My favourite and the best MindMap Software Tool Today

I don't usually walk around selling anything but today after years and years of using iMindMap for my Tony Buzan "proper mindmaps", and dozens of its other features...I am totally in awe and need to share.

I started using Microsoft (MS) Project in 1995. During my holiday (?) and spare time (??) I worked on a VB OLE project to integrate a packing scheduler algorithm for South Africa's biggest fresh fruit exporter with MS Project. Critical paths, Dependent tasks, Schedule compression, coloured, Start-Stop Dates, Split runs, Merged runs, Faster packing lines, Slower packing lines, More/Less expensive packing lines, Pallets per minute/hour/day, Breakages, Resource balancing, and a lot more was thrown at me, and I, in turn, threw the requirements into the algorithm and nicely displayed useful intelligence between a calendar view (before there was a calendar widget), an MS Access Database (ermmm), and MS Project. And allowed the human packing scheduler to move things around. What used to take him weeks and weeks locked away in small room every year, took a few hours of data entry, and then intelligent drag and drop to test different options at various stages of the year ahead. Power to the people! Power to the user! Organisational resilience was a key factor in why the client wanted this solution - the Planning Manager was getting very close to retirement and this was a massively complex job to succeed with, and critical to business success!

Now...after 24 years of acquaintance, love, hate and other feelings about MS Project (and project management in general, traditional, agile and other perspectives), and many of its competitors in "traditional project management" and "agile" spaces ... I have been settling for years now very comfortably into post-its, string, and/or magnetic whiteboards or cork boards.

Until now - finally a new tool is tickling my interest again in this space. Check out this video - Using iMindMap Time Map Feature - and let me know if you've ever seen any software tool better for planning dynamically and quicker than this! Yes, I will continue to collaborate and facilitate planning with a team using low-fidelity approaches...but then when it comes to digitising, I may take a photo, or I may take a backup photo AND upload the detail into iMindMap. "It depends" as always, on what the value is and to whom.

While you're looking at the Time Map video...consider the Bubble Web, Bubble Group and my current favourite, the Radial Map. It's the fastest way I currently have of converting all my random sometimes linear, sometimes non-linear, thoughts/ideas/memories/questions into something visual and then being able to make better sense of "it all". From essays/term papers I need to submit for my coaching degree, to notes from meetings, to possible options for various things. And especially notes to myself for my own reflections now, later, and much much later.

I don't have shares in iMindMap, but hope to (soon), or it's parent group Open Genius which also has an amazing charity to help youth of today be the leaders and saviours of tomorrow!

When my high school 16 year old best friend introduced me to mindmapping in preparation for our upcoming History exams, I really did not get it. I basically copied his the whole way through our studying together and had MUCH worse marks than him. Then in 2001 I bought


and it changed my world ever since. Slowly at first, but as I got better at drawing and creating something meaningful to me, so my memory of the things I was drawing and pictures I was creating for myself improved radically.

A 3 Minute MindMap On An iPad Notes! Not A Great Example But Return On Investment Is Good Enough For This!

Another 3 Minute MindMap - From iMindMap. ROI Is Good Enough IMHO. See Why I Need All The Help When Presenting My Ideas To Other Folks? :-)

Prior to this, I could never last minute cram for exams. Not that I recommend anyone to do so! But I have discovered that even in crisis of 2 full time jobs and studies on top ... mindmapping got me through and still gets me through a massive amount of work in a short space of time!

And in about 2009 I gave this

to a friend who was also studying part-time and it helped them pass their legal+finance course with its huge volume of content!

I bought these 2

to help my son in 2018. There is some overlap between the 2 books but it seemed like such a solid investment in his lifetime and it turns out he really likes mindmapping also!

My son is only 7!

7 Year Old First MindMap By Hand

My son loves working on computers ...so he HAS to use whatever I use (joys of being a rolemodel?), and so... he did this *quickly* as his first software mindmap.

His First Ever Software MindMap Version Without Much Assistance Or Training From Me. iMindMap Really IS Child's Play! This Took Him Under 10 Minutes

Many more happy mindmapping and learning days ahead! #happyparents #happykids

More Happy Days! When I bought the iMindMap Ultimate Plus edition of the tool, I also received a copy of Tony Buzan's business mapping book. Some food for thought in here also especially if you're new to business and/or management!



