What do you do for a living?

What do you do for a living?
I would bet that your answer will consist primarily of your job assignments or professional characteristics.

What makes you sad?
Do I see among many others a failure of a company project or missed deadline?

What makes you happy?
May I guess that it is part your work achievements and part your personal life victories. Predominantly the second part of the answer.

On a grander scale:
How would you like to feel and based on what? What are the strongest influences you are object of and  how do you react to them? How do you feel at the end of the day?

There are many stories that epitomize the really simple to articulate, but extremely hard to implement solution. I guess you have heard the story about the fisherman and the fishing empire. It's a long one for this blog post.

There is one simpler that became my favorite one. It has been echoing in my head the whole day. When asked, one of the Mountain Men replies:

 - What do I do for a living?

 - I Live for a Living.

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How do you warm up a large audience?

You are in a room, in front of a large group of viewers, listeners and hopefully admirers. You are just about to begin a lecture, a presentation or a speach. How do you engage everyone's attention in a way that leads them to the topic?

Well, the easiest route is to ask them to dance, move around in the room, play a game or tell a joke. How about people who are not willig to behave like kids or feel offended by the topic of the joke?

Here is one idea that I used on a conference (ETC 2013): Take a careful look around, most probably there is something catchy in the environment that you can use as a riddle. Use it as a simple, yet powerful tool to jump start your session.

For example, how many of you know that the furniture equipment company Steelcase has played a major role in the first steps of the company IDEO? How can we connect this to the topic of the presentation of Design Thinking? Quite simple. Start with the question "Can you please tell me the manufacturer of the chairs used in this room and why is it important for our topic today?". As it happens they are a very fine example ot Steelcase chairs and at least someone in the audience will be able to deduce the connection.

So, with a very short question that does not require extensive effort you will achieve several goals:
 - people will start thinking about your topic - great, as they will listen more carefully
 - they will look around and make a basic connection to the ones sitting next to them - you can use this at later stages of your presentation, such as hands-on sessions
 - they will wake up, provided that you are one of the many speakers in a long series or presentations.

Great start!

Now you have to raise the bar with the presentation itself.

Rocket Science

The blog post that moved me quite a bit last week was Björn Goerke's First, they fire you up….

For me, as an information developer and a writer, this presents a perfect cohesion between beautifully laid out thoughts an a curious video.

My reply to it is that for every Solid Booster Rocket there is always the hope to become a SpaceX Reusable rocket.





[credits: spacexchannel]

H1 2013 Personal Retrospective

One of the main continuous improvement imperatives is "Learn". Learn from your personal experience, from your observations, from trusted people around you.

In my case, there have been so many exciting assignments and events that they have left me with little time to think and consider. I guess, the summer is a nice time to think about the lessons from my participation as a:
 - coordinator and lecturer at the Sofia University course on "Managing Software Projects and Companies"
 - lecturer Technical University of Sofia summer practice course
 - speaker at ETC 2013 Sofia

Some of the next posts will summarize them. Your comments are highly welcome.

Between stimulus and response, man has the freedom to choose

Well, sooner or later, the summer vacation is over and is time to get your hands dirty.

This transition is remarkably harder, when there are tough decisions to be made, especially involving close friends and colleagues. This, I guess is the right time to remember the first of the 7 habits:
 - Be proactive - willfully choose your path and do not let be acted upon, be "response-able".

Quite often there is the temptation to give ready answers and hope that they will stick. Similarly, quite naturally, they do not. Unless the receivers of these ideas is actually starting to
 - Dream of achieving your proposals.

Hmmm, it is an interesting relation between Stephen Covey and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

Watch me presenting at Evolution of Technical Communication conference

If you happen to be in Sofia, Bulgaria on 21 June 2013, you can come and watch me present and discuss the connection between Design Thinking and the profession of information development.

Information about the conference: Agenda.

The All Mighty Scrum Master

It is absolutely true that a correctly set up team of professionals does not need a dedicated Scrum Master.

Problem statement: However, sooner or later, they will fall in the trap of the everyday ordeal. You can easily recognize it by retrospective action items not done, or a messy Jira, or continuous overcommitment. There might be other signs, specific for your team.

As to why it happens: The answer can be found in team dynamics. Sooner or later, the team reaches the stage after "form-storm-norm-perform". This stage still does not have a name. It is characterized by the old "common sense" taking rule.

Solution: This is the right time to reintroduce the role of the Scrum Master. It must be someone with knowledge of the project history, as well as with a lot of trust from the team. The only missing ingredient from the recipe is human interaction and dedicated discussions on how to overcome the good old common sense. For inspiration how to continue, refer to Beware of Common Sense

Justine Toms and The Blogs

Justine Toms ignited quite a fire this week. It started with a presentation on the importance of online presence. Then, it continued with many heads considering revitalizing their blogs.

Who knows, it might be a new beginning.

Her online profile is: Justine Toms

About Trust and Agile as Behaviors

Something that amazes me is how easy we forget basic postulates. In this case, our believes determine our behaviors. Thus the connection between trust in the new ideas and our behavior towards implementing them.

If you want to read an interesting post on the connection between trust an becoming agile, head straight on to LeadingAgile and read Agile at the speed of Trust - an Overview (Written by Peter Callies).

