The SquizLogKeith Pitty takes a squiz at the world. |
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The SquizLogKeith Pitty takes a squiz at the world. |
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In today's news I read that the US has pledged humanitarian aid for Lebanon. This immediately brought to mind yesterday's article by Paul McGeough, in which he reported that "Washington is rushing to replenish Israel's arsenal of precision-guided bombs."
Just a tad hypocritical, don't you think?
The other day I sat in a meeting for two and a half hours. We covered some important ground, made some decisions and resolved some issues. But, in my humble opinion, two and a half hours is just a tad too long for an effective meeting.
Then today I read Jason Yip's paper entitled It's Not Just Standing Up: Patterns for Daily Stand-up Meetings. It gave me a touch of nostalgia. I used to enjoy daily stand-up meetings and considered them to be an excellent practice. I remember how we passed the token (a baseball that a colleague had brought back from an XP conference) and how the stand-ups encouraged teamwork and gave us a shared sense of progress...
But rather than continuing to reminisce, let me select a couple of patterns from Jason's excellent paper that struck a chord with me.
I like the way Jason describes a good stand-up meeting as being quick, having high energy, being supportive and self-managed. That's certainly a good description of an ideal stand-up meeting. Thinking back to my experience of stand-ups, they certainly had the first three attributes but I'm not convinced that they were self-managed.
That's why I like Jason's suggestion to Rotate the Facilitator. If the stand-up is to be self-managed "we want the team to take ownership of the stand-up and this requires removing any dependence on a single facilitator." As Jason points out, inexperienced facilitators will need some coaching in the beginning but hopefully the team will reach the point where "no explicit facilitator should be required at all."
Those familiar with stand-ups will know that the suggested format is for each developer to let the rest of the team know what they did yesterday, what they plan to do today and what obstacles confront them. If there are any obstacles it's obviously important that they are removed. Sometimes, even though such obstacles are shared with the team it's possible to lose sight of them. So I like the Blockage Board pattern in which blockages are posted to a "publicly visible whiteboard or chart that identifies raised obstacles and tracks the progress of their resolution."
These are just two of the patterns described. If you are involved or interested in stand-up meetings I recommend that you read Jason's paper in full. Meanwhile, I hope that I'll have the opportunity to put some of Jason's suggestions into practice soon. After all, a good meeting is a quick meeting.
The kids couldn't see the attraction but I thought that it would be a waste of a beautiful sunny day on our journey home from Tamworth not to take a short detour through the Hunter Valley wine country.
And I'm very pleased we did. Our single tasting destination, complete with a stunning view, was Warraroong Estate, a small winery in the Lovedale district.
Our hostess lined up the bottles starting with the 2005 Semillon.
"Ah, so this is the triple trophy winner", I said. A broad smile broke out over her face, which brimmed with pride. "Yes, we beat the big boys this year."
We sipped and were impressed. A superb sample of a variety that is renowned for its quality in the Hunter Valley. I enjoyed the Long Lunch White as well. I would love to have lingered for longer in this beautiful spot but, as I said, the kids didn't share my opinion. So we purchased, said thank you and good-bye and went on our way.
Just to even things up, the next stop was at a milk bar in Cessnock to satisfy the younger thirst for thick shakes.