If you don't yet know who Tony Buzan is, it's worth checking out his  TedX Talk "The Power Of A Mind To Map" and bits from youtube for example YouTube video "Learn, how to learn" for some sense of where he is coming from.

Thankyou for reading!

How to get it done in organisations

I was attending a course during 2016. Attending were a whole bunch of people from many different walks of life, and many different organisation experiences and levels.

Out of the blue, one of my fellow trainees was explaining how they, in their role of working with many organisations on big business-to-business transactions, had discovered a very useful approach to getting things done in their own organisation, as well as client organisations.

"Want something done? Give it to a busy person"

This statement about "how to get it done" in large organisations drew quite a negative reaction from within me.

I realised the statement was right and wrong at the same time.

Busy people have figured out ways to give and to create more value to the organisation - by being of good service, they are asked to do more and more. They figure out ways to do more and more - usually alternative work practices that make them more streamlined / efficient. They become extremely knowledgeable across the whole organisation - knowing who's who, and who to go to directly and for what. Also importantly, they know which avenues to not even bother to try - saving everyone time and frustration.

So...the statement still makes me feel a bit ill, but I also recognise the truth in it. Many organisations I have worked within are literally functioning mostly as a result of these very busy network nodes.

For managers and leaders - look after your ever-busy people - they are busy keeping things moving in the right direction. You may not know what keeps them so busy - but perhaps that's where a little more curiosity and study will be quite revealing!

Agile In Four Or 4 words

I've been heavily reflecting on last week's post agile in 3 words and I'm not happy enough with it.

So this "Agile In 4 Words" is a response to that previous thought - to bring in a previous previous thought I captured in this older post Open question how.

I think the shortest summary to what is agile - other than "collaborative lightweight working practices" that means many different abstract things to many different people I've tried it on...and gotten nowhere with, is actually:

"How can I help?"

This one induces in the person asking out loud or silently to themselves the team working principles, the proaction, the learning, and more. That lovely "how?" question really opens things up more for everyone!

Especially in response to my earlier attempt "Can I help?" - a simple "No" would stop anyone in their tracks. And that "No" is to be expected when people are massively in a state of focus and don't want any interruptions.

The "simple" introduction of the "How" makes this an engaging question that any team member can get creative with by themselves and come up with more creative suggestions - even innovative practice improvements!

How do you think this is better or worse than the earlier version? Or...indeed..."How can you help?" :-)

Agile In 4 Words - How Can I Help?

Thankyou for supporting!

Agile In Three Or 3 Words

How many times have I heard the following from new clients and other coaches telling stories about their "difficult" clients? That's why I crafted this post!

Agile In 3 Words Is Easy

Actually explaining agile quickly, succinctly and simply for anyone, or any team or any organisation of any size is really easy, if you do the work (inspired by Byron Katie). It's simply you, and everyone in your organisation, and every supplier, client, consultant, advisor, regulator and customer around your organisation offering really often:

"Can I help?"

For agile in 3 words it is as simple as this! The implication is that everyone proacts to help each other all the time with everything from making tea to delivering the most complex system requiring 100's of people interlocking and aligning.

As an agile coach one of the things I look/listen out for when assessing the agile fluency of an organisation is how many times I hear the above line, and especially its followup which is highly noticeable in environments where there is a great deal of proaction - namely:

"Thank you!"

Now, go do the work! Thankyou for reading and supporting! :-)

My favourite coaching tools: Open Question How

I've been reflecting on a multitude of interactions over a number of years trying to improve my speech metaphors, better questions, less leading and less inference.

Along the way, learning about the simple Open Questions / Closed Questions model used a great deal by Business Analysts, as well as facilitators of new ideas and group consensus.

Open Questions are divergent - they cause the person asked to provide new insights from their own subjective experience or beliefs. Typically these are the Where, What, When, Who, How. And not the Why as it is too aggressive for the recipient.

Closed Questions are convergent - they cause the person asked to move forward with their ideas or their decisions. Typically these are the Yes or No, This or That.

Along the way I noticed is that most/all "Why?" questions can (and should) be reframed with the other Where, What, When, Who and How questions.

