The day I met Jeff Patton

Do you remember the last time you have been enlightened about a work-related thing? It was a nice feeling, isn’t it? That delightful sensation of newly acquired knowledge, the confirmation of deep belief, the sense of accomplishment. This is exactly what happen to me a couple of weeks ago.

I have to admit, I don’t get this type of enlightenment often but when it happens, it has a deep effect on my trajectory. Today I would like to comment on this recent training I did with Jeff Patton.

Fantastic teachers use graphic facilitation

I was amazed to see Jeff Patton talking and doing tons of graphic facilitation at the same time. The idea sticks much better, although his book had all the content in it, hearing the explanation and seeing the content being drawn makes a huge difference. I now have these illustrations in my mind when I face a problem at work.

 The process of making software is not easy, but it is so much fun

During my journey in making software, I have experienced successes and sometimes drama. I guess this is part of the job, but really with the right framework in place, it becomes much more fun.

To me, it is now very clear that some companies might make things more difficult than it should be, it is just a matter of getting everyone aligned with a first class training.

The framework for true collaboration is key

The concept of a discovery team is elegant, optimised and honestly fun. It seems that the tensions of not knowing “what is going on with the backlog” simply disappear because the framework provides not only a shared understanding of what is being developed but also cohesion and rhythm.

Where to from there?

Practice, practice, practice. I really don’t want to fall into the trap of having learnt something fantastic and not even using it. Jeff nicely suggested that asking for forgiveness rather than permission is the best way to go. I agree with him and I have tried that in a few organisations, it works indeed. That makes you an agent of change but the real question is; do I want to be an agent of change or do I want to work with people that know and already use a good process? Having a UX Designer is certainly a segway for change, but it comes with willingness from an organisation to embrace change.