A Scrum Certification Summer End

It has been an interesting summer. More interestingly, I am now a certified Scrum Master and Scrum Product Owner.

It feels good to know that an effort has been crowned properly.

Inertia and its anti-Scrum effect

Working routinely in a changing environment leads to waste, both in the professional and the personal life.

Somedays I just get out of home and take the route to work. The problem is when it happens on a weekend and I completely do not need to visit the office. By the time I realize that I have already wasted time and money on diesel.

The same happens when at work we do not actively choose what and when to do. This is one of the reasons why we should not skip the retrospectives at the end of each iteration, either sprint or change between workdays and weekdays schedule.

Do you have some special mantras that help you keep on track?

Scrum @ BPM

This morning, while waiting for the Office 2007 update, I was reading an article on the future of BPM - BPM in Ten Years? My Best Shot.

The combination of Scrum being implemented at work and BPM as my future professional target resulted in the idea that BPM's next incarnation will be a mixture of Scrum principles and BPM methodology.

To put it in a few more words, using Scrum, the team members are given freedom to choose their own paths to the target presented by the product owner. They act as rational personas and the result is a much more motivated and capable team.

On the other hand, currently there is little flexibility in the implementation of the BPM modelled processes. Very often the improvements are done like little "waterfall" development stages. There is little flexibility and continuation of the improvements.

This is exactly where the Scrum principles can help. They can empower the team members to provide feedback, influence the workflow and continuously improve, improve, improve... But then comes the question of the most proper management style to allow this to happen.

Peace one day

You are either a visionary or a crazy man.

One man is searching for like-minded people. Believing that there could be a simultaneous cease fire. Peace one day. Globally.

Currently, the current normal is that everyone is aggressive.

He keeps on doing it for years.

What is the difference between normal and crazy? Normal is what the majority accepts.

This year I heard about it one day after 21 Septermber

Can we change the majority's perception? Can we find and reach the right majority?

Will I hear it on the date next year? Will I have done something to implement the idea?

I am a TED translator

Today I can proudly tell you that my first TED translation is available. It is the speach about the upcoming singularity by Ray Kurzweil.

I am very happy to have the chance and bring this knowledge to people who are experts in other languages.

Scrum @ home

A few months ago, the department I work in started implementing the Scrum methodology. Then came Lean. We still try to fight our way through the terminology and ideas. However, thanks to our great Scrum mentor, Monika Kovachka-Dimitrova, I am pretty sure that we have a great chance become winners.

In the meanwhile, I've decided to start applying some of the Scrum principles in my personal life. Probably it is due to the smaller scale, but the positive results started flowing right after the first weekend sprint. Even when I involved my family in the planning, the results made me jump for joy.

The morale of the story is the following:
Maybe, after reading Ken Schwaber scrum books, you are still not completely persuaded that scrum works in a strenuous environment. If that is the case, I recommend to give it a try and experiment with your own tasks. I am sure the results will surprise you ;- )))

Being in Madrid and reading Terry Pratchet

There is some strange magic in this combination. The bustling with live and emotions Madrid can give you its own visual interpretations of the Discworld. It can do so to the almost unbelievable degree when you can find the characters and situations from the book on the very streets you are enjoying while sightseeing.

This city bends the universe around its flamenco, corridas, sun and smiling citizens. Even the basic laws of the universe as we know them are distorted by the extremely powerful atmosphere of this city. The easiest example: do you know what does E=mc^2 transforms into?

E=mucho callor^2

With the Making Money as my bed time reading, my experiences from the day get mixed with the magical world. So, my recommendation if you are reading Making Money is to do so while spending money in the midst of the Spain's capital.

Docupedia

Well, the collaboration workspace, the docupedia project that I spoke about, is now live. If you want to see what the next generation of product documentation is, you can go to

and see for yourself.



As one of the main aims is to let you actively collaborate in editing the existing documentation by applying to it your professional experience, you will be asked to register.

After that, the only way is up ;- )))

Birthday Party and Presentation Preparation

Last week was my birthday. Together with this I watched several in house presentation. You might find entertaining the similarities between preparing for a birthday party and a presentation.

who has accepted you invitation / who will participate
what are their tastes / their background
what is the preferred music style / voice and body language
what do you expect as a present (have you prepared it by seeing information to them on what are your preferences) / did you warm up the atmosphere with information that leaked several days upfront

If you can find more such couples, please do share them with us:

Dying by principles in Bruges

If you want to live by some principles, then you have to be careful what principles you choose. You should also beware what are the exit conditions (to disregard these principles) you define. Or at least investigate thoroughly before applying a principle. Cause if you don't, you are a goner for no reason.

To understand what I mean, you have to watch In Bruges. However I do not recommend you do so if you are in a sensitive mood, or with a girlfriend, wife, kids... you get what I mean. This movie is a step higher than Two Smoking Barrels in blood spill, nostalgia and especially regret.

I still do not get it how the city of Bruges has allowed this movie. I shiver even at the thought of going there, not to mention that I do not want to check neither the city square, nor the cathedral, nor nothing...

On BPM Methodology by SAP

Moist von Lipwig (from the Discworld) knows that if you seek successful operations, you should make your products easy to consume.

SAP knows the same. To speed up BPM adoption, they provide their customers with BPM methodology advices available on an SCN Wiki page. There are also other materials that you might find useful.