Further along the way I noticed that with a bit more effort most/all Where, What, When, and Who questions can be rephrased with How. And based on some stakeholders feedback, that's a very good idea as it seemed to unlock many more options and more possibilities in people's minds.

For Example:

• Why did you do that? Becomes
• What did you hope to achieve by doing that? Becomes
• How did you think it would turn out, and how did it turn out?

• Why do you think we should speak to xyz? Becomes
• What do you think we could learn from speaking to xyz? Becomes
• How does speaking to xyz help us?

There are 2 books which have been particularly useful to me, and I am sure there are multitudes others. "Metaphors We Live By" by George Lackoff and Mark Johnson, and "Steps to an Ecology of Mind" by Gregory Bateson - but more on these later! 

My favourite coaching tools: The Evening Review

The Evening Review is a great technique for increasing self awareness.

It is deceptively simple – but it is very powerful. The evening review puts the spotlight on all the kinds of vague impressions about how one's life is going so that one can encounter and understand more fully what is actually happening. 

Requirements:

I suggest keeping a diary/journal next to your bed.

The review method:

1. At the end of the day, preferably about 10 minutes before going to sleep, find a quiet place free from outer distractions.
2. Close your eyes, give attention to relaxing your body, quieting your feelings, and as much as possible stilling the activity of your thoughts - aka calm your "mind monkey". Your mind should be quiet and receptive, but remain alert.
3. Now, review your day in your mind, playing it back like a movie, but backwards, beginning with where you are right now, then the time of late evening, then early evening, then the dinner hour, and the late afternoon and so on until morning when you woke up - and even any disturbances of your previous night's "sleep".
4. Throughout the experience it is important to maintain as much as possible the attitude of an objective, detached, non-critical observer, calmly and clearly registering the events of the day, neither becoming elated at a success, nor depressed and unhappy about a failure. The aim is not to relive the experience, but to notice without emotion in your consciousness what were the patterns and their meaning for this day.
5. Finally, write down your general impressions of what happened and anything particular that you have learned.

There are many variations of the Evening Review. In the above form, it is very effective for gaining a greater sense of the whole of one's life.

After you have captured a few days (or many days, weeks, months or years) read through your notes and observe how they affect you. Usually people are surprised by what patterns they discover for themselves, once they just start to collect "the evidence".

And that's really what's required - once you have brought the unconscious into the conscious, suddenly you have greater awareness and from there, you have more choice about how you wish to proceed or act or behave differently - if you so choose. And hence you have more freedom!

Thank you for reading and your support!

Agile In A Nutshell Part 3

Okay... I don't know if you noticed... but it is really really hard to really curate an agile in a nutshell post that is quick to read, grasp and move forward. This is partly why I avoided much agile postings over the past decade - it's a very very long piece of string (or rope to hang oneself with)!

:)

The previous 2 attempts at this (Agile In A Nutshell and Agile In A Nutshell Part 2) I like and I teach fluidly. But I also add the following nugget when I am teaching.

Where did these agile manifesto, the 12 agile principles, and especially those 10,000 odd agile practices (half of them technical/technology focused like pair programming; and half of them people/organisation/management/process focused like standup meetings) come from?

Well it's clear where the agile manifesto was written and by whom in 2001 - 17 world-recognised software engineering consultants, coaches, managers and all importantly - practitioners.

And it's clear as well where the agile principles were written and by whom in 2004 - the same experts that formulated the agile manifesto.

But what about those 10,000 agile practices?

The agile practices have been observed by team members, team managers, coaches, consultants, and other observant people ... of high performance teams. These observers have then documented them online, or in books, and have presented them at conferences as well as internally. 

This means that we're still discovering practices all over the shop/place that help organisations become quicker and nimbler.

In my opinion, the smartest organisations are recognising their own unique practices that are giving them competitive advantages, and keeping them secret. The even smarter organisations are making their unique practices transparent and world-wide accessible because they realise others may contribute small tweaks that give even better performance - ala open source.

They also recognise that thinking is really hard to replicate and their organisation as a whole organism is thinking differently and hence behaving differently. Behaviours are easy to observe and replicate, but does not mean you will get the benefit.

