 Hello and welcome to the Christmas special episode of the Agile Pubcast. This year, myself, Jeff Watts, Paul Goddard and Nigel Baker got together in Birmingham to celebrate another year and to round it off with a bit of fun. Christmas jumpers on and we started off by talking about drunken estimation and then we picked up on a question from one of our listeners who asked what we would ask Santa for if we were to write him a letter this year. So settle in with a glass of mulled wine or your favourite Christmas tipple and listen to see what Nigel, Paul and myself are looking for for Christmas this year. Thank you for all your support over the year. It's been great to see the number of listeners go up and up again this year and the comments and interactions have been fantastic. We hope you continue to enjoy what we do and if you want to support us a little bit more please head on over to patreon.com slash the Agile Pubcast where a small monthly subscription get you access to all sorts of extra goodies including more episodes of the pubcast, some videos and behind the scenes footage and photographs as well as a few other little things here and there. Anyway, that's enough of me. Let's get back to the pub, the old contemptibles in Birmingham. Hello. Looks good sir. Going live. We're live. Hello Birmingham. We are in action and we'll see how long it lasts and see how much people can hear me on this side. Try again. Cheers. Of course the live thing is something that you were from over there. Whereas we've got the... Yeah. Oh, so lives from that thing now is it? Yeah. So it probably won't hear any of this will it? What do you think last time? It picks up. It's quite good. It's brilliant. Excellent. Excellent. What do you guys drink here? Mortamus, isn't it? Mortamus? A lovely, I would say medium cider would you? It's not a sweet one at all is it? Yeah. But it's not super dry. It doesn't offend my sweet tooth. So it's nice. Is that number one one was called? Yeah. Mine's the middle one. Yours was... YARP. YARP. YARP. YARP. And how would you describe yours, Jeff Watts? A little bit citrusy. Okay. And Christmassy? Light. Christmassy theme to it? Not that Christmas yet. Because I would associate spice with Christmas. So if you had to give it a season, which season would you give it? Spring. Ah. Difficult. I think we should have moulds, shouldn't we? We should at some point today we will do. We should explain where we are and what we're doing. Ah, what are we doing? It's the Christmas day. So this is our annual... Christmas jumpers. Christmas jumper. And... Day out. Christmas day out. Day off, day out. Day out. Day off, day out. For... Agilify our job bare and expect an adapt. And we are in the old contemptible superb at Birmingham. Which has just gone very quiet all of a sudden. As everyone realises we're talking to a camera. Yeah, it's got high ceilings. It's got dark green British racing green walls. Yeah. It's got a feeling that looked like in the olden days it should have been nicotine But obviously not now. Just the way it's painted it looks and feels like Christmas. Yes, it's like an overly flowered Christmas cake Cooked by a great auntie ready for your Christmas. It's making me feel Christmassy just by being in here. Ah, fantastic. It hits the mark. Well picked, Geoff. Geoff, pick this pub. You've chosen wisely. I picked it based on the name. As I would pick a race horse in a race. Because I thought we were the old contemptibles. We are the old contemptibles, yes. People don't like us. We don't care. What I have spotted is this pub seems to be a very popular haunt of old alcoholics. What makes you say that? Further down the bar there's a few older gentlemen who are here drinking quite a lot quite quickly quite early. Yeah. So it seems to be the... I'm not saying being an alcoholic is actually bad. I'm just saying if you have to have two pints stacked up, two guinnesses and down them in quick succession before midday that is normally not a sign of... People don't use the same alcoholic name. What do they use? The drinking problem. Because you can have a drinking problem without being dependent on alcohol. So if you drink for social preference you have a drinking problem. But you could not have a drink for a long time. But the standard joke is a lot of people, they don't regard themselves having a drinking problem. You have a problem with their drinking. They don't have a problem with it. Have we said where we are in the country? I said Birmingham. You did say that? Yeah. Which is mostly in the Midlands. It's true because we are actually in Birmingham thankfully. I think it's technically in the West Midlands. I couldn't tell you that. But it seems like quite a popular lunchtime kind of drinking business pump. Which is a kind of business use. It's an old style but there are lots of business types in here. Alcoholics. And having an alcoholic drink at lunch. Which tends to be found upon these days in work. Really? I think so. I can't remember. I don't know many offices where... I did a workshop recently. And they had cans of water in the desk. On the desk? While I was teaching they were drinking. You see that a lot. And I was at a company. The same company we were talking about. We won't say where it is. The only appliance they lock in the office is the milk fridge. But the alcoholic fridge remains unlocked all day. Nobody steals that but people steal milk. I think that's