Show Notes:
Improving Agile Retrospectives on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Improving-Agile-Retrospectives-Efficient-Addison-Wesley-ebook/dp/B0785W7PM6/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Improving+agile+retrospectives
And on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/marcloeffler
Marc’s ACE talk:
https://aceconf.com/speaker/145/marc-loffler
Causal Loop Diagrams:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causal_loop_diagram
Uptalk:
https://lifehacker.com/uptalk-actually-serves-a-powerful-purpose-1795688458
Show Notes:
Improving Agile Retrospectives on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Improving-Agile-Retrospectives-Efficient-Addison-Wesley-ebook/dp/B0785W7PM6/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Improving+agile+retrospectives
And on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/marcloeffler
Marc’s ACE talk:
https://aceconf.com/speaker/145/marc-loffler
Causal Loop Diagrams:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causal_loop_diagram
Uptalk:
https://lifehacker.com/uptalk-actually-serves-a-powerful-purpose-1795688458
Welcome to the Agile Book Club. You're your hosts, Justina and Paul.
Speaker 2:Hello and welcome to the Agile Book Club podcast. I'm here with Houston and Bendel. Hello everyone. And today we're going be talking to mark lessor the author of improving agile retrospectives, helping teams become efficient, helping teams become more efficient. Hypo. Hello Justina, are you having a lovely morning and a lovely morning before we start recording? Okay. Sandwich tariffs. Not quite fair. Our listeners have no idea that we have been fighting with this studio set up for the last half an hour and oh, it was just, it was a mess. Ringer was, was not behaving the way that I expected to behave and I was making all sorts of stupid mistakes like, like having my phone connected to ringer and picking up the extra audio and echoes and all this sort of thing. 100% of my fault. So glad we set this stuff up early to practice and try to sort out the bugs. Delighted. It's working now and I'm so sorry I put you through so much frustration. No, I'm used to actually remember it each year at every conference though, mother of technician, there are some problems. Yes indeed. Indeed. Technology. Love it. Hate it. So today we're going to be talking to mark Leffler, which is exciting. We reviewed his book two weeks ago, well actually a few days ago, but two weeks ago in, in audience time and any moment now he's going to be joining us. And I'm really looking forward to having a conversation with him about it because he has a lot of experience that didn't come through in the book. There were a lot of ideas, but very few of his stories. And so a lot of people I know are not terribly excited about doing retrospectives. It's not the most fun part of the job or maybe it is the most fun part of the job, but it's, it's one of the most stressful parts of the job because it's the part over which the scrum master has the least control. Anything can happen in a retrospective and there's always resistance and all sorts of human factors. So it takes a particular kind of personality that actually really dive in and make retrospectives the best part of the job. And this is one such person, he's been doing it for over a decade now, so I'm sure he has a ton of stories he did. Didn't get into the book. And how did you, how did you meet mark? Mark came to the very first A's conference as an attendee, not as a speaker and as an attendee. And during the first day he was feeling really motivated to contribute and we had lightening talks on both days and he liked the lightning talks on the first day. And so he spent all this free time that evening and the second day preparing lightning talk on, oh goodness. I want to say it was something, it was the 10 10 things that you can do to enjoy your scrum master. It was either 10 things you can do to know your scrum master or 10 things that an evil scrum master does. Something like that. And he gave a really fun lightning talk and it was his first time to ever speak on stage. And so that was how I met him. And then the next year he submitted a talk proposal and we accepted it and he was fabulous. Um, in the second year he gave a talk about watermelon reporting and I didn't know quite what to expect and he asked me to get a watermelon as a prop. Every time I invited mark to speak at ace, he asked me to get a prop one year. It was a football jersey. So what he'd done with watermelon. So I was just telling me this dinner, the watermelon reporting story about the year in which you were speaking at ace. I think it was the first time that you spoke at ace as an invited speaker rather than that by the talk. And you asked me to bring a watermelon and I was afraid that he was going to do some kind of a Gallagher thing that they would, I would also need tarps and drop cloths and umbrellas. But, uh, you know, he just hacked open a watermelon to illustrate his point, which is the way that bad news in the center, which is red as it gets reported out through layers of management to get sweetened and softened until by the time the most senior people hear what's going on, they get the green version of the story. So hello mark. Thank you so much for joining us. Yes, higher upon, but it was great. Um, and you've been back to speak since then as well, but that's not what we're talking about today. Not as not a topic. So we were just saying you sit in the, I read your book a few times and we it, well that's, that's that's how we roll minded is full of highlighters and notes and such. And I'm sure that you just, this is just an absolute mess of post it notes and we talked about it for the podcasts that we've recorded, which is going to be released, um, tomorrow. I think. And one of the reasons we were really excited about talking to you is that you've got a lot of stories. You've got to have a lot of good retrospective war stories. And, and I would say earlier that it's not that common to meet agile coaches or scrum masters who love doing retrospectives. They're, they're one of the more awkward parts of the job because they're so unpredictable and it requires so much concentration and efforts and there's so many human factors involved. And you are one of those rare people who seems to just thrive on running retrospectives. What's your secret? For me, it's one of the, of the most fun parts of doing agile, I think. Um, because
Speaker 3:this is, this is the, the room where the magic happens or where the learning happens, where people are, are figuring out why things are not really working. Maybe like they should work where people try out experiments. And, and I laughed the, maybe also the bit of bringing some order into the chaos of ideas and yeah, I really love it when lots of people come together, maybe different opinions come together and help those guys to, to come to a conclusion, which helps them as a team to become a better team in the end.
