Agile

Steve’s Update 8/21/2017

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr)

It’s my weekly Scrum style standup for my audience, so where am I?

First of all, on time.  Sorry about my delays folks.

So what have I done the last week?

  • “A Bridge To The Quiet Planet”: Churning away, working on getting a good pace.  Right now we have a demon, spies, and Scintilla’s ability to smuggle some very deadly weapons between worlds.  Also sarcasm, because how do you react when someone in the most obviously Evil Cult Robes hands you a book.
  • Way With Worlds Minibook: The next book, on Food and Cuisine, is formatted and ready to drop!  So this weekend is queuing it up and getting marketing together.  Looking good so far – and my editor is really knocking it out of the park.
  • Seventh Sanctum: I did NOT get to the new generator as I had a few more bits of code change to put in to improve error reporting.  Anyway, that all looks pretty good.
  • Art: Wait, art?  Yep, I’m trying a side project to practice my graphic skills by designing fake book covers.  I might share them and what I learned doing them.
  • General: This was a social-heavy week – honestly I’m a bit burnt out from it.  Plus side, got to marathon season four of RWBY which is, of course, awesome.

What am I going to do this week:

  • Way With Worlds Minibook #3: Get it done and probably out.
  • “A Bridge To The Quiet Planet:” Keeping up my writing pace and finishing chapter 6 hopefully!
  • Generators: Really I want to release the damn generator.
  • Other: Lots of end-of-month cleanup here, so that may occupy me.

Challenges:

  • Worst thing was pushing myself socially – I need to take breaks AND take breaks from big social events.  It’s not easy to be honest.
  • I haven’t taken time to do my posts on writing – and am kind of not sure how I let that fade.  I think I queue up posts so early I sometimes don’t budget time if I don’t have something 2-3 weeks ahead to go.  I’ll need to think that over.

– Steve

Steve’s Update 8/15/2017

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, www.SeventhSanctum.com, and Steve’s Tumblr)

It’s my weekly Scrum style standup for my audience, so where am I?

Well this one is late –  man I have to be more careful.  Though Monday was a bit nuts.

So what have I done the last week?

  • “A Bridge To The Quiet Planet”: Chapter #5 is out, with cops, secrets, demons, and more.  Marigold, Scintilla, and Beacon find out more about Shalen, while Briar Lindel contemplates bad recruiting and living with a teammember with magic-potion-induced flatulence.
  • Way With Worlds Minibook: The edits are done, the cover is mostly done (I just have to go to the final photo).
  • General: I added some better error checking to the Sanctum so people get less annoying 404’s – apparently someone revived a bunch of REAL OLD links (try 3-7 years) somewhere.  My guess is a few sites went live again or links got copied over.

What am I going to do this week:

  • Way With Worlds Minibook #3: Finish the cover and get it publishing-ready!
  • “A Bridge To The Quiet Planet:” Going to take a break writing for a few days due to my schedule, but then back at it!
  • Generators: OK I didn’t release that new generator, let’s see if I can get it done.

Challenges:

  • The unexpected issues have damped down, so cross your fingers.

– Steve

My Agile Life: Be Your Own Best Boss

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s LinkedIn, and Steve’s Tumblr)

(My continuing “Agile Life” column, where I use Scrum for a more balanced and productive life continues).

One of the better bosses I had, when seeing a report I had created, noted “Now I understand where we are and I’m worried.”

Why do I say he was a better boss? Because his reaction to seeing disturbing data was to then figure out what to do. He didn’t kill the messenger (me) or berate the team (everyone else).  So, solve the problem.

This provided what’s known as Psychological Safety (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_safety), feeling I and we could take risks.  Ironically I was laid off a few months later – as was he – due to other reason.  I felt so bad for him being laid off I forgot my own feelings of annoyance.

Psychological Safety is crucial for good management and good Agile.  Agile philosophy and methods depend on feedback and authenticity so people can respond, communicate, and improve.  Without that it will fail -and trust me, I’ve seen some doozies.

In personal Agile, you’re everyone – the boss, the product owner, the scrum master, the team, the analyst, etc.  Psychological Safety seems to be a bit irrelevant here.

But I realized it’s not.

Ever berate yourself for mistakes?  Ever beaten yourself up over missing something?  Hard on yourself?  You probably have done all of this – you haven’t provided yourself with psychological safety.  You’re being the Bad Boss to yourself.

This is very common.  This is probably near-universal.  I’ve encountered many people who beat themselves up constantly, and worse of all excuse it.  They’re their own battered spouse, their own abusive parent, their own tormentor.

Honestly, a lot more of us probably need to be in therapy.  But back to Agile before this gets too depressing.

To be productive, you need Psychological Safety, even in your own personal life.  How can you achieve that?  A few things I’ve found:

  • * Honesty.  Be honest with yourself self, admit your mistakes and flaws and issues.
  • * Cooperation.  Work with yourself to improve.  Coach yourself.  “You” are on the same team.
  • * Enablement.  Help yourself get better so you don’t repeat mistakes and can improve.
  • * Review.  Review what you do to improve what you do.  It becomes regular, it becomes habit.
  • * Empathy.  Let yourself “feel” what you feel, its like having empathy for others but you’re taking a look at yourself.
  • * Humor and fun.  Learn to have fun, let yourself have fun, enjoy things.

It’s not easy.  But it’s better than the alternative.

Being your own worst enemy is, well, the worst.  This is because you can never get away from yourself.  How about being a good manager to yourself instead?

(By the way I do plenty of books for coaching people to improve in various areas, which may also help you out!)

– Steve