I’ve been listening to many podcast episodes recently. One of the quotes I heard is “They know what their problems are. They just don’t want to change.” “I want to be physically fit, but I’m old.” I’ve seen many twenty-ish and thirty-ish people react to my take on improving my physical fitness. “Your approach to your team works very well, but mine is different from yours.” How different are we? Does my team consist of geniuses, whereas your team is full of preschool kids? ...

I have been inviting friends to my home ever since I started living alone three years ago. I love hosting them and making them feel comfortable in my home. In today’s world, people heavily rely on social platforms. Instant messaging is convenient, but it can be difficult to tell if we’re truly connecting with others. Are we talking to real people, or just chatbots? Additionally, social platforms often present a filtered version of people’s lives. How about their true selves We probably can never know. ...

When I first practised Agile on my old team, one of the things I learned from the consultants was Story Points. Since then, it has been used in many product teams in my company. As all the teams use Scrum as the main framework, many colleagues even misunderstand Stories and Story Points as Scrum ideas. They’re actually from Extreme Programming. Stories Points were invented by Ron Jeffries, one of the three founders of Extreme Programming. They were invented to abstract from hours to complete an item. With the Fibonacci series, developers can easily say the bigger the Story Point is, the more complex the Product Backlog Item is, and the more uncertainty in developing the Product Backlog Item could be. Developers can use empiricism to vote for the size of a Product Backlog Item. With the aid of the velocity trend, they can select the Product Backlog Items into their Sprint Backlog. ...

Having been away from the swimming pool for more than 20 years, I started to learn to swim last month. My girlfriend was a competitive swimmer. She participated in many swimming competitions during her school years. After convincing me to go to the gym, my girlfriend then persuaded me to swim with her. Every summer, she took me to the sportswear shop, urging me to buy a swimming suit and swim with her. Whenever she urged me to do so, I refused and went away. Part of the reason was that I wasn’t interested in swimming. Part of the reason was that I wanted to observe her reaction to my refusal. ...

I wrote a blog post in April on studying for Professional Scrum Master (PSM) II. Last week, I took the exam and scored 100%. PSM II was called Professional Scrum Practitioner (PSP) before 2016. After that, it was renamed PSM II to bridge the gap between PSM I and PSM III. This exam focuses on applying Scrum in the workplace, as evidenced by its old name. Without extensive experience working as a Scrum Master, this exam would be challenging. Luckily, I have over five years of experience working in all the Scrum accountabilities. ...

As a mentor of two new Scrum Masters working in teams with little to no knowledge of Scrum, I often face challenging questions. My usual reaction is not to give them a direct answer at first. During one of the lectures, an Agile coach emphasised having a 2-week Sprint. Perhaps his speech was very effective. Perhaps there are some misunderstandings. A mentee who had been working in a team that runs a 4-week Sprint asked me whether he should ask the team to change to a 2-week Sprint. I asked him why he wanted to change to a 2-week Sprint. ...

Twenty-something years ago, there was no internet access in typical households. When I finished my homework, I often called my friends via the home phone. The phone calls usually lasted 15 to 30 minutes. Then, it was my mother’s turn to speak to her friends for another 15 to 30 minutes. When feature phones started to become popular, many mobile phone service providers offered a promotion plan allowing users to send a certain amount of free SMS messages to others who were using the same service provider. We switched to the same service provider and kept texting each other day and night. There was a limit on the number of words per SMS message. I still remember how much effort we made to make our texts concise. ...

When I’m on the street, at restaurants and on public transport, I often observe people. Based on my observations, most people look down at their mobile phones anytime. They never look up and watch out for someone who almost collides with them. They never stay alert to traffic. They start walking across the street when someone next to them steps forward, no matter whether it is a green light or red. Together with their masks, they look soulless. They seem to consume whatever social platforms push. Why are their little screens so attractive that they would sacrifice everything, including safety? ...

The lecture series continues, and there were more observations on bad habits in the presentations. During a lecture or a presentation aimed at teaching the audience, speakers usually look for interactions with the audience to gauge their understanding of the content. However, going to an extreme may annoy the audience. The lecture series was held using Zoom, making it difficult to get feedback from the audience. In one lecture, the speaker asked us to reply by typing our responses in the chatroom. “Okay? If you’re okay, type ‘ok’,” she said. Many of us answered “ok” in the chatroom. ...

Recently, I have been attending a series of lectures on the business nature of my company. Until the latest lecture, I had learnt most of the materials before. As the lectures were delivered by different speakers, I focused on their presentation skills instead of listening to the content. All the lectures were delivered in English, no matter whether the audience and the speaker were locals. It’s okay as the speakers may want to practise English speaking or it was restricted by the faculty. But all of them have different bad habits. This caught my attention. ...