By Agile Conversations authors Douglas Squirrel and Jeffrey Fredrick. When teams first adopt Agile, Lean, or DevOps practices, they often think that they’ll have less conflict with the new methodology. “We’ll stop fighting over deadlines because we’ll estimate the work first,” they say, or “Work in Progress limits will mean we don’t get overloaded.” Surprise! The estimates and limits and tests usually lead to more clashes, not fewer—and this is a good thing, because the conflicts give us … [Read more...]
Strengthen Your Conversations Skills with Remote Work
BY AGILE CONVERSATIONS AUTHORS DOUGLAS SQUIRREL AND JEFFREY FREDRICK Collaboration is built on skills, and you can build those skills through deliberate practice. This growth mindset view is particularly useful in our world of suddenly enforced remote working. Remote collaboration is more demanding and unfamiliar to a lot of people who are experiencing it for the first time. Responding to these new challenges with a fixed mindset, taking the view that remote working is just hard and … [Read more...]
Take The Slow Lane To Build Trust
By Agile Conversations authors Douglas Squirrel and Jeffrey Fredrick Congratulations—you’ve decided to improve trust with someone at work. It could be the project manager who sets deadlines without consulting you, or that customer who’s complaining endlessly that you don’t deliver sufficient quality, or the star salesperson who sells features the company can’t deliver. Whoever it is and whatever the symptoms of the lack of trust, the first rule is—SLOW DOWN. When we talk to clients about … [Read more...]
