How many post-its

Fresh back from an amazing week with Joe Justice at the Bosch Engineering headquarters in Germany.

Just thinking about post-its and the scrum board.

The purpose of a scrum board is to MAKE WORK VISIBLE.

Therefore, the level of information should be enough to keep all team members and other stakeholders informed about what is happening, but not so much that the board is hard to read.

Agile Manifesto – Translated to the restaurant business

Several weeks ago I tried to convert (interpret) the Agile Manifesto to the restaurant business (it was written for software development) and I had a problem with #3, “Customer collaboration over contract negotiation” “- but I couldn’t work it out.

Today, I was training a new team member Nick Cowan, we were reading through the Agile Manifesto, and he said, “Contract negotiation refers to the menu!” and, “the customer collaboration part is talking to the customer in real time to find out what they want and then amending the menu item to meet their needs and wants” – and that was the essence of what I was looking for. I got it.

Yes, the Agile Manifesto applies to all businesses – you just have to work out the essence of what the was meant and apply it to your circumstances.

Andrew Carnegie said, “the mastermind principle is defined as two or more minds working in perfect harmony towards a ‘definite major purpose’ open access to a third, far more powerful mind that none of the individuals have access to”. – Well, this experience was the essence of what Carnegie was referring to. I have been wrestling with this alone for several weeks and gave up, thinking, “I get the essence of it, hopefully, others will too.” But with Nick’s help, I have a workable explanation.

Well done Nick!

 

 

How long does it take to tidy an office?

Well, there are 2 aspects here.

One is to tidy the office

The other is to keep it tidy

So Marie Kondo (Japanese organizing consultant and author of 4 books) says,

  • You only have to tidy once
  • First, you have to decide what you want to discard
  • Second, you have to decide what you want to keep and where you are going to keep it
  • Then, daily tidying consists of using something and then putting it back in the place it lives!  (these bullets are my paraphrase)

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