Reading this post from Matt Wynne today (via Twitter), the thing that I found most inspiring was this sentence: “As a coach, I like to introduce new practices only when I can offer them as a solution to a problem that the team has identified for themselves.”
As I commented in the post, I believe this is a key point to having a committed team that is ready to do whatever it takes to improve things.
Not only does the team have a strong feeling of being responsible (they are!) for the way things are done in the team (i.e. if we don’t do it, nobody is going to) – but having the problem defined by the whole team and the solution agreed by the whole team increases highly the chances of successfully solving the original problem.
A basic, which I thought was important to stress again…
Ahoi! Long time no see! :)
Sorry for the lack of writing the past few weeks, I simply haven’t found anything that I wanted to blog about. Today though, when reading my feeds, I stumbled on a post from Mike Cohn promoting his newly published book. In short, you can win a copy of his new book “Succeeding with Agile” by leaving a piece of advice in the post’s comments:
To win, enter as a comment to this post the one most valuable bit of advice you would give to a team that wanted to succeed with agile. I will pick the one bit of advice I like best and send the author a copy of the book. I will also pick a second winner at random from those who submit. So, you’ve got two chances to win so let’s hear your best one bit of advice.
My piece of advice is the following: “Know why you are willing to walk down this path.” Once you know, you’ll be able to make the right decisions as to what practices to adopt, remind people in the organization in case of doubts and most importantly stay focused on what you and the team have defined as the reasons for the change.
Time for a culture break today and to discover a bit of the Bavarian culture at its best.
The Lansdhuter Hochzeit is a huge celebration that takes place every 4 years in Landshut, Bavaria. It celebrates the wedding of George the Rich (son of the Duke of Landshut) and Jadwiga (daughter of the King of Poland) which took place in 1475.
For this occasion, a big part of the Landshuters are letting their hair grow and dress-up like people did then. Everything must look authentic and comply to the strict rules of the association that organizes the event. A small village is also built to reconstruct the way things looked like at that time and how people celebrated this wedding by eating, drinking and watching the infamous knight fights.
The result is a beautiful city full of colors and people celebrating this ancestral ceremony with lots to drink and eat.
I took plenty of pictures and put a small selection online: http://www.flickr.com/photos/frenchfrog/sets/72157621624331263/
Doing a small search for “laho” will show you a few more…
