The benefit of coaching comes from small distinctions that can have a profound effect on your understanding.
I really understood this when Joe Justice asked two questions after we watched the video clip above.
The video is under 3 minutes long and I had watched it several times in my preparation for the training. I got the idea, but I missed two very important points.
Joe asked, “What two things did you notice about this?” Silence in the room. “OK, one, how many demos did they do?”
The answer was simple – they did weekly demos on a month-long sprint! So they didn’t wait until the end of the sprint to demo. They demoed throughout the sprint.
The second question was about who they were demoing to.
It was the competition. The hardest audience. Experts.
Jeff Sutherland says “you have a choice, you can be just another development team or you can be great. but to be great, you need this feedback”
This reminds me of something Cal Newport talks about in his great book “So Good They Can’t Ignore You” where he talks about Alex Berger who wanted to be (and became) a great Hollywood script writer.
Cal says about Alex “The other thing I noticed about Alex is that this learning did not happen in isolation: “You need to be constantly soliciting feedback from colleagues and professionals,” he told me. During his rise, Alex constantly chose projects where he’d be forced to show his work to others. People were waiting to see his scripts – there was no avoiding having them be read and dissected. “When I look back now, I’m humiliated that I ever showed it to anyone” Alex recalled. But it was necessary if he was going to get better”
The point is that we all need coaching – thank you for the insights, Joe –
Out of gratitude, I would like to give Joe Justice an unsolicited testimonial and recommend his courses taught through ScrumInc .
Joe is the founder of TeamWikiSpeed and he’s using Scrum every day in everything he does. He is a great teacher and a good man. He describes himself as a ‘Scrum Native’ in that he has never known professional life without Scrum.
I have no connection with ScrumInc other than I am a happy customer. I pay them for training and will continue to do so. I can’t stress the importance of attending these training courses where I received hands-on experience and had all my questions answered.
