Is success or failure really a choice? I don’t think it is at all. Pretty much no one chooses to fail. Unfortunately, we can’t just choose to be successful either. What we CAN choose is to try to make a success out of a failure! The old saying “Make lemonade out of lemons” really is a good way of looking at things, especially for agile teams.
Agile teams will have times when they “fail.” I know a lot of people dislike using the words “fail” and “failure” when talking about team results. I’m actually pretty tired of that argument because I don’t think it helps anyone. I’d rather call a “poor result” a “failure” and acknowledge we can and will strive to do better next time. As I say during workshops I facilitate, “I am blunt and reality based. Sometimes that means I will say things which you won’t like to hear.” I don’t call teams “failures” or anything like that. That would be namecalling and that is never appropriate. However, calling results a failure is correct and leaves no room for interpretation. I find being blunt in those situations to be more useful because teams then must face the reality and not try to sugar coat it as “not being all that bad…” [Read more...]
See that picture off to the left? That is me and my agile team! It’s not a bad picture, but there appears to be something missing, right? Where’s the “team” part of me and my team? Well, you’re looking at it! That’s right, I am a team of 1 for almost everything I do. This has unique advantages and challenges over larger agile teams. My goal with this blog entry is to give you some insight into how I make it work by telling you how I do it, and more importantly, the principles I try to keep in mind. The idea for this blog entry came from a comment on a blog entry about 
