Audiobook Review: Scrum - The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time (Unabridged) by Jeff Sutherland (2014)

I have completed listening to Scrum - The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time (Unabridged) by Jeff Sutherland (2014). It is a provocative read and challenges and attacks much of the workplace and project activity that I have experienced and observed. The Scrum "movement" is growing. Scrum is a culture requiring 100% commitment! Scrum faces opposition from territorialism, information hording, lack of transparency, protection of individual power and hierarchy.
Too much time and cost goes into creating and updating beautiful GANTT charts and writing lengthy documents which do not provide good value in terms of improving project success. According to Sutherland - Gartner, Forrester and Standish feel likewise. One team should get the job done from soup to nuts. No hand-offs. The team needs diversity of skill-set, thinking and experience. Team members need to identify with the product/project not their individual specialty. Small teams get work done much faster and better than big teams. Huddle-up for 15-minute daily stand-up meetings. What did you do yesterday to help the team finish the sprint? What will you do today to help the team finish the sprint? What obstacles will get in the way? Only one-sixth of the work done actually produces something of value. Do One Thing at A Time - The greatest waste occurs through multi-tasking. Doing more than one thing at a time makes you slower and worse at both tasks. Studies show conclusively that the people who multi-task the most have the most over-inflated opinion of their ability compared to their actual performance. Half done is not done. Value only exists when something is completely done and useable. Do it right the first time. When you make a mistake stop and fix it right away. Waiting to fix it later can take 20 times more effort. Working Too Hard Only Makes More Work - Work too many hours and you start making bad decisions and mistakes. Peak performance occurs at about 40 hours. Working longer results in less accomplished overall and poorer quality. No heroics. Heroic effort should be viewed as a failure of planning. Don’t fall in love with your plan. The map is not the terrain. Don’t project too far out. Don’t estimate tasks in hours. Estimate tasks relative to each other in terms of effort and prioritize in terms of value. Learn your velocity through the experience of sprints. Once you know how fast you are going you will know when you can be done. The product owner decides the order of work. She must understand the product from the customer point of view. The scrum team’s technical expertise will inform the product owner as to what can be built. As product owner, move outside of yourself to see the whole picture. The product owner must be available to the team and the customer. The product owner is a leader and not a boss. True joy is experienced when you are striving toward a goal. Studies show that happiness leads to success in nearly every domain of our lives not the reverse. It’s the journey not the destination, the process not the result. Reward striving. Scrum accelerates the product of human effort. Scrum has proven to be effective in software development, in business, the classroom, in government and in the non-profit sector. I'm sold on the benefits of Scrum.

Audiobook Review: The Virgin Way: Everything I Know About Leadership

I have completed listening to The Virgin Way: Everything I Know About Leadership by Richard Branson (2014). It is entertaining and rich with leadership and quality customer service lessons. Don't micromanage. PowerPoint culture is boring, ineffective and completely out of hand. Strive to be excellent and atypical. Say what you mean and mean what you say. Get out and kick the tires. Look at your business from the perspective of customers and competitors. Everything can always be improved on.  Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. The harder I practice the luckier I get. One size will never fit all. Hiring the right people is a skill and the most important part of my job. The concept of being over-qualified is nonsensical. It all comes down to attitude and desire. Hire for attitude and train for skill. Provide excellent and plentiful customer service by real people. Profit is a bi-product of good customer-service. If you don't have passion for what you're doing you shouldn't be in a leadership role. Fun is infectious and good for business. Culture eats strategy for breakfast. Nurture your people or someone else will soon be stealing your lunch. In Part IV: New Skills for a New World, Branson champions entrepreneurship and states that it should be nurtured at a young age. He charges the education system with being myopic and detrimental to maximizing one's full potential. Teachers teach what they know and it isn't entrepreneurship. Government and companies should encourage and support entrepreneurship. (I am taken back to my 16 year career with the YMCA, championing entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship.) Very successful people often had the help of a mentor. Lead from the front. Collaboration is essential to success. Face-to-face communication is essential for building trust. Silos are for grain. Tear down the walls. Informal collaboration is key to creativity. Branson quotes Steve Jobs: "Creativity comes from spontaneous meetings from random discussions. You run into someone. You ask what they're doing. You say WOW and soon you're cooking up all sorts of ideas!" Branson's Afterword: Follow your dreams and just do it. Make a positive difference and do some good. Believe in your ideas and be the best. Have fun and look after your team. Don't give up. Listen, take lots of notes and keep setting new challenges. Delegate and spend more time with your family. Turn off your laptop and iPhone and get your derriere out there. Communicate, collaborate and communicate some more. Do what you love and have a couch in the kitchen.  The Virgin Way entertains and educates from beginning to end. 11.5 hours of listening