Countless stories abound how GM documented all the things Toyota was doing in their factory in Japan and tried to replicate in the US - but failed. And we see that quite a lot industries - competitors hire people from the other organisation (or the same consultancy!) and then try to copy what worked elsewhere - and it usually fails expensively, spectacularly, and hurts a lot of employees, shareholders and stakeholders.

The simplest way to deeply understand this is a story about a piano made by a world famous piano maker. A wood furniture carpentry company decided to move into the piano manufacturing business as they had the same required tools, they could buy the same materials, and they thought they had the same skills required. So they bought a piano and dismantled it, making notes and designs about how to assemble. Then they assembled it back. But once it was back in "1 piece" there was a problem. It did not sound like it had. So they tried to manufacture a new one from their instructions. And they succeeded in making a pretty good replica of a real piano, but once again there was the problem - it did not sound right. So they got out of the piano making business (wisely). They lacked the "secret sauce" of being musically minded and aware how all the complexity of sound generation, amplification, transmission integrated with the different moving complicated parts of a piano.

And that's also what agile is - the practices help - in the same way that knowing what the keys of a piano are what notes. But playing a piece of beautiful music on a piano is differently from knowing things about music and piano operations. Yes the analogy does stretch to "practice is required, and feedback" to get them right.

But more importantly it is the secret sauce - it is the agile mindset that causes these agile practices to evolve into something unique for the organisation and its context. Some practices are individual targeted (like disciplined arrive on time to meetings), some are pair targeted (like pair programming to create, quality assure, reflect, learn, and make better realtime), some are team targeted (like whole team planning game), some are larger organisation targeted (like town hall meetings), some are senior management targeted (like go-and-see/use-your-legs reporting walks). And on and on :)

It is much more important to be agile than to do agile!

For more and deeper thoughts about agile check What Is Agile For You What Is Agile For Us. Thankyou!

Agile Coach Interview And Selection Questions

Years ago I was hiring agile coaches, and working closely with a hiring partner who was really really (!) good at finding talent. I had no time, he had some time and was keen to help me in any way we could figure out how. I knew agile, he knew recruitment. I knew coaching, he knew people.

The first round questions that I designed then still hold true today. I was inspired by Joel Spolsky's 12 questions candidates should ask their potential employer before deciding to join back in 2000. It may be a little old in some circles by today's standards, but it is still insightful imho:

The Joel Test:

1. Do you use source control?
2. Can you make a build in one step?
3. Do you make daily builds?
4. Do you have a bug database?
5. Do you fix bugs before writing new code?
6. Do you have an up-to-date schedule?
7. Do you have a spec?
8. Do programmers have quiet working conditions?
9. Do you use the best tools money can buy?
10. Do you have testers?
11. Do new candidates write code during their interview?
12. Do you do hallway usability testing?

The neat thing about The Joel Test is that it’s easy to get a quick yes or no to each question. And that's what I needed from my first round interview questions that anyone, even a non-agile-skilled or non-agile-knowledgeable person could use. So I came up with 24 quick questions, and we got some truly great candidates making it through the face-to-face screenings.
One of the most (perhaps THE MOST) important things about an agile coach is their experience. Money can't buy experience. Reading about other people's experiences, or attending courses based on other people's experiences is not the same as having the direct hands-on "did the best I could with the information and knowledge I had at the time, and nothing worked...until...after much persistence and many failures something worked!"

All experience is relevant. I am wincing at how arrogant I was when I was younger thinking that attitude mattered more than experience. They are equally important - it all depends on the problem space and time! The thing about people without experience in a particular space, is that they don't know what they don't know. My 24 questions highlighted things that were relevant for the different openings we had going at various times. A quick 10 minute Yes/No followed by a few initial typical HR availability, package suitability, location, role etc matching minutes and wallah - 1x effective initial screening for very cheap!

