Thank You!

Posted on July 18, 2010 by Joe Little

I am back now from a visit to Lima, Peru. And from New York, and Newark, and Saratoga Springs.

Freud said that life is about Arbeitung und Lieben. Work and Love. And, to me anyway, these words have started to intermingle. I love my work, and I work to express my love.

At the deep level, I think we first wish that those we love know that we have tried to express our love for them. And of course, we never express this well, or just as each person would want. But we want each person to know that we *tried*, in our actions or words, to express it as well as we could to him or her. And particularly, of course, those that we care about most.

So, this is what I want to say today. Thank you!

Thank you to my family for putting up with my travels. And me.
Thank you to my friends (you know who you are) for helping me. It is my wish that you know how grateful I am.
Thank you to my course attendees and my clients for letting me do the work that I love so much. And, I hope, for being a small part of your life getting better. And increasing your ability to make others’ lives better. This is to me a great satisfaction.

So, this also an admission of partial failure. None of you can know how much more I would have wished to express that well of water (as I will call it) that has been given me. There is so much more there, and I know how poorly it has been expressed.

And I know that what I have expressed or done has, oft times, fallen on deaf or partially deaf ears. It was not the right time, or the right phrasing, or it was too physical, or too dramatically stated, or too abstractly stated. It was said in metaphors that fit my culture or my nature, but not that fit your culture or your nature. Or was too quietly stated.

Each of us wants and needs things to be expressed or done in just a certain way and in just a certain time. And I know, too well, that I am not always able to do that. It is a sadness to me, that my actions or words could not have been more just what you needed. But a sadness that is just part of being human. I can accept it well. But today I do feel it.

But again I say, more happily: Thank you!

One can say it as: Muchas gracias! Merci beaucoup! Vielen Dank! Mille grazie! But in my own mother tongue it is: Thank you!

If you wait for perfection, …

Posted on April 1, 2010 by Joe Little

If you wait for perfection, you might wait too long.

There are some similar quotes, but so far as I know, this quote is mine. As the father, I kind of like it. But most parents love their own children. (If I am not the father, tell me now.)

This applies to all of life. And to Scrum and Agile and Lean. As the guy said to Jack Lemmon in that famous movie, “Nobody’s perfect.” In fact, not a single thing is perfect. So, my advice is: Don’t wait for perfection.

Still a big problem out there. Too many people doing it. I usually don’t do it more than 3 times per day.

Use this quote to work on ‘em. Make life better now, before it gets to ‘perfect.’

One of the biggest business problems we have.

AgileBusiness – new yahoo group

Posted on May 17, 2009 by Joe Little

Quick notice that we just started a Yahoo group called Agile Business.
See here.

Key words might include: Agile, Business, Business Value, Agile Project Management, Product Owner, business analyst, Lean, Product Management, Marketing, Executive, Manager, Agile for non-SW projects, etc, etc.

Come and share your questions and your comments.

Yahoo Groups – 4 easy lessons

Posted on May 4, 2009 by Joe Little

Apologies to those used to Yahoo groups. This is for beginners.

First, why should you care? Because lots of really smart people use Yahoo groups (and ScrumDev in particular).

Second, why should you worry? Because lots of people hear stupid things or get into flame wars on Yahoo groups (and similar). You must Think For Yourself.

1. How to get there.

Go to http://groups.yahoo.com/
In the search box, type in Scrum (one example)
Click on Scrum Development

2. How to join

At the home page, click on Join This Group!
You will be asked to Sign In or Sign Up (become a “member” of Yahoo…it’s free)

3. How to read

From the home page, click on Messages (upper left)
In your Edit Membership (or when you join a group), you can say if you want single or daily emails when posts happen. I like Daily.

4. How to Post

One way: Under Messages, click on Post. That gives you a window to make a post.
Or you can send an email.
Or you can reply to someone’s post.

OK. Now change the mindstream.

A personal note

Posted on September 11, 2008 by Joe Little

In 2001 I was living in NC working as a consultant in NYC.

I remember early on a Tuesday morning, getting on a plane in Greensboro and flying to LaGuardia. I stopped to get some beanie babies for my kids.

And took a taxi to the World Trade Center at about 8:25am.

It was a beautiful September morning, crisp, clear. The taxi driver said there was some smoke at the WTC, so he turned on 1010WINS (“all the news all the time”). “A small plane seems to have lost its way and crashed into the WTC.” I needed to take the PATH trains to my client in Jersey City. I told the taxi driver to keep going. I lived in NYC for 20+ years; we don’t stop for minor things.

He left me off at Bowling Green. I rolled my luggage toward the WTC.

And the second plane roared past my ear. Or so it seemed. And crashed, with a loud explosion, into some everyday normal people sitting at their desks drinking their morning coffee.

Everyday between 8:30 and 9am there are (were) about 100,000 people in the WTC Plaza area, half in the World Trade Centers and half in transit. You can be sure they wanted to kill at least 50% of those people.

As you are reminded of this event, remember that it affected real people. People just like you. Directly. It isn’t about the TV or the radio or the movies or the newspapers or the books. It was real people.

I was there. So I must tell this story, this too true story again. I worked many years in the WTC or going through the WTC mall day after day. They bombed my living room and people I knew.

If it tells me nothing else, I tells me what my mother told me long ago. Be alive now, have the courage to do it now.

Services We Provide

Posted on April 30, 2008 by Joe Little

My boss (that would be me) tells me I must make some money in order to afford to spend time on this blog. So forgive a short post with advertising.

We provide Lean-Agile coaching. See here. Or contact us (contact info is at that site). From one day to 400 days. This is what we do; we’re good at it. We do many varieties of coaching.

We also provide Lean-Agile training. In fact, we just opened a new site, http://leanagiletraining.com/ We have been doing training for years, but this site is new. Not as pretty as we would like, but that will be improved iteratively. And more content to add to it.

Within training, we provide both public courses (see that site) and in-house courses (contact us). The public courses are being updated all the time (we have some scheduled that are not showing yet).

You may wish to subscribe to our training course newsletter (monthly)…see on the right-hand bar (Can we help you?) or see the mailing list page at leanagiletraining.com. The newsletter also includes 3 or 4 new ideas each month, which we hope you find useful even if the courses are not interesting at the moment.

…well, maybe not as good as a Super Bowl ad.

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.