Speaker 2:And yet, uh, one of the things that I have noticed is that if you go into any organization that that is working in an agile way or an organization that's using scrum, there's a few things that you can predict.
Speaker 3:[inaudible]
Speaker 2:almost always half day these stand ups, they almost always have some sort of a physical board in which you can see what's happening. They almost always have
Speaker 3:a cross functional team,
Speaker 2:but when you ask them when they had their last retrospective, this is where people tend to get kind of sheepish. It seems that the most important part of continuous improvement, which is a cornerstone of agile, is the one which is the most often overlooked and discarded.
Speaker 3:Why do you think that might be? I think the main reason is that humans laugh to stay in their comfort zones and also day to day they laugh to have harmony and um, don't want to reduce conflicts if possible. So they do like to, to talk around topics without really talking about the big, the big, big elephant in the room. And because this was also this word. Yeah, increased conflict maybe. And then we have to discuss this and there would be maybe some fights and so on. But in my experience, if you have a team where there's a, a crepe psychological safety where they really, um, are able to talk about anything that happens and they can talk about, um, also maybe just say something like, I'm DePaul, what you did last week, uh, wasn't maybe what we would like to see here. You can, cliff could have been better, but without having this blaming and senior pointing in the bag. But this needs some kind of psychological safety, although in the team, and sometimes when you look at retrospectives, they are always trying to be on more on the surface, not really talking too deep into the real issues they have. And then of course, retrospectives gets there. There's no real effect. Then in the end, you're talking about the same problems again and again. And of course, when should you go to a, to a respective or to some other workshops where you don't see any results and where you don't see that this helps the team somehow. And that's why I believe I'm as a retrospective facilitator, one of the most important things is to, to create a room of safety, to create the room of psychological safety so that people are able to talk about what is on their mind and without having this blaming and finger pointing in the room and then you will see that people see, okay, this has an effect. No, we are really moving. We are really changing something. And then people will also laughed at retrospect as in the end.
Speaker 4:[inaudible]
Speaker 5:so you mentioned that retrospective is a place where magic happen, but I bet that you had some hard situation. What was your, the toughest example of retrospective that you had to run?
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah. One story I had was I did a retrospective with waters, which was for a longer timeframe, I think for half a year or something like that. And they wanted to have a look back at the last six months and talk about and look how they can improve. And um, in the end, the, the, uh, yeah, they had some serious issues.
Speaker 4:Okay.
Speaker 3:And the problem was that there are two people who had two complete different opinions, really opposite opinions about how this could be solved. And they were really, uh, in the end, only these two people were talking and talking and fighting and everybody else was listening, shaking their heads and what is going on here. And, um, the thing here for me as a facilitator was the fine orderly. There is some common ground and the common ground they had was, yeah, we want to solve the same issues in India. And the experiment we did in this in the end was I said to them, come on, let's do the following. So there's the idea of Paul and there's the idea of just, you know, and why not try Paul's idea for four weeks and then try just enough ideas for four weeks. And then we meet together again and discuss which one of two experiments work better for the team itself. And um, and that helped to solve the situation. In the end. Everybody was first fine with that approach. And um, yeah, we solved this issue. This was one of the one of maybe many war stories I had.
