The one month you have time to recalibrate your [work] life

Somehow for me, August means back-to-school time even though I teach adults, not kids.

The weather here in Seattle has been spectacular this summer. Bright sunshine, cool air, light breezes, long days, and perfect temperatures. Even the humidity has been reasonable.

For those of you who don't know, we don't have mosquitos here in Seattle in the summer, so you can throw open the doors and expect not to be bothered by those annoying critters. Sunshine and fresh air come flooding in. It's our reward for hanging in there during those grey months that precede them.

It's probably not what you think

Coming back to Corporate America after 9 years of entrepreneurship was a bit of a jolt. I joined a startup that practiced Scrum, but I didn't really understand why we had to get together every morning and provide status. It wasn't until my next job that I began to understand what Agile was about.

Agile pulls all of these elements in a reasonable order, but no one explained it to me at the time.

The methodology isn't dying, respect for technology workers is.

Packed together in "open seating,"
a style that has since been proven to be worse for focus and collaboration.

I been working as an Agile leader for 13 years, mostly as a contract Scrum Master for big companies like Alaska Airlines, Boeing, Disney, Expedia, JPMorganChase, Microsoft, and Providence Health. As the years progressed, it became more and more difficult to keep Agile practices from becoming a series of checklists to be minded, exactly the opposite of what Agile was intended to be.