Conversational Transformation

A client tells Squirrel about a "horrible" meeting where his team accused him of pushing them to overwork and take shortcuts, but we discover it was actually a great breakthrough.

The Shoe Principle says that if you buy a pair of shoes, you have to get rid of one. Like Marie Kondo, we suggest asking whether each team activity "sparks joy"

Squirrel describes two shirts he makes for clients, the How Shirt and the What Shirt, that provide a brief and memorable description of the roles of a technical leader and a product leader respectively.

Squirrel describes a client of his that is "thrashing"—trying to do so many different things that they aren't getting anything finished.

We're joined by Steve Berez, partner at Bain and co-author of Doing Agile Right: Transformation Without Chaos.

A reader points out that our example conversations often show people masking emotions, but we don't say as much about what to do when someone is being rude or when you yourself feel your emotions are out of control.

We respond to an article on user stories that has some good points (user stories are prompts for conversations) and, in our view, misses the mark on others.

Clarke Ching explains why bottlenecks are important, why your developers should always be your bottleneck, and how to explain the theory of constraints using a herd of buffalo.

How do we end up with so many walls and so little communication?

Upcoming events, new transcripts, and latest podcasts. We're glad to have you here—keep talking!

Jeffrey and Squirrel had very different experiences at recent tech conferences including DOES London/Virtual.

Coming to the final chapter of Agile Conversations, we look at how leaders can not only provide accountability for others, but be accountable themselves.