Speaker 5:I like your solution but it sounds a little bit like the kindergarten teacher.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Some some times I would say you yeah, sometimes you are maybe a bit of a kindergarten teacher, but yeah, sometimes there was no other way. I think as a facilitator also you have to other place your hand in the wound, right where we're really, the big problems are and, and it's also important that for example, they are very be silent people in your team, introvert people and maybe ask for their opinion. It's also something which is important for our facilitator. It's not just standing there and let them discuss and think it's, it's really important that you have some facilitation skills and I'm really look at what is happening in the group. If you see somebody is getting angry, you really approach in my poll I can see, um, you're not feeling well at the moment. Uh, what is your take on this one, for example, and just trying to get the re conversation and not only one or two people talking, for example.
Speaker 5:What was the craziest
Speaker 2:retrospective idea that you had? Because we talk about some negativity and now I would like to have some crazy Mark's story, a crazy mock story. How's that? No pressure.
Speaker 3:As you could see in the, in, in the book, I like to do, um, metaphoric, retrospective, like soccer retrospective and stuff like that. And um, the, the most crazy or to speak different maybe was, um, this is what's based on the idea from, um, from[inaudible] hands. And I think she was all at a some Sunday. Right? Um, and, um, the idea was to do a pirate retrospective because Geeta is a big fan of pirate. And I saw them, maybe let's, let's have a look how, how this could work out the seem to be, to really think about, we are pirates meeting on our treasure island around a nice fire fighter in the middle and then talking about our last, uh, fight out there on the sea with other, with another ship. And so this was the idea. And um, then I decorated the room really, really like a, like a pirate stuff. Like I had some pirate hats and some pirates words and, and I didn't really have a real fire, but yeah, I painted the one and then we were sitting in the room, which was, it was not the first retrospective for Co of course with this team. So it was already quite major team. I wouldn't start such retrospective with a, as a first one maybe with a new team. Um, but um, it was really fun. We talked about, uh, an in pirate language about what happened the last sprint and talk about what was the things we brought home and um, how the fight went and all the things. And this was really fun and it worked out quite well with everybody.
Speaker 6:Okay.
Speaker 2:I was thinking about, you had a whole chapter about using metaphors to make retrospectives more fun and more engaging and perhaps to bring out different ideas. What do you do when you find yourself in this situation in which there's somebody who's just not connecting with a metaphor? Like, like for example, you're using the football metaphor and you've planned for the whole retrospective around the football metaphor and you've got protocol stuff all over the room. And as a member of the team turns out to not understand 40, I just hate football or actually first personally hates and understands football. But, but somebody who just is not into sports at all and knows nothing
Speaker 3:about football. Okay. So I think football has never happened. Um, I'm from Germany, you know, pawn and then Germany, football and soccer is quite a big thing. So this, this never happened. But of course, and if for example, if I do the pirate or it's not retrospective is a, nobody has been a pirate in the past. I hope so. Um, what did I do in the beginning is to just do a short explanation of what we are doing. And it's just a few weeks ago I had a girl who wanted to do, uh, a horse, um, as high as the cross tournament. Uh, I'm retrospective, which was totally clear for her. What would happen in this retrospect is, but no phone, nobody else. So we just land in the set the stage phase that we do, short explanation what she did in the Horse Tournament, how that turn out for her and how is usually goes so that we have a common ground. Of course I'm still not an expert in Haas tournament and you don't have to be an expert in Austin. And that's because in the end it's not to talk about the real soccer game, a real horse tournament or read pirate days. It's about doing crazy things with a metaphor. And um, for example, if you use a soccer metaphor, it's not about that you try to get a real life ticker of the last sprint. It's more about the key. What could be crazy stuff that could happen during such a soccer game. Like we got, um, whatever four of our players got off the place because they were, and they have to do another game and we got$400 instead and things like that. Or our coach ran on the field and gold and whatsoever. So crazy things that could happen. So it's not about re real realistic the soccer game that small but fun having to use this metaphor in the end. Oh, that makes a lot of sense. Thanks for the explanation. You also talked quite a bit about um, the benefits of having an external facilitator. How much, how many times in your career have you been invited as an external facilitator for a company as an expert facilitator for retrospectives and what's that experience like? So this usually happens a