Thanks to Kevin McGuire who noted this talk from TED by Evelyn Glennie in a comment a few posts back - inspiring on so many levels, which is why I’m reposting it. Hard to pick out individual moments of greatness (her work on behalf of disabled children in music and education is remarkable), but one of the less prominent observations - that the harder you hold a drumstick, the more tired you’ll get and the less sound you’ll make - teaches a lot of lessons.

And here’s another one that I’ve been pointing people at recently - Tim Brown on creativity and play, reminding us - again - of what we once had as children, what we lose as adults, and giving us permission to be playful in the pursuit of innovation.

This survey as reported in the Guardian worries me. Even accepting the caveats noted by the writer, the fact that 29% of teachers disagree with this

Creationism and intelligent design are not part of the science national curriculum programmes of study and should not* be taught as science.

is grounds for real concern.

*oh, and the article misquotes this by omitting the “not” …

From a great blog on Britannica by Michael Vesch:

I marvel at what a remarkable achievement it is to bring hundreds of otherwise expressive, exuberant, and often rebellious youths into a single room and have them sit quietly in straight rows while they listen to the authority with the microphone. Such an achievement could not be won by an eager teacher armed with technology alone. It has taken years of acclimatizing our youth to stale artificial environments, piles of propaganda convincing them that what goes on inside these environments is of immense importance, and a steady hand of discipline should they ever start to question it. Alfred North Whitehead called it “soul murder.”

The other day, looking at some music theory workbooks (ah, the dear old ABRSM) destined for my wife’s piano pupils led me to thinking about how it is that every four-year-old is visually, verbally and sonically hyper-inventive, and yet by the time we’re adults we’re so out of touch with innovation that we need to attend courses and read books on it. The AB workbooks were a case in point - dull, neat, and so very adult, a shame to mess them up with anything as freeform as writing… and very intolerant of mistakes.

Taking a cue from some of the facilitation work we do in team training: so much education is on the basis of “yes, but…” - Yes, but you need to write neatly now. Yes, but that’s not the way to draw a face. Yes, but you’re only allowed to put these sounds together this way. At some point thinking about technique and mechanics is essential, of course, but how would it be if this were approached in the spirit of “yes, and…”. Yes, these words aren’t in the dictionary, but what might they mean? Yes, and if you take that bunch of notes and do this then you have all these new possibilities?

Lessons here for team and corporate innovation too … next post!

A backlog won’t look after itself: someone has to care for it, and it has to be fed (and watered, and bathed, and clipped, and pruned…).
Read the rest of this entry »

So this evening I hosted the last talk in the SPA Autumn Series, in which Nick Ababurko talked about how IBM is using a Systems Engineering approach to tackle large and complex projects with its clients. Lots of food for thought: it’s clear to many of us working in agile development that - in spite of what some would have you believe - agile doesn’t scale, at least not in the trivial sense some people suggest (note to Ken - I’m sorry, but Scrum of Scrums just doesn’t cut it).
Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s a collection of backlog smells – things I’ve encountered in backlogs in various projects, with some thoughts on how the backlogs got into the respective states and actions to take to improve matters.
Read the rest of this entry »

So, a backlog item is a quantum of value. If something is of value, by definition it is valuable to someone: agile development identifies that someone as the user (represented by an actual user or by a proxy, such as Scrum’s Product Owner).
Read the rest of this entry »

Whatever your iterative practice, and whatever you call the repository of requirements, the best start to an iteration – planning and execution – is a well-defined, well-understood backlog. Agile is not new in this, but some of the practice that’s developed around planning and backlog preparation doesn’t help. Here and in some subsequent notes I’ll suggest some ways of thinking about backlogs to improve the experience of teams when it comes to turning backlogs into features.
Read the rest of this entry »

I was reminded by seeing this Rembrandt self-portrait in the flesh last weekend of the amazing and uplifting effect of outrageous virtuosity. Here’s the artist at around 22, painting one of his first self-portraits, in a way completely at odds with the more formal portraits he and others were producing at the time. Lit from behind, the hair details scratched into the paint, a gaze that’s felt rather than seen, and a wall as background whose texture takes on a life of its own.
Read the rest of this entry »