become more popular. And again trying to keep people in the office for longer I suppose. Social and you stay longer. Drinking in the evening. As long as you don't break the rules. Which are what? I don't know. Don't code terribly when drunk I imagine. Well it did bring up a conversation about drunk and estimation. Oh that belches drunk and estimation. Which is? Do you want to expand on that? I'll probably do a disservice. So Arlo Velsu is someone who doesn't particularly like estimation. And while drinking one day with his dad. So I believe he decided to invent an estimation process based on alcoholic drinks. And I think he wants something like... If you need to speak to somebody. Then you need a drink. Because developers are naturally inhibited. So that would be at least a one-point story. And so for every group of people you need to speak to. You need a pint. If you had to look at a crappy piece. A crappy part of the code space. That was another pint. If you had crappy environments that was another pint. And so on. So you worked to how many pints it was. And if it was above a six-pack. Then he started talking about it was just hard liquor. So when you get into the spirits. Then you need to break it down. And after that you're into hard drugs. And so you don't want your team on crack. We used to do it in Nokia. Crack? That explains the whole reason why the product didn't go. I rephrase. They used to do a beer-related estimation. So instead of story points. We had story pints. So they accumulated. Their velocity. Did you? Probably got it from major. They accumulated points. And at the end of the sprint. We used to go to the pub and try and drink those pints. Oh wow. That's quite a lot of pints. Well it depends how productive the sprint was. Sometimes it would just be three or four pints. But yeah. On this podcast we encourage responsible drinking. Responsible drinking. We have to keep reminding people about that. Yeah. Excellent. So what's the theme of today's podcast? Beyond Christmas. We had a suggestion. From one of our listeners. Jamie Collins. Hi Jamie. JC as I call it. It's an appropriate name for this time of year. Jesus Christ. Catch up. It's okay. A usable clack. A total joke on one of our courses recently. And everybody in the room got it. The pool was sitting there like this. And then eventually he got it. And there it is. And he drops. Now he suggested what would we be writing to Santa for this year. Agile wise I'm assuming. But he didn't specify but yeah. Let's go with that. Or personally I suppose. Yeah. Okay. So then begin. So what are we writing to Santa for? A decent scrum master. For you. Not for me personally. Just one for the world. I've just been running a lot of courses lately where I can know maybe it's just I'm getting a bit tired and a bit full on. Near the end of the year. It's just that I seem to be struggling to convince people or to motivate inspire people. That there's value in someone like that in a team I think. Someone that actually wants to put down what they're doing right now and actually pick up that responsibility. You know what I really enjoy that. I really enjoy getting more helping people be better. We didn't have quite a lot of that. About a month ago now. That was a uplifting day. And that's what I was going to mention earlier. You told me don't talk about this now because it's potentially good pubcast material. I think if anything this year what's helped me is the more advanced the practitioner courses we've been doing. Where we genuinely I felt a better connection with people on their journey and seeing them actually enjoy doing that role. Doing a scrum master on. I believe in this kind of personal growth thing and I actually I'm better off because of it and I want to be even better. And that's given me trying to move away from the sheep dip of the CSM element of what we do which is very much trying to just set an education about actually trying to help people grow and I think just a handful of them I won't name them but there's a handful of people that we've worked with that I think have really reinforced my faith that people actually do want to do it and do it well I've kind of gone off the subject there of Santa's list but if I could have more people like that You would like more advanced courses? No, not more advanced courses just more advanced people You know more interest That sounds really negative. I'll take that thread and I'll run there because a theme for me recently has been the scrum masters that I'm coaching I know they're good Yeah They kind of know they're good but they haven't got the courage to be good Okay, why do you think that is? They're worried about the consequences of their actions So, you know, we've said before a good scrum master should be prepared to lose their job to go up against the status quo to challenge things and to say the stuff that nobody else has said a lot of these people and maybe it's the time of year as well Christmas carol people don't want to lose their jobs But yeah a lot of people I'm coaching they've sort of gone back into their shell of it and they don't realise they have but they knew something's up, right? Because I'd be writing for more courage for these people when they do get that courage and they do do something I've known very, very, very, very Yeah That fear is there and that gives me a buzz I'm not being all altruistic here saying I want courage there I like to see