lot. Um, especially when you start with new companies and working with them. I usually do the first retrospectives on my own, uh, on one hand to show them how to do it. On the other hand, to have a, a neutral position. And um, and this, I think it's one of the main advantages of having external retrospect, retrospective facilitators and with a dicta external. I don't mean that this guy has to be from, from outside of the companies. Um, I think it's already enough of the scrum master from the other team is doing your perspective in your team for example, and use as grandmas you to reflect retrospective of the other team. And you're just interchanging and it's all you have a chance as a scrum as also to be part of the retrospective and to also bring your points on the plate because it's really difficult to moderate something. And on the same hand, you're a participant. I think that's not really working out well. But with external, I always mean somebody external from the team could be from inside the company, could be from external. And the main advantage is really you are not really into all these fights. You're really neutral. You can take a new position and um, you can just, um, give anybody a chance because you're not really, uh, yeah. Uh, yeah. I don't have an opinion so far. So I think that's one of the main advantages in the end, the downsides, it's a good what could be the downside of the solution. The downside could be if you don't have any clue about the team that you maybe don't know about the real issues they have. For some, what I like to do is something I called a scene for prospective where I say, okay, let's focus on the topic of software quality. For example, because I know that they have some serious issues with quality for example, then it could make some sense to do something on that topic instead of just doing a plain retrospective on, on any topics. So maybe that could be a downside. But other than that, I believe to have a neutral person in the retrospective doing your facilitation parts is one of the best things you can have. You know, I really enjoyed the chapter in your book about systems thinking. I think it's one of the things that a lot of people talk about in a few people really understand. And uh, and it was a really nice introduction to creating causal loop diagrams. Could you describe how you use cocreation? Of course, a loop diagrams within a retrospective environment? Yes. And you're also just mentioned my, my favorite tool, which is called Luta crimes. I really liked Colucci awkward backgrounds because cause you can just, um, co-created quite easily. Just use a whiteboard for example. Or nowadays there are lots of electronic whiteboards already or um, I also did it on an iPad on, on Microsoft saw face where I just used a pen, um, for creating a closed loop that I, crumbs of both of these things are possible. Um, which is maybe not the best idea is to use a flip chart or something like that because you can't really change things. And if you create causal diagrams you will change a lot of things and moving things around. And the main advantage of course Luca, I grounds for me maybe just to have a, maybe we should have a short explanation what calls we'll do that if firms are, so the idea of a causal loop diagram is have to have causal links between different variables in your team. For example, for example, if you have a problem with the velocity for example, or the quality, this is the topic you put in in the middle. Like okay, we have a velocity problem here. And then you think about what are possible variables you have around the velocity that is influencing this. For example, the quality of requirements. And so this means if you have a bad quality in the requirements, just takes longer for you to understand what is happening here. Maybe you implemented the wrong stuff so the velocity goes down. So this is could be one variable you could address. And often I find teams that they don't have any idea anymore what they could try next to solve their problem. But with a causal loop diagram, you get a, you get a whole, I would say lots of ideas now what you could address because you find lots of area which maybe you didn't think about in the past. And then you can start experimenting. What could help in the next step. And this is one that's why I like them a lot and I'm always too short introduction on a flip chart with a topic like that, for example, a velocity or call it because anybody can can understand what I'm talking about. And then I let the team start working on called loop diagrams, usually not more than four to five people per causal loop diagram. But what I also did in the past, what that I, that I did the opposite on the left side team at the toe part, one of the team is working on the right side. The other part of the team is working, um, to create a causal loop diagram work also quite fine. So, um, yeah, anything is possible. And then I go around to ask questions and give some advice. For example, if, if you only have links that go into your variable, this is strange because usually, um, this area is also influencing something else. So this is something I'm looking at and I've always tried at the variables are neutral, so there shouldn't be something like that. Quality of requirements that should be just noted as quality of requirements so that we can go up and down and um, yeah, this, this is really a cool tool from my point of view.
