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Tag: success

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Pushing the Limits
Coaching

Pushing the Limits

This is Mark.  He challenges me.  He confronts me.  He inspires me.  I think he is amazing.  Mark doesn’t do things because someone like me who claims to know a bit about agile says so.  He looks at the world from every perspective. I love this about him because he forces me to think deeper than I’ve ever had to in many areas.  He stretches me as a coach and forces me to keep growing.

Definition of Done was an area where Mark really inspired me to dig deep.  This was his concern …

“I hear and see people teaching Definition of Done like it is a checklist of all the things a team has to do in order for a user story to be done.  I think this undermines ownership of quality code by the team because the checklist becomes a crutch and an excuse to be mediocre.  It causes people to say things like, ‘Well it meets the definition of done,’ when they know that the code still isn’t as good as it could be.  It develops the attitude of, ‘Oh well, it wasn’t on the list so I don’t have to do it.’”

Permission to Fail
Agile

Failure Must be an Option

I have heard people say all my life, “Failure is not an option,” and today, I would like to challenge this belief and say that in order to succeed, failure must be an option.

One of the things you learn when training to be a coach is the art of deep listening.  When practicing this art with a team, the coach is listening to people and hearing what they are saying.  You also listen to things like tone of voice because much information can be heard in what is not said.  Changes in tone, pace and volume when they speak and the inflection in their voice can give clues to what the speaker is thinking and feeling.

The coach is listening for things like passion and energy when people speak, they are listening for things that reveal the teams core values, strengths and areas of weakness or greatness where probing questions can begin to push them to new levels or wider areas of thinking.