Sunday
Attended a workshop on Use Cases. The audience contained both use case users and sceptics, which resulted in some heated discussion. Not unusual for an SPA session. I did get some useful ideas to apply at work.
The day ended with a barbecue and drinks sponsored by Cincom, who valiantly keep on making, selling and using Smalltalk. One day, when I grow up, I want to do a real Smalltalk project again.
Monday
Marc Evers and I hosted the “Thinking for a Change” session this morning. The session went well: 3 out of 4 participants were able to find the root cause of their problem AND come up with some useful things to do about it. The problems were quite diverse:
- a software development coach having trouble communicating and working with the managers of the team
- having a good balance between home life and work
- how to reduce the spiraling costs of change in an application
- a business struggling to find enough money to survive the next few months, until their product is out.
In the evening we did a “Birds of a Feather” session on evaporating clouds. Again, two very different cases. One of them got to a start of a conclusion; the other managed to uncover a whole set of assumptions. To really resolve it, both parties would need to go through the exercise, to get a better understanding of the other party’s position, reasoning and assumptions.
In the bar, after dinner and drinks, I joined another group making a Current Reality Tree and a Future Reality Tree. Today was a Thinking Processes day.
Tags: Systems Thinking, agile, SPA 2006, Theory of Constraints, Thinking Processes
