1st Place: Baltimore Lindy 500

Posted on August 24, 2011 in Lindy Hop

This weekend I competed in the Amateur Invitational Jack and Jill at the Baltimore Lindy 500. There were approximately 40 competitors that were hand-picked from neighboring states to participate. I made it to the finals (top 5 guys and gals) and was partnered with kerry – who I was just meeting for the first time. No sooner than we’d finished shaking hands were we swinging-out at 190 BPM. When the dust settled, my partner and I were heralded as champions.

My souvenirs are a wad of prize money, lucky #27, and this epic photo:

1st place finish!

Spotlight - Elliot and Kerry

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Better User Stories

Posted on August 14, 2011 in Agile Methodology

User stories define three things for my team:

  • What to build
  • Why to build it
  • Who to build for

Writing high-quality user stories goes a LONG way toward the success of our team, but this of course begs the question – how do we write high-quality stories? I’ve created a presentation that demonstrates the simple, yet powerful technique that we employ to make our stories amazing. The summary: remove all terminology.

I hope that you enjoy this brief presentation!

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Retrospective Hero Pt. 2

Posted on August 12, 2011 in Agile Methodology

Another outstanding sprint; another outstanding retrospective. The theme this round is “A Land Before Time”. Our team is represented by the blue, bridge-crossing dinosaur. The team then drew things that impeded our progress, or helped us to arrive safely at our destination. The result is epic and insightful:

Apparently we really like sharks...

Sprint Retrospective

Creative retrospectives are the way to go.

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Retrospective Hero

Posted on July 13, 2011 in Agile Methodology

Every two weeks my team meets to discuss how we can be more awesome. In Agile/Scrum this is called a “retrospective”. The conventional format is to talk about what worked, what didn’t work, and what we can fix. While the conventional format is good, we can do better. On the whiteboard I drew water and a boat. I then gave the following instruction:

1. Our team is represented by the boat.
2. If something is working, draw something that makes the boat move faster.
3. If something isn’t working, draw something that makes the boat slow down.

After saturating the drawing with things that were working or not working, we then brainstormed and illustrated fixes.

A picture is worth a thousand words...

Sprint Retrospective

The outcomes of this meeting included: Amazing brainstorming, praise from our coach, and a totally energized team. Props to Innovation Games for inspiration around creating this format.

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