that I don't want to get into politics now on this because it's not a foreign policy but I think at the moment in this country there is a lot of uncertainty around this it all walks of life so I think maybe that does have a rub off on people but you don't want to be awkward you don't want to upset people for fear of what might happen Yet you could say some of the politics that's going on is actually about speaking their version of the truth that they know is going to be unpopular Yeah almost provocative But I don't feel that at all I feel a lot of politicians are often fake certitude fake certainty They're saying you are uncertain but do not worry but I have all the answers the answers are simple, they're clear unfortunately I find both sides wrong So what I would like for Christmas is for people to embrace uncertainty to actually take it on and say you know what, it's a gift not a curse not knowing all the answers is a scrum master what a wonderful opportunity to learn to experiment an opportunity to try new ideas try new directions and not wish for the foe's certainty of the agile guru who knows it all or the senior leader who claims they've got a method that fixes all the issues when it doesn't really I stop reconnect so my speech is lost it's still recording So what I'm going to do is for the recording is when the camera comes back on I'm going to say the magic words to solve the problems of the world and the guys watching the video will never know oh my god you've just solved it that's the plan, the only you listeners will get that joke if it ever worked what's 12 minutes and that's how you solve the problems of the world I can't believe you've waited till never to come up with that if you could bottle that in the sun you'd be a millionaire it's hard to think we could talk about it again it's so sensitive lost in the moment it's gone but I'm glad genuinely it's been lost in the moment that's what I want it's more reliable yes what we would like it's more reliable let's do it for the video what we would like is more stable technology to allow us to communicate to the world we find it absolutely incredible that we're in the middle of the second biggest city in the UK I blame BT it's all BT's fault I'm going to get nationalised that's a marriage made in heaven I talked about that before we just imagined the government thinking we've finally got our hands on a wonderful technology of a BT phone infrastructure do you reckon my note is about BT was to be nationalised they get BT sport as well but they get BT sport BT sport is the very different no it would be open reach it's open reach so it's not BT at all it's open reach BT retail will stick on top it's just the vans in the street isn't it so is the vans and the wire BT don't want it BT do want it because it's actually one of the profitable bits but you're right they've got the department and then BT went and serviced on top so we had just a recap not working yet let's go you wanted more courageous scrum masters I wanted just a decent scrum master and you wanted the gift of uncertainty I take it as a gift not as a curse I think they're all related so if people can embrace and say they will feel more courageous it's nice I get to work I get to work through where their fear is and their concerns are they're a lot more empowered than they think they are they have a lot more ability to act than they're thinking about fear we over blow fear you can imagine far worse things that actually happen your imagination takes you far well for me this week I did a scrum master course a public course and I thought everyone was quite good everyone was quite high level of standard of intellect of understanding of delivery and I really liked having those conversations with them my only job was I didn't have enough time with them I just felt that I could have done another couple of days there easily some of the topics that were raised I felt were two days on their own two day topic on their own we could jump into that we could really have some good chats about it but you've only got two days you can point to one side and move on I'll start about that things about organisational structure management performance of use all stuff that I would love to get deep into and we'll dig into that we just couldn't do in the actual event which made me a bit sad I'm doing that at the moment it's fun it's more fun for me than it is for them because they're living it but and that for me was one of the most frustrating things about the course I did this week I was saying to you on the train I was getting nothing back wait wait let's just confer this is the course you were doing for Jeff not for me the course you were doing for me was a really good course just that client I was doing this week so just getting very little back in terms of their problems trying to engage in two days you are right you have a limited time and there is a certain agenda to get through but those courses for me are much more interesting when people actually want to get to grips with their problems and talk about how can this content help you deal with them how can I help you deal with those problems so yeah I was just I love a bit more of that so I did less training this year than last year and I intend to do less training next year than this year and of course that is a answer but what was the question why? is that why you're on Christmas less training no I don't want it