The very few who made it to face-to-face interviews which were experiential and enjoyable for both the coaches and the candidates highlighted the right candidates each time! Happy daze! (especially compared to traditional candidate screening processes and pains)

Rob's Agile Team Member or Agile Coach 24 Question Assessment:

1. Do/did you use source control?
2. Do/did you not use source control?
3. Can/could you make a build in one step?
4. Can/could you not make a build in one step?
5. Do/did you make daily builds?
6. Do/did you not make daily builds?
7. Do/did you have a bug database?
8. Do/did you not have a bug database?
9. Do/did you fix bugs before writing new code?
10. Do/did you not fix bugs before writing new code?
11. Do/did you have an up-to-date schedule?
12. Do/did you not have an up-to-date schedule?
13. Do/did you have a spec?
14. Do/did you not have a spec?
15. Do/did programmers have quiet working conditions?
16. Do/did programmes not have quiet working conditions?
17. Do/did you use the best tools money can/could buy?
18. Do/did you not have the best tools money can/could
19. Do/did you have testers?
20. Do/did you not have testers?
21. Do/did new candidates write code during their interview?
22. Do/did new candidates not write code during their interview?
23. Do/did you do hallway usability testing?
24. Do/did you not do hallway usability testing?

After you have all the "yes" and "no" responses to these, you will know the level of "modern" and "old" styles of developing and delivering software. Now you get to decide how to direct the rest of the experiential based interview if you decide to let the candidate through to face-to-face more investment round(s).

I advise experiential interviewing during the face-to-face as it is a case of "under stress, we regress", and a lot of coaching can be quite stressful as very little is under the control of the coach who is at best influencing the situation! And any coach who has not mastered conflict management and resolution skills, personal attacks, helping people overcome their own anxieties etc can be quite damaging to your organisation.

f you're more focused on a coach who's technical background is less interesting, you could take a look at the coaching levels and the types of coaching and design similar Yes/No questions to try and understand the tangible hands-on experiences a personal, executive, soft skills, etc coach has.

I suggest at the beginning of the face-to-faces to do some spot-checks to check that whatever Yes/No questions you screened with were correctly interpreted, and that the candidate's response was accurate before proceeding into the simulation(s). Some people, you know, will say anything to get a role! :O

After the simulation assessment(s), ensure you and your assessment team form and document your own, subjective, fact-based, Delphi-style, assessments of each candidate.

My final question for the candidates: Ask each candidate face-to-face what their opinion is of the other candidates. You'll be or not surprised how many candidates know, or know of, the other candidates, and their face-to-face opinions can be quite informative! Also insightful is how they react to those coaches they don't know or know of.

So hopefully by now you have collected all the minimal data points to make a more informed decision about finding the right candidate - a round peg for a round hole / a square peg for a square hole - for your people's (!!) needs. Remember, past performance is no guarantee about future performance. But also remember this is a critical role to match the right person to - as any change agent will by the nature of the role be disrupting people's comfort zone(s). Including your own often.

Good luck with your search and selection process!

Lastly, please let me know how it all works out for you and your organisation. Remember the most important (top) line of the Agile Manifesto reframed is a bit like "we're doing it, and by doing it we discover new and better ways of doing it, and we share with others what we have learned so that we all benefit". That's "agile"!

Thankyou for supporting!

What Is Agile For You What Is Agile For Us

So…what do you want to know?

I guess there are 3 readers this agile principles blog post is targeted at:

1. Total newcomer to the whole agile movement/thing
2. Someone who has had some brief training, or read a few books, or someone working next to a team “going agile”
3. Someone who just wants to understand when to reject agile and when to accept agile

What Is Agile For - And How Do I Learn Agile?

Firstly, welcome to this post (actually several that are linked!) about “agile”. I’ve said to myself for a number years, “do not go gentle into that good night” as many many have tried and most have only partially succeeded…the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and many brave good people who tried to communicate their "Eureka!"

To be inspired, and honour William Shakespeare, a little reminder from Hamlet, Act III, Scene 1 with agile updates:

To be [agile], or not to be [agile]: that is the question!
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows [mistakes] of outrageous fortune [delivery in the past],
Or to take arms [learn from the past] against a sea of troubles [complexity],
And by opposing [with a modern, learned mindset and approach] end them [deliver successfully and sustainably with a team that becomes a real competitive advantage]?

Note - I’m not trying to introduce or explain my interpretation of "agile" with this particular post. 

Instead I am going to connect various ways I have taught the 12 agile principles that are behind the agile manifesto to people who have attended my courses or people I have coached or led in organisations. I’ve read (and continue to read) (all) the books, speak to (all) the people and make my own mind up based on my experience.

