Helping IT teams and their managers deliver great software solutions
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Good question: how to unblock stuck conversations
When discussions become stuck in a ‘death-spiral’ of point-counterpoint views it’s useful to have some techniques to unblock the discussion. One great technique is to shift the focus from telling people about your views and start asking questions to understand theirs. I was in a bid planning meeting at a large consultancy when the discussion…
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Ineffective pushback to a pushy manager?
How do you deal with a manager who believes that a software development team needs to go faster and should be pushed? I want to review some of the responses to my earlier blog and test the idea that they would create a productive conversation that would lead to effective outcomes. How does our advice…
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How can I push the software development team to go faster?
A common challenge I’ve heard from Development Managers or Product Owners is “how do I push my software development team to go faster?” Here are ideas on how to approach this topic and have more productive conversations. Understand your own mind Start by clarifying your own mind, particularly your intention and motive for trying to get…
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Removing the bubbles: solving bottlenecks in software product development
A challenge with software product development is visualising the work so that you can spot where there are delays in the process of converting ideas from “concept to cash”. This post shows how a cumulative flow diagram helped identify a pattern of queues over time. Removing these queues had many benefits such as fewer errors,…
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The importance of understanding variation or how to avoid treating all contractors as thieves
Here’s a story of how managers detected a problem, but by not understanding the cause of the problem of the type of variation the problem represented, applied the wrong type of solution which meant things were worse for everyone: Once upon a time in a large financial institution that had many thousands of people in…
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Naming names: helping Agile teams effectively deal with discussing individuals’ behaviour
I’ve seen a common issue where people in Agile teams are afraid to mention the behaviour of specific individuals. There’s often a fear that speaking about individuals’ behaviour will result in conflict, but indirect strategies are often self-protective and avoid dealing with the issue in a way that allows everyone to learn. By reframing the…
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Handling a team member who “talks too much”
How do you handle a situation as a team manager or coach where one member of the team seems to dominate the conversation? The scenario below is based on several experiences where team members think “that person’s talking rubbish!” but don’t know how to address it. This blog shows how the Ladder of Inference can…
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Improvements on using a simple kanban for effective meetings
Since I posted last week about using a simple kanban to structure workshops, I’ve used the technique with several other clients and have made some subtle but useful improvements. Here are the key improvements: Making time constraints explicit. Ask everyone at the start of the meeting “are there any time constraints you have?”. Write a…
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Skilled incompetence in action at Agile workshops
As part of my workshops on effective communication, especially around introducing innovative new process approaches such as Lean and Agile, I’ve found examples that demonstrate how people can act with “skilled incompetence” and “skilled unawareness”. One exercise I run is to help people look at how effectively they communicate feedback on difficult topics. The scenario…
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Using a simple kanban to run effective meetings and workshops
I’ve found using a kanban a productive approach to structuring and running meetings, workshop and presentations. Many meetings or workshops are often run from a fixed schedule that isn’t easy to update or change and also isn’t visible to the participants. I wanted to find a better way of structuring the day which balanced some…