Speaker 2:That's, that's one of the things I really like about Casa lip diagrams too, as opposed to some of the other problem solving or problem identification tools like fishbone diagrams and such is that it's not just the influencers to have the things that influence the problem that you're looking at also interact with each other. So you, you've started seeing various feedback loops which are involved. You can see ways in which things that you might not initially have thought would happen. Impact can have an impact on the same as that do have an impact
Speaker 3:[inaudible] and you also get a lots of interesting conversations going on, so people really start talking, discussing the problem, you get different views on this topic. I think that's also one of them. The big advantages of a closed loop die from, because it's really an interactive method where you can discuss with the other guys in your team.
Speaker 5:Okay, so now back to your fun part of the book. I was very curious about one aspect. Actually, I liked your creative ideas too around retrospectives, but I was wondering how much of the time you have to face the resistance from the teams that, for example, they say we don't have time for such game. Yeah, let's just talk or don't even talk because it won't bring an effect. Like what was there an awhile who said, I don't want to play in a metaphor based retrospective. You see, I hope to do that.
Speaker 3:[inaudible] so two parts. First part is in, in, in my meetings to work groups, there's all always one rule and the rule of two feet is if you believe this is not the best place where you can put in your time, then you are free to just leave the room and, and goes somewhere else. That's fine. It's okay. And nobody will blame or finger pointing or something like that. It's the perfect. Perfect. Okay. Um, because I'm not a big fan of, in, in inviting thousands of people. Um, and you find out maybe these guys are not the right for you meeting. And, uh, the other thing, the fun fact now is that it never happened that somebody said, no, I don't want to do this. And I think it's also about your attitude, how you enter the room, how can you just, um, introduce the topic? Because if you just do it like it's the normal thing on, on earth and it's so normal to do, to talk now on in imperative language, it's so normal now to do a soccer perspective. Um, usually people like to have fun at work and I think it's also about you if you already entered the room, like, ah, yeah, I'm not sure if this could be the right thing for you, but let's try if this could be interesting. And then always, uh, already you get some people like me, uh, I don't know really. And you'd a facilitator, you do moderate that you are the one creating the frame and the, and the retrospect is to just be confident in what you're doing. If you believe this could be helpful for your team and you believe this is some cool tool that can be used and you come in with the right attitude to know what, he will just say, no, I don't want to do that.
Speaker 5:Okay. So based on your experience, how man, how often do you change the metaphor for the rest? For the program? I can believe that
Speaker 3:after as
Speaker 5:then the football based and retrospective. Some people are tired of the topic and they need something from you.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I though the soccer perspectives or other metaphorical respecters are special retrospectives. I don't use them every, every sprint, for example. So I'm usually using the, just the normal things we all know like the whatever, a timeline, a maths at clad, a start, stop, continue, uh, whatever. I speak with retrospective, tons like that. These are the, the things I usually use. And then we'll be maybe one perspective. Every third or fourth brand would be metaphor. We wrote subjective and then I'm changing this theme all of the time, so I want to whatever, five soccer perspectives within half a year or something like that. Oh, okay. Yeah. And the other thing is that, um, sometimes you, you have teams who are really happy with doing speaker retrospectives and you always get great results. So, um, um, I learned from, from, from, um, I'm just, um, what Bob Marsh was, wasn't that doing the wrong thing, right? Or doesn't help. Right. So, uh, in the end it's also about it you have some results and um, it's, so it's the method is just one part and it's more important to talk about the real issues and the real topics. We're kind of bouncing back and forth because I was more focused on some parts of the book in Houston are clearly focused on other parts of the book. So I'm going back to the orange stuff, the tedious part. I am a 50 year old white guy. So making it all about me is sort of my shtick. Yeah. So you talk a lot about experiments and I think this is something that's often overlooked is people come to retrospectives and use them like therapy or they made too many decisions about changes and they don't know which ones they, which ones they hadn't implemented, which works, which didn't. Can you talk about how you design and manage experiments in a way to avoid that sort of practice? So I'm like I said, experiments for me is one of the most important things that I found out for me that I really explicitly, uh, editor retrospectives. And um, because we all are, we are working in a complex adaptive system. So we never know if, uh, a thinking, something we decide on to do if this would really help us in the end. And this is really important to understand that anything you will try and in the end of the respective to change things for the better could just be something that didn't work out because you don't know. So it's really important to keep in mind why you're doing an experiment of what should be a salt in the end. So