What Would You Do?

The Sprint Retrospective had just ended and I was finishing up my notes from the session.  I looked up and found that Wayne and Garth (not their names) had hung back after everyone else left.  We started talking about the sprint, and that led to discussions of the project, and that led to questions of job satisfaction.  The question at hand was, “How do you know what you’re meant to do?”  For this question, Wayne had a way to cut through the noise.

Say you won the lottery.  Not the big lottery…but a few million dollars.  Enough that after taxes and the lump sum disbursement shake out, you have enough to invest and receive a tidy sum of about $200,000 per year for the rest of your life.  Not an excessive amount, but certainly enough to live comfortably on without having to actually work.  What would you do?

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Sailing Metaphor for Agile

When I was in high school, my friend Scott and I took his father’s sailboat out on the lake where our families spent summer vacation.  We had each been sailing numerous times; always as crew, never at the helm.  We both knew the lingo; “Come about” and “Pull that jib in tighter!”.  I had taken a boat safety course, so I knew all about life jackets and right-of-way.  There was even a page in the safety manual that talked about sailboats and gave a handy chart for the points of sail.  We were set for adventure! Continue reading “Sailing Metaphor for Agile”