because that's within my control but we've all asked for something for others personally for me I don't know I'd like to personally I'd like to re see something different do some different things I probably said this last year I'm not acting on it but trying to I don't know just engaging different activities bring something else to my job well that's the thing right going to the same same things that we're expecting so if you said the same thing last year I haven't acted on it why is next year going to be a different what are you going to do about it but it's a time is it no that's not actually a question what am I going to do about it well I'm going to book on some stuff I'm going to do some personal development wise I'm going to do my refereeing course next year I've booked on that but once it's got nothing to do with agile but it's got a lot to do with doing I did a referees course last month for refereeing for the kid days I'm going to go on and do the adult one is refereeing adults different from kids yeah for me personally for me personally probably adults I think just because I don't know, I don't know why can I extended a play they listen maybe maybe it's saying more about me this is getting quite deep now but I enjoy that level of respect that you get back from players as a referee and rugby is a sport that's built around respect so you can tell big hulking gorillas stand back and they won't punch me in the face that's the idea I did get quite a lot out of that last year and I think I've been holding off doing that I've booked on to a course next year so I'm going to do more with that so I've got macro and micro things so macro would be I've been quite enjoying this year more by accident by design doing scrum in non-software context and I mean real product development context but no software making real physical objects for scrum and I find that incredibly hard and incredibly interesting and I'll like to do a bit more of that if I get the chance so I'm finding that quite fascinating learning about the mechanics of making things that are not software as I've enjoyed that so as a macro thing I'll like to do more of that as a micro thing I've got the silliest little minor thing that I'm thoroughly enjoying and I've decided to fill it with sort of knick-knacks or symbols or action figures of things that I liked for my childhood and so I've been loving just picking up gradually, traveling around little toys or figures representing certain things for my childhood because they've all become very trendy and collectible these days so on my shelf I've got He-Man on the shelf and I've got Donatello the turtle and I've got Bob Effect from Star Wars and I'm enjoying them having them for one little represent of each person so I've got a few ideas no, I'm not a child my daughters do steal them and then put them in like they have like Skeletor in bed or having tea with He-Man which I regard as being a slightly controversial because Skeletor and He-Man have never traditionally gone on they've solved that problem though completely exactly, I think Skeletor's the mum have you seen Grumpy Skeletor on Twitter? I've seen some of that and so what for me is joy is I do all this like helping people transform the world of work build your collection of toys I'm transforming just little things symbolising I've got two transformers on the shelf Optimus Prime and Megatron so those are two up there so I'm just trying to get one of each thing you've got the good and the evil I kept them quite far apart I'm going to have a little shelf I'm going to have a little shelf of some of these heroes or some of these characters I've got Roland Mack on the shelf he's having nemesis, doesn't he? I don't remember, did you have a nemesis? I don't think so, beyond ratings but the idea is I'm going to have this little shelf of these little characters these little characters of my childhood and I've got to do it that was the nickname for my youngest when he was in the womb we called him Roland Ratt so why didn't you quiz him in Roland? because he stole our last name sorry Roland hello to all our Roland's out there I don't have a choice of a name interestingly, for my birthday last week I got my wife gave me a rugby shirt which was the colours of Roland Mack shirts so I was like, oh Roland Mack she's like what? I had to show it to a little dolly toy from my childhood but that's giving me a little bit of pleasure actually genuinely, I'm not have you always been a collector? I collect everything so I've still got it's a massive outing I've still got all my childhood possessions how old are them ever? all of it so childhood wise so I've got all my original Star Wars toys action force he-man all of it I never kept it in good condition I kept it for that scratch and itch so I quite enjoy that so I collected again all the original Star Wars stuff and all that as toys I wouldn't collect I used to play with a lot of toys I was given a lot of toys which I did with my mum my mum never threw away which is I wasn't as a child but I am a master I hoarded as a child I like looking at the art of toys but I wouldn't say I collected what's the thing behind collecting? I can tell what happened to me so I collected I had my original toys which I loved as a child and I played with them then at the age of about my teens my late teens Star Wars collecting became fashionable in the 90s so I would go around boot sales and try to