just a simple example, maybe Justine is always late for the daily stand up in the morning. So the daily center[inaudible] nine o'clock in the morning and Justine is always late or doesn't come at all. And I'm so an experiment could be let's move the daily stand up to 10 o'clock and our hypothesis, and this is the important part, you need to have some hypothesis. What do you believe will change? So this case quite easy hypothesis would be Justin is there. So she, because it's pretty clear, it's just too early for her, such as mood 10 o'clock hypothesis. Justin will be there and now the important part comes if you start with the next prospective, the first thing you should do is look on your experiments from the last retrospective and not only look if you did them because this is usually the case, but also often not. You know, nobody looks at the experiments for the last, irrespective also happens a lot. But now we look at your experiment and you see, okay, yes, we moved the day, the daily to 10 o'clock and then look at the hypothesis and then you find out, oh, Justin was still not there a or k is or we have to try something else. Maybe we should ask her what his problem is with a daily stand up in the morning. Interesting out. Just tell tough. Yeah. Um, it's always, Paul is talking for 10 minutes about all the like cleaning his desk and whatever and, and this is so boring for me. It doesn't bring any benefit for me in the team. So it's just this, this time it's just I, yeah, I don't, I don't like it. And then we decide on the next experiment with could be, okay, let's focus on just on today and the future and just talk about things from the past if they're really important for everybody in team. Like we fixed an important pack, we changed some interfaces in the, in the sauce called whatever. And everything else is just about focusing, what do we do today? Who needs help, who needs support, what are the next big things we have to tackle? And so the experiment is then in the next respective, we changed the format of the daily stand up into really Omar future focus for the daily stand up. And the hypothesis again is just you know, we'll be there. And then of course in the next sort of Spec if you check again, um, if this, if this worked out or not and if it worked out perfect, then you can just put a check behind it and then just go into the new topics you would like to just ask. And if it's still a problem, then you have to try the next experiment. If it's still a serious problem or if you ha if you're lucky just you know, left the team. Yeah. Then we can just put a check behind the two. Um, this experiment and hypothesis, you're really staying on the problem until it's solved or not so important anymore. And this brings in the sense and that the people really believe this is an important thing we are doing here and you are not starting from zero again so it doesn't make sense to start a from zero again by just gather data if the problems from last perspective are not soft yet. So then you just go into complete directly into generate insights. Again, trying to find some different ideas. This is where costs look like chrome is perfect. Just look at your causal loop diagram from last time, which of the variables maybe you didn't address yet and then start a new experiment in this case and why you should focus on your on on two to three experiments. It's a, it's like when you, when you're in a hospital with medication, if you get more than one, two, three or form of[inaudible] at the same time you don't know which of all these things helped in the end. And then it will get really difficult to find out what was maybe a solution for the problem. So how do you track experiments that are in flight? How do you keep them visible to the team so they know what they're working on, changing it should be doing to make that change and they know what the expected results are in between retrospectives. So, um, usually what happens if you, for example, in the scrum team, these instruments are just on the sprint backlog so you could, they're always transparent, always visible because they are there. Yeah. You have to work on them too, as on any other things you do in a sprint. So I don't like to put it on a flip chart and put it in the room because usually after two days, nobody's used to flip chart anymore because it's just part of the room. And, um, and I don't like to put it into some PowerPoint or sharepoint or some, some, some wiki because nobody will look at them. And what I, what I do now for maybe the last six to 12 months, what I'm about, I'm trying to do, I introduced a lot of games to popcorn floor, which is, which was also a fabulous talk. We had the ace conference I think two or three years ago. Um, from, from Claudio. Um, I think and um, and the popcorn flow is a quite interesting method. Where you have the popcorn stays for is an acronym for problems, options, possible experiments, um, committed, um, ongoing. Um, what was it done, a review and next steps. So what I usually do now is then that I add the Brocklin so we just customer's perspective on this popcorn flow. Then we have the maybe your possible options. We found out in the closed loop diagram where we then created some experiments that we could start and in the uh, in the column ongoing you see all the experiments which are currently going on, which we are currently trying out and if there are done, they're moving into the review column where we can check if this helped or not. And I really like using this, this Popcaan flow for you can, you can also use it for example, as an impediment backlog, which is really perfect for doing stuff like that.
Speaker 5:Okay. I have one more question just to satisfy my curiosity since I got your book. I was wondering why on the cover there is a wave.
