Pragmatic Agilist

I recently stumbled over this really great article from Steve Martin (not the comedian) in the Harvard Business Review on " Personality Traits of Top Sales People ."  The article had some surprising revelations, most of which I realized could end up helping almost all of us in our daily lives one way or another.  It's a quick read, so do please run off and read it.  But I had a couple of thoughts about how Steve could help the rest of us out. From Jeff Moore, http://topsuccesssite.com Professional sales people are role models to all of us in at least one crucial thing:  the ability to pursuade.  Sales people get their targets to do two very hard things:  make a decision, and commit money to be spent on that decision.  In our lives, we may feel we have had a "big win" if a decision maker we work with tentatively agrees to go along with a suggestion we have made for a while on a trial basis (while planning to disclaim all knowledge if it goes south)...

Hey, you say, is it true you're presenting at next week's Agile 2011 conference in Salt Lake City?  Yes indeed!  I've had the privilege of developing an agile project portfolio simulation with NAVTEQ/Nokia product manager Cory Hohs, and we're fairly enthusiastic about how it turned out.  Participating will be just the right way to spend a lazy summer afternoon at the conference, for sure! Actual presentation information We've been slated for Thursday, August 11, at 3:30pm.  Hope to see you there!

My friends at Innovation Games have given me access to a set of really incredible online games that you can use for distributed "Iteration 0" or "Inception" activities, depending on what you call them. Try this one out, and let me know what you think! Cheers! Bang for the Buck Prioritization: Timing: 1 hour Ingredients: A list of backlog items (epics / stories) to prioritize. Players (5..8 recommended): Product Manager / Product Owner Development Team Directions: The goal of this game is to collaboratively rank a backlog based on estimated value and estimated cost. The y-axis is the value of an epic or story and the x-axis is the cost. Each axis is organized as a Fibonacci number. We typically use this game for release planning. Clicking on this image, will start an “instant play” game at www.innovationgames.com. You'll see this image as the "game board" and an icon of a light bulb in the top left corner of this window. The light bul...