Audiobook Review: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

I have completed listening to The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change (2004) by Stephen R. Covey. The 20 minute Forward by the author had me enthused that this book was going to be right in my wheelhouse. The book is great but not at all what I expected. This book is almost evangelical with powerful words and intent. The author promised a journey of self-development and personal growth that could result in me being a better spouse, parent, friend, co-worker ..... and he delivered! The book is intriguing, challenging and somewhat intimidating. Live your life with integrity. Integrity is the most fundamental source of personal worth. Personal peace comes when your life is in harmony with true principles and values. What are your personal values, mission and vision? Take ownership. Don't let emotions, impulses and pleasure-seeking subordinate your values. Apply principle-based actions. Be proactive. Make and keep promises. The chapter on your Emotional Bank Account might be the most meaningful and important thing that I have read this year. Habit 5: Seek First To Understand and Then to Be Understood is a crucial life skill which I needed to be reminded of. I need to practice and improve my empathic listening skills. Focus on your circle of influence, the things you can control. Build a better you! Don't blame others or circumstances. You have the freedom to choose how you act and respond. How do you want to be remembered when you have left this planet? Thank you Stephen R. Covey! I highly recommend this book. I wish that I had read it many years ago.

Audiobook Review: The Success Principles - 10th Anniversary Edition CD

I have completed listening to The Success Principles - 10th Anniversary Edition CD: How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be by Jack Canfield and am now beginning to put much of my learning into practice. PMPs note: I claimed and was granted 21.5 PDUs by PMI for listening to this book. Canfield became successful beyond all imagination with the Chicken Soup for the Soul series of books and being profiled in The Secret. Canfield weaves practical, pragmatic and proven business and success advice with a heavy serving of Law of Attraction belief and methodology. The book is rich with interesting anecdotal stories of individual success and constantly refers to seemingly every popular Law of Attraction, self-help, motivational, personal finance and how-to business management book ever published. The Success Principles is entertaining and packed with life-lessons, applicable guidance and life-skills rules. I particularly like Canfield's explicit emphasis on the need to learn skills, take action and persevere in addition to having positive and affirmative thoughts. The narration is engaging. The leadership and management principles revisit touchstones of dozens of best-selling books. The review and reminders of best practices are affirming and this book pushes my buttons in a good way. I am thoroughly enjoying the motivational stories and legitimate life-lessons. I highly recommend this audio version of The Success Principles to everyone and particularly to aspiring leaders and youth. The audiobook is a 22 hour journey. I suggest listening to it in 15-minute to 30-minute bites.

Audiobook Review: Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

Finished listening to abridged audiobook: Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen (2002). Straight forward and to the point. Get your to-do's organized and update daily. Systematically control and close all open loops and free your mind. Focus on outcomes and ask always what is the next required step. There are many more wise words (3 hours-worth in the abridged version). Fortunately for me, the YMCA sent me to a time-management workshop early in my career and I learned the TimeText system which is similar to Dave Allen's framework only it was pre-computer era and entirely paper-based. This book is valuable learning and reinforcement. Warning: The book will appeal to left-brain individuals and make right-brain people want to tear their hair out :) Next on my list of listening pleasures is: The Success Principles: How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be (2006) by Jack Canfield. 

Audiobook Review: Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work

Finished listening to audiobook: Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work by Chip Heath and Dan Heath (2013). The WRAP model presented is a simple and workable framework that will help me make better decisions. At 8.7 hours, the audio book was too slow for me to recommend. I wish that I had skimmed a hard copy. Next on my list is Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen (2002).

Audiobook Review: How to Make Friends and Influence People

Just finished listening to audiobook: How to Make Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie (1936). It's not perfect but there are some real nuggets here and I wish that I had read the book 30 years ago. Now listening to audiobook: Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work by Chip Heath and Dan Heath (2013).