A Beautiful Teams Evening

Last Tuesday, I had a blast at Boston SPIN. I led a roundtable about transitioning to agile, and discovered that not everyone takes the feedback the timebox gives them. In this case, people weren’t finishing what they “attempted to commit to” in the timebox, but they extended the timebox. I suggested that was not such a hot idea; that they should take the opportunity to do a little retro and discover why they couldn’t finish in the time. Maybe it was an estimation problem, maybe it was something else.

For the main talk of the evening, Andrew Stellman and Jenny Greene spoke about Beautiful Teams. I wrote an article (what do you call it when it’s part of a book?) and Andrew and Jenny asked me to explain it during their talk! (If you click on their link, they have a picture of me too. How sweet is that?)  Abby graciously allowed me to use her as one of my props. I pretended to be tall and she pretended to be short. Great fun all around.

One of the best things about Beautiful Teams: Inspiring and Cautionary Tales from Veteran Team Leaders is that aside from seeing patterns of teams that work and don’t work, none of the authors receive a royalty. All of the royalty money is going to PlayPumps. I don’t know how much money the book will raise, but I have some hope we can make a little difference in helping some villages manage their water needs in a way that doesn’t require half their workforce to get water every day.

Andrew and Jenny, thanks so much for giving me some microphone time. I had a blast!

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