I reckon if you and your team and/or peers follow the logic of the linked “HowTo Learn/HowTo Teach the agile principles” - and apply my guidance, you and your learners will discover for yourselves what these elusive, ambiguous, uncertain, etc principles mean for you and for your unique situation. And this deeper learning/realisation will set you up for great success in whatever you are going to attempt for the rest of your career.

A pushy declaration, I know. But I’ve been watching the people who really “got it” on my training and how their careers (thanks to linkedin!) have proceeded since 2010…and I am very pleased for them! And even more pleased that a simple manifesto and a few simple principles that were initially thought about in the software development and delivery space that I initially embarked my adult work life in ... have become to be understood as entirely applicable in all walks/works of life.

In the purest nutshell, by the dictionary, agile means "quick and nimble". These days it also has some ambiguous meanings appropriately and inappropriately added to the term, including "10,000 practices you can try to make your organisation quicker and nimbler" - also known as more competitive.

Agile Is [NOT] Too Much To Learn

I’m iterating this post, but over time the dedicated walk-throughs for learners, trainers, teachers, managers and the curious will expand here. Agile is really easy to explain and learn, but challenging to embody. You will see! 

• Agile in 3 Words
• Agile in 4 Words (in response to my earlier "3 word" attempt)
• Agile In a Nutshell
• Agile In a Nutshell Part 2
• Agile In a Nutshell Part 3
• Agile In a Nutshell Part 4
• Agile Principles 101
• Agile Principles 102
• Agile Principles 103
• Agile Principles 104
• Agile Principles 105

What Is Agile For?

My recommended “understand, embrace agile right in mind to do agile right and get the best benefits” and "read them now!" agile books currently are:

Perhaps Agile is not a What, perhaps it is a When, or maybe it is a How?

Thankyou for supporting! Happy learning "to be agile" :-)

Zimbardo Stanford Prison Experiment Materials Now Online

A while back I blogged about Professor Philip Zimbardo and his research and great work around post traumatic stress disorder. In his work in this area, Zimbardo has come up with a new theory of time - the Time Paradox (UK) (or US) - as well as a Personal Time Perspective Inventory which has been quite helpful to my coachees to get a better sense of "what may be".

Zimbardo speaking in Warsaw 2009

Just recently I discovered that Prof Zimbardo has made materials from the infamous "Stanford Prison Experiment" available online. Despite having first learned about the "prisoners and wardens" experiment during a university psychology module years ago, and learned about many other psychological experiments since then, the write-up and photos are still quite a shocking account of what happened during those 6 days (out of the planned 2 weeks) before the experiment was terminated early due to how quickly things got out of hand.

It's well worth the read-through, as well as watching the movie clips. It really is amazing what a system can do, and does do, to ordinary people. And as for uniforms and other physical associations. Wow.

And just when it might become grim and depressing, Zimbardo offers us all hope and salvation from the very human condition of life - his Ted Talk on Psychology of Evil. We need to celebrate heroism - the rise of the ordinary normal person who takes heroic action in the space where others are frozen.

"But I just did what any other person would have done under those circumstances"

Maybe, maybe not.

Anyway, Zimbardo for me, is a truly an amazing mind and life story with amazing benefits for humanity! For a little self-help/coaching for yourself and more detail, see my earlier Zimbardo time perspective assessment post!

My favourite coaching tools: No Time To Improve Agile Retrospective Cartoon

This is a short and sweet one that always brings a little smile to my lips (and some or many team members) when I bring it up in front of the "we're too busy with important stuff" teams during agile retrospectives, or preceding an agile retrospective due to too much resistance because "we are too busy"!

From http://i2.wp.com/ecbiz168.inmotionhosting.com/~perfor21/performancemanagementcompanyblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/tobusytoimprove.jpg

It seems no one is currently sure where the original is, or who created it. For more modern updates there have been plenty, just search Google!

No Time To Improve / Retrospect As We're Too Busy!

Once we all get past the uncomfortable "Gulp" moment after this cartoon is presented, the team discusses what things are keeping the team members too busy to think about or to reflect or to introduce improvements to the way(s) they are working.

I might even throw in the original Albert Einstein quote:

“If I had an hour to solve a problem I'd spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.”

