Agile Development Blog

Just got off the phone with Dan Montgomery who interviewed me on his BlogTalkRadio channel on Sustainable Leadership.

Following the ‘More…’ link will show my notes and links from the 50-minute interview using the Decker Grid.

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Here at Rally, we’ve been working hard over the last several months to bring our Agile course materials and presentations into the New Age. We want to have what you might call “truly Agile” course materials and presentations.

What does that look like? Well, it started like this.

Thanks to some folks in marketing, we each took the Bert Decker course “Communicate to Influence” on presentation skills. (”Jean, you really have to learn to keep your hands at your sides; you’re all over the place!”) What a phenomenal 2 days of on-your-feet guidance about connecting with your audience!

Two books have been our guide on dramatically reducing the clutter on our slides.

Then thanks  to my colleagues Chris Spagnuolo and Ben Carey, we Rally Agile Coaches began reading Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds and Slide:ology by Nancy Duarte. We’ve also worked to reduce the number of slides. We’ve become more cognizant of the aesthetic of each slide.  So, notice in the slide here about defects, we no longer have a bulleted-list of all the issues around defects and what might cause them to be increased. The slide is no longer the story; it is the backdrop to the story that the trainer/presenter tells.