Archive for the ‘Personal’ Category

• Transformers – Revenge of the Fallen

  Date: 2009.11.20 | Category: Movies, Personal | Response: 0

  If I told you a movie would have more robots, more explosion and more fighting, you’d say “sequel”.  But what if I told you the movie also dropped all the affable charm, humor and innocence of the first movie?  You’d probably skip the film.  Or you’d probably be like these stars wondering where their movie went?

  

  I wanted to like this movie since I really liked the first movie a lot.  So many things came together in the first movie to make it an enjoyable summer entertainment.  Unfortunately, some producer decided the sequel needed more robots and less people, so the movie ended up flat like a can of Coke left out over night.

  I guess what really irked me were the dumb Skids and Mudflap robots.  Why would an alien species of machines talk like 13-year-old boys complete with homophobic posturing and putdowns?  It is hard to be entertained when animated things are putting you down in a not funny way.

• Seems Obvious Now

  Date: 2009.09.14 | Category: Personal, Test-Driven Development | Response: 0

  Just wanted to reiterate the value of TDD – I am working on a programming challenge and was surprised how easy it was to add a hunting and killing algorithm to my program.  Since it was written using TDD, I had a nice suite of fast tests which allowed me to incrementally encapsulate my new algorithms and keep the system functional at nearly every step.

  At the most, I only had two, maybe three, broken tests while adding the new classes, pulling up fields and moving methods.  Not bad, not bad at all.

• Agile 2009: Touchdown in Chicago

  Date: 2009.08.23 | Category: Conferences, Personal, Travel | Response: 0

  I’m in town for the Agile 2009!  This is my first big Agile conference and I am looking forward to all the sessions and meeting up with some colleagues.  Of course, with any big conference there are just too many sessions to attend.

  

• Ibiza Es Paradis

  Date: 2009.07.28 | Category: Personal, Spain, Travel | Response: 0

  Mas de nuestras vacaciones.  Me encanta Ibiza y no puedo esperar visitar el ano proximo!

  

  

  

  

• Visiting Barcelona & Sitges

  Date: 2009.07.23 | Category: Personal, Spain, Travel | Response: 0

  Spain is one of my favorite places in the world to visit.  Here are some pictures from Barcelona and Sitges.  Since this is our second trip to Barcelona, next time we are going to take a look at some flats.

  

  

  

  

• Going to Agile 2009!!

  Date: 2009.07.15 | Category: Agile, Agile SD, Conferences, Travel | Response: 0

  I will be attending my first big Agile conference this year in Chicago from Aug 24 to Aug 28.  The program for Agile 2009 looks really good and some friends of mine, Lleywelln Falco and Dan Gilkerson, from XPSD are speaking on Approval Tests.  This should be a good time to connect with old friends and make new connections.

• Photos from Shanghai

  Date: 2009.07.06 | Category: Personal, Travel | Response: 0

  Here is a collection of pictures I took while in Shanghai.  I am glad to be home.

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

• Going to People’s Republic of China

  Date: 2009.06.14 | Category: Coaching, Travel | Response: 0

  Today I am starting a journey where I will spend the next three weeks in Shanghai coaching Scrum teams and training ScrumMasters.  I have never been to China before, so this should be an interesting trip.  I truly have no expectations or preconceived notion about what I will see or experience.

  

• Why Do I Do This Stuff?

  Date: 2009.05.04 | Category: Coaching, Personal, Retrospectives | Response: 0

  I finally got a chance to listen to Software Engineering Radio’s podcast of Linda Rising about retrospectives after it was recommended by a friend.  If you facilitate retrospectives and have not listened to Linda’s interview, make the time to listen to this podcast.  It is full of interesting tips, tricks and techniques.  Linda made a comment about halfway though her interview which resonated with me and I wanted to share it with you since it helps explain my motivation to work with software teams and why I am passionate about Agile software development.  

  During the interview Linda said, and I am paraphrasing here, that retrospectives are a way for people to break free from their old behaviors and become the people they want to be at work.  So many times in our careers, we play this role that is assigned to us by our peers or management.  Or we perform this role out of some misguided habit, even if it is not helping us.  In Linda’s opinion, through the ritual of a retrospective, we are given the opportunity to pause, reflect and decide what behaviors we want to take forward with us.  In this way, a retrospective can be both transformative to the individuals and by allowing the people to change, the organization is redefined by the actions of the reenergized individuals

  This is one of the reasons of why I am a consultant – I want to give people the opportunity to be the person they want to be at work.   So often in our careers we are chained to our past behaviors and decisions we feel we cannot escape them.  However, I feel the only thing holding us back from change at our workplace is accepting that all the authority and power to change resides in us, we just have to choose it.  We don’t need our manager’s permission to change our attitude or start being helpful.  We just have to want the change and recognize change starts with us.  We just have to decide that we don’t want to carry around all those chains and links to the past.

  

  When this is the case, then role of someone like me is to buy enough space for people to feel secure enough to take the first steps.  Most of the business and technical practices I recommend are about creating safety, trust and breathing room so the organization can be transformed not by me, but by the participants.  Now that is powerful!

• Happy Anniversary Blog!

  Date: 2009.04.22 | Category: Personal | Response: 0

  Turns out I started this blog on this day one year ago today which also happens to be Earth Day, too!  Just wanted to take a moment to say thanks to my readers and I look forward keeping in touch in the next year.