Speaker 3:Why does a wave that's a good[inaudible]
Speaker 5:if there was any connection. Yeah,
Speaker 3:that's good. Let me, let me remember why we chose to wait. I think they sent me a few pictures of what could be on the cover and then um, I think the wave came in because um, where you saw all is doing a lot of change from my point of view. And so if you, if you look at some, some beaches for example, um, on the, on one hand they're cleaning the beaches. On the other hand, they are, they are, um, making all these muscles smaller because this house and this created right. If, if so waste are changing a lot and maybe not in one, two or three years. Sometimes it takes a few thousand years es that something's really, really changing. But water or waste in this case have a look of power to change something. And this is the same for me. For retrospectives, retrospectives are about change and, and changing things hopefully for the better.
Speaker 5:Okay, thank you. So this is the benefit of running the podcast. You can have the stupidest question ever and get the answer. So thank you. What I asked you the question, I just assume that[inaudible]
Speaker 3:the wave was there because waves are always in motion and they're cyclical in nature.
Speaker 5:Ah, okay.
Speaker 3:So my assumption was incorrect. That was not the motivation. But my, I like your idea too. So Paul, it's fine. Metaphors can work in many different ways. If you think about pictures, right? Everybody see something different in pictures. So does this, um, that's the, that's the nice thing about it.
Speaker 7:Okay.
Speaker 3:Well this is a Whoa, I've got one other question. Um, what has been the reception? This, this is a[inaudible] I was very impressed when when I, cause I didn't know you were working on this book. All of a sudden the book comes out by a Guy I've known for a long time, although we hadn't been communicating for a while. So you don't have to keep me
Speaker 2:informed of your life. I will try and if you, this book comes out published by Addison West Westly part of the life code and signature series on retrospectives. And
Speaker 3:it's,
Speaker 2:it's been a long time since there's been a major book on retrospectives. I was telling you that used in there during the last podcast that I could count all the books I know about that were written on retrospectives on one hand and have fingers left over. And most of them are self published. So there's only been two books on retrospectives. They were published by a major publisher. Um, what does the reception been? What is, what kind of feedback have you gotten? What impacts do you feel you've made with this book?
Speaker 3:Um, the reception to be honest is it's not so big. Interestingly, and I don't know if people have a, have a proper just contacting me or asking questions, stuff like that. I have a Twitter account running for the respective way. I just use some of the quotes I have in the book and they're just tweeting them all the time. Though. There's a lot of things that are happening are usually people are retreating a lot of these ideas to, to other people too. I think people are interested in this method and trying to try new things out. Um, this was, um, I, I truly believe after 10 years, I think, or 11 years, the original book from Sob that last one came out. I, I truly believe that maybe it's, it's time for some, at least some new book in this area with some new ideas. And um, yeah, my corn left the book, Lisa Crispin who um, yeah, who made the whole thing more or less possibly put because she connected me to the editor as at, as an Edison Wesley at Pearson. And um, so there were a lot of, of people I really like, like I was like get a, she was asking for the book for, I don't know, four years already because it's more or less the same book came out in German in 2014 already. And she was always, always begging me for translating into English and bring it out. And I was really stretching for publisher who would be willing to publish such a book. And so I think there is some kind of reception happening, but not directly that I get direct feedback or direct emails of like that.
Speaker 2:Well, I think there's some great material in here and uh, I hope that that through this podcast we can help get it some more exposure.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I hope so. And for anybody out there listening, if you have questions, if you would like to, to ask some stupid questions, like just, you know, maybe salty, she had a stupid question. It just opened. Like I've just connect on Twitter with me, ask question, you will get an answer and I'm, I'm really happy if I get feedback because it will help me also to improve maybe in the future if there's another, another edition or something like that. Okay. Perfect. So thank you so much for your time today. It's been delightful talking to you, young machine, your wake off then. Thank you for the invitation and it was a pleasure talking to you and I wish you a great rest of the week and I'm looking forward to the episode covering life. Okay. Have a good week too. Bye. Bye.
Speaker 2:So that was our interview with Mark Lefler, the author of improving agile retrospectives. That was a lot of fun.
Speaker 5:Yes. If you liked, uh, the interview, there is a slightly trends that mark will also join us on the conference in my, so keep your eyes open on ice core ice conference.
