20 attempts to write a book. Fiction or non-fiction, it didn’t really matter. To be a writer, I needed to write. For me, a successful outcome would be a book I wrote.

Back to the Future

Twenty five years later after that fateful conversation with Mrs. W, my dream became a reality.

On Wednesday, 6 June 2012, two days after the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, my first book was born: ‘The Dream Team Nightmare’, a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure aka Fighting Fantasy style game book where you, the protagonist, plays an Agile Coach tasked with helping to get a failing Agile team back on track.

The value of experiments

Thanks to my previous attempts (aka experiments), I’d finally produced a work consisting of elements of fiction AND non-fiction. What’s more, it’s the first ever game book in the Agile Community that I know of. And better still, in writing ‘The Dream Team Nightmare’, I imagined into existence a series close to my own heart called ‘Agile Adventures – When the journey matters as much as the destination’.

Dream BIG, live it little by little

So what’s my biggest take away from my 21 attempts in recent years at living my dream of becoming a writer? That we have everything we need to overcome the challenges we face to live our dreams. The key is to stay faithful to your dream, go easy on yourself and live a bit of the dream every day.

What’s the smallest step you can take right now to help make one of your dreams come true?

New Release: The Dream Team Nightmare

“Hello World!”

From the first ever Agile Adventure to be created! Get your copy from Leanpub here. Journey on your own or go on an adventure and read it with your team and your friends. Most important of all, have fun!

Are you ready for an Agile Adventure?

Launch Day of ‘The Dream Team Nightmare’

After a gargantuan team effort with plenty of help from my friends, on 6 June 2012, we’ll be releasing the first complete version of ‘The Dream Team Nightmare’, the first in the Agile gamebook series called ‘Agile Adventures’. We very much hope you will have as much fun reading it as we have had in creating it!

What reviewers are saying about ‘The Dream Team Nightmare

Jenni Jepsen, Communications Strategist (and Agile Enthusiast), says:
“Reading ‘The Dream Team Nightmare’ is a fun and involving way to understand the basics of Agile, the common challenges practitioners face, and practical ways to address them in your organization. Portia brings in tools as part of the story that those new to Agile, and perhaps not so new, can put into immediate use.”

Yves Hanoulle, Creative Collaboration Agent, says:
“What you are holding in your hands, is a rare piece of art. Art usually is created in a very short time, yet it can not be created without the lifetime and the experience of the artist. Not only has Portia managed to put so much wisdom into this book, she has also reinvented the format of Agile books. Although it looks like a book, it’s also a course, a game, an adventure, a quiz, dare I say even a fairytale? This was the funniest, most inspiring agile book I have ever read. It instantly became my favorite book to give away.”

Dyan Corutiu, Software Developer, says:
“The Dream Team Nightmare is a crash course in Agile. This game captures the essence of Agile in very simple words and examples. I strongly recommend it to all players involved in building software products, from technical to product people. Engaging, entertaining and painfully realistic at the same time, it serves both as a gentle introduction to the Agile mindset and good reminder of the values embraced by teams who consistently deliver valuable software.”

Sandro Mancuso, founder of the London Software Crafts- manship Community, says:
“Great introduction to Agile, full of real-life experience and techniques that can be applied immediately. Portia shows, in a very engaging, unique and fun way, how a sequence of small decisions and the way we interact with people can determine the success (or failure) of a project.”

Staffan Noteberg, author of “Pomodoro Technique Illustrated”, says:
“The Game of life is to try, learn and adapt through small and frequent experiments. Portia’s book gives you the unique opportunity to understand Agile in an experimen- tal way. The palette of problems and creative solutions, presented in this book, will surprise experienced Agile practitioners as well as new enthusiasts.”

Olaf Lewitz, Agile Coach, says:

“‘The Dream Team Nightmare’ is the most compelling and intriguing ‘business novel’ that I have read so far. The message is so well wrought into the narrative flow that you barely notice you are learning a lot. The style of making assumptions, validating them to keep track of what you learn and plan to do is that of an effective change artist. To explicitly identify options, deferring decisions to keep options open, not only makes reading this gamebook very exciting, it is also part of the method you see applied. I highly recommend this book to agile readers of all experience levels. You will learn. Let Agile Adventures entertain you!”