get the full set why just because I wanted them as a child as an adult I've done the same thing again what I've done this time was what got me into the collecting bug was there was a toy shop there was a toy shop in Northern UK somewhere where the owner had died in like 2005 and the doors were shut for like 10 years on this toy shop and eventually they opened it up to sell off the stock but this person had owned the shop since the 30s so he had in his warehouse original 1970s 60s 80s toys untouched and they got auction and I saw an article on the newspaper about this on the your dream as a child discovering a shop with all these goods so I thought I'll bid at auction for a couple of these things and I bid for a couple of things but I'm of the collecting mentality so that started off an itch so I thought okay I've got a couple I'll find a couple more I won't get the expensive ones I'll find a couple and I'll go on until I've got it all and I couldn't once there was a gap so like that I have to fill I'm not sure I wanted it I just wanted to finish it as a collector is it something that you get joy out of showing to other people that are interested or the joy that you get personally yourself from looking at them and seeing them I don't think it's either I think the joy of collecting is the act of collecting not collection so the minute I so I had to complete it but it wasn't the things it was the completion the closing of the task you know it's an activity you have to go on to achieve all these things I was wondering whether there's any psychology here that could be useful to us well I think it's about closure it's like spring goals I've heard rumors that spring goals may become an artifact in the next scum guide an actual physical thing you have to create and I'm a great believer in goals because they give an arc to your life a journey to your life closure that you can aim for I had closure I went for it I implemented it I couldn't afford that much money so I did it gradually over many months gradually building up to I got closure and that made me feel quite good about it some collection though I get the art buddy I agree with you we were like stamp collecting that's no end to that arm I think that's upon with some types of collecting I think collecting works far more it's a fine set would you not collect the Panini stickers because there was an end to it would it annoy you if you didn't get the whole set would you carry on it wouldn't annoy you I never got the whole set but you didn't know I think that was designed didn't it so you'd have to send off for the last few but you were on Facebook parents saying oh we're looking for these four stickers for this book my wife added it up the amount of money you'd have to spend I think it's like £400 to buy and that's assuming you've got all the stickers for every pack without swaps well I remember my brother back in the 90s when Beano and Dandy had Panini things and I would like collect a few and my brother who was like 10 years older than me would send me to the shop with three or four pounds and that would buy an entire box of stickers and I'll take it home and you put them in his book so I was like astounded someone buy an entire box of stickers that's what you've got to do see that for me I'm not saying it's cheating but that that doesn't scratch that wouldn't scratch my edge because to me I like the idea that I've got a couple of packs every week so I think I would I would actually run it at a time because I would be going at too slow a pace but also surely if you buy a pack of 20 you lose interest pleasure there's no closure, it's just like grind I worry with some agile implementations they're grind there's no art in them so much work in progress in the Panini album but when you finish a team oh it feels good or you get all the foils all the foil stickers to the book oh that feels good all different ways of looking at closure you're right, just in terms of transformation taking it back to an agile context here is that running training courses running the course training everyone in the scrum keep training no one's seeing any journey with that no one's seeing the narrative of the company changing not building a team, just opening the packets nice metaphor what about you, we haven't come to you yet we're running out of time personal goals or wish list for next year I'm hoping that I don't start up another crazy project you still got to finish team mastery you've got a project hiatus but most of my work is done I've got a book for you, your fourth book for everyone I've worried this is my fourth book I didn't count co-authoring fifth book, space mastery so mastering the ability not to write a book a blank book learning how to take time for yourself how to give yourself space time taking a bit of time off next year do you feel you've pushed yourself hard this year so what's your next book on I don't know there's a winner quiz show how's not to win a quiz show can't be good at that bit I haven't fell out of love with writing I kind of feel took a lot out of me that's what you wanted to write some people have got one book in them it was a subject I was particularly passionate about and I've done that and I've enjoyed the process of doing it and I don't know what about you I wrote a book, did I remember where is it I gave Jeff a copy and he never gave me feedback wouldn't you have read it I don't know I would like to but it's