Speaker 2:You do mispronounce the name Caliper? Um, yes, yes. It's morning here talking. So, but there'll be a link in the show notes so you don't have to remember anything. We'll make it easy for you. Oh listen to me. And also, uh, if, sorry to sound like a broken record, but we don't have any advertisements or anything on this podcast and uh, it does cost money to make, you know, there's all the, the editing and the hosting and the various tools that we have to use and such. And for the time being, we're just covering the costs ourselves. We've got one supporter on Patriot. Thank you so much. But if you find this valuable, if you enjoy meeting these authors, if you enjoy hearing the stories, if you enjoy the reviews of the books, that helps you to choose which books you want to read and which books you, you might decide to skip, then please support us. Uh, we could use the help just covering the costs of producing this podcast. We do it for fun, but it would be great if we did it for fun and it and, and um, and didn't have to pay for. Okay. I said it. Um, sit by. You can, you can either support some patrion or to make it easy. Um, if you want to just buy a scup coffee and buy me a cup of coffee, it's the URL. Just buy me a coffee.com is an easy way to remember how to get to our patrion page where you can just buy me a cup of coffee or just, is it just buy me a cup of coffee or you just buy me a coffee? It's just by me. Definitely by my cup of coffee. That's too long. Just buy me a coffee. Okay. The link will be in the show notes as well.
Speaker 5:Yeah. But if you're a student and you cannot afford to buy us a cup of coffee, at least share some feedback with us on the apple reviews or on Spotify, others[inaudible] on our social media. Just let us know what your head, what you love would really appreciate that.
Speaker 2:Yes. Cause this is our sixth episode. Yes. And we've got plans to keep doing this for years so we know we've got a lot of room to improve. And your feedback will be terribly helpful in doing that so that we can be better for you and for everyone else. Yes.
Speaker 5:Because actually one thing that I noticed that there's a lot of people that send me like private feedback like via linkedin or via email, but they think that everyone is shy to be the first who are like really
Speaker 2:review and put the note out there. So don't be shy. Yes we can take criticism. Yeah. You know what? Actually we w w I was thinking about this, you still need, you told me you're getting all this feedback from people on your personal social channels. Yeah. I'm getting almost no feedback at all. And you said maybe it was because I was too intimidating so I've got an idea. Okay. Are you familiar with the concept of a uptalk know who you are, but you probably don't know the word uptalk is the word that describes that pattern of speaking in which when a person is talking, their voice at the end of almost every sentence goes up as if they're asking a question.
Speaker 8:Oh yeah.[inaudible] Amelia. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And um, I did a little experiment with uptalk once, which was, was really interesting. Um, I do kind of have a problem with coming across as being intense or intimidating or what have you. And I also, I've got this huge problem with sounding so sure of myself even when I have no idea what I'm talking about. And I think that has a lot to do with upbringing. I think it has a lot to do with MBA studies. We were taught how to present ourselves confidently. So much of of the MBA studies involved presentations and convincing people in high school I was debater. In fact, I w I, I, I was a, I was not just a debater. I was an extremely successful debater. Um, I went all the way to the, the state level competitions and I ended up taking third place and state. And so I've had tons of practice in convincing people that I know what I'm talking about, even when I don't that I don't know how to stop doing it. And so maybe we would get better feedback. Maybe we even have a better podcast if we sort of recording all the podcasts with me speaking it up. Talk
Speaker 8:[inaudible]
Speaker 2:Oh, I mentioned the experiment. So I did an experiment at work. I started intentionally using uptalk and one of the things I found is that it made me feel less defensive. It made me feel like it was okay to be wrong and not so attached to my own ideas, which was really weird. It because not only does it encourage other people to be a little bit more, more critical when thinking about what it say, but it also makes me less critical of my own, not less critical, more critical or more open to changing my own ideas. Really Weird experiment. And surprisingly, people didn't find it annoying where they didn't tell me they found it annoying, which they would have because I was being less intimidating because I was using cup talk. I don't know. So it was a thing I did for like a week and nobody said it was crazy and nobody seems to notice, but they treated me a little differently and I found myself thinking differently. Okay. So maybe if we recorded a whole podcast of the agile book club with me using laptop maybe, or we can more feedback. Okay. So here, listeners, if you want me to record an entire podcast using up talk, then maybe give us some feedback. Otherwise, you know what's in store. So thank you so much. It's been a fun episode of fun interview and we'll see you in two weeks on the Agile Book Club. Bye Bye.