And/or I might put this one in front of the team to reflect upon:

"Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe."
- Abraham Lincoln

No Time To Improve Because Strategies Are In Conflict (Usually, Deliver! Deliver! Deliver! Unintentionally Making That Axe Blunt, Blunter and Bluntest Of All!!)

If there are still some people needing deeper understanding of the situation they are in, I would introduce them to, and request them to, complete the Covey Time Management Usage Matrix (also known as self-study lightweight time and motion study). After this step is complete, especially including the lunch breaks, random web surfing, tea breaks, urgent phone calls and all the other really important things everyone does with intention or with serendipity at work as normal Business-as-Usual, then people are open to the message, and a humble inquiry!

Respect The People You Are Trying To Help - It Is Their Life!

Always respect the people you are introducing this too, and respect it is THEIR context and THEIR experience that matters, not yours, as external coach / observer / non-invested in the focussed business outcome! And remember why you are introducing this to them - something they are doing must be wasting energy in YOUR ?humble? opinion - not in theirs! Be careful and go very gently and respectfully!

Thankyou for reading! :-)

Scaling Software Agility Presentation by Dean Leffingwell

This is a followup to one of my previous book recommendations - Scaling Software Agility by Dean Leffingwell

You can access a summary basically of the major themes Dean focusses on for Scaling of Agile: Scaling Software Agility (pdf)

SPA2009

Also known as the British Computing Society Software Practice Advancement Conference, 2009. I attended SPA2009 from Sunday-Wednesday (5-8 April 2009) and was really pleased that I did! There were a lot of new faces, a lot of old faces, great new topics and content on programming, process and people stuff. There were some strong opinions that people were passionate about and argued the merits of - a great learning and networking event!

Introduction to Agile for Traditional Project Managers by Stacia Broderick

I just found this really good Introduction to Agile for Traditional Project Managers presentation that Stacia Broderick put together for Agile 2007. I am quite comfortable with what she says, and the relaxed pace that she presents it at. A well "knit" session integrating some good points from various influences and showing some solid experience she has clearly encountered in real world situations.

Hosted on InfoQ: Introduction-Agile-Stacia-Broderick.

Stacia's blog site: Agile Evolution Blog ... is not all "agile" focussed, but some gems are scattered. :)

I think it's a good complement to my Agile Introduction recommendation from about a year ago: Agile Project Management - a place to start though at 1 hour 26 minutes it is a little longer. But I think the time invested is worth it.

Thankyou for supporting!

The Inventor of the Wind-Up Radio

It is quite a good read from the inventor of the Wind-Up Radio - Trevor Baylis.

It covers great ground about inventing, inventors and a couple of other relevant topics: Trevor Baylis OBE.

Another wiki going places...

While doing some research for a last minute Sri Lanka holiday, I found this wiki that I was previously unfamiliar with. Content is good, growing fast, recent and accurate (for Sri Lanka at this time). If you want to avoid using a tour operator for your trip, you could do worse...wikitravel.

SANS Institute Publishes Experts-Agreed List of Top 25 Coding Errors

Some top people in the software industry, as well as critical organisations, have come together and agreed on a list of top 25 programming errors, and provided discussions and ratings on each. The information is well presented and easy to read: Top 25 Programming Errors.

Disk Defragmentation Tool

Thank you Jaksa (my colleague) for this invaluable tip for a great Disk Defragmentation Tool! I've been a believer in defragmenting my hard disk drive on an annual or bi-annual basis (or major file system upheaval event) for many years.

The problem I started experiencing over the past 5 odd years, is that as my hard drives became bigger, "defragging" took longer and longer. Worse, the tool provided with Windows only works properly when 30% of the hard drive is available! Now 30% of 120MB is only 36MB and is not such a bad temporary sacrifice. 30% of 100GB is a huge sacrifice that I just cannot afford! Not on my development workstation, nor on my personal home machine(s)!!

Jaksa pointed in in the direction of independent evaluations listed on Donn Edwards' web site. Or you can simply download the winning defragmentation tool (JkDefrag) here.

Brain Rules

Brain Rules is quite a fun little web site that gives one possibly plausible explanation for how the human brain evolved over time and how it works for humans today. A collection of short entertaining videos and some writings.

Light Motivational Relief

Despair.com for wonderful miscellaneous motivational posters and sayings....all twisted into a very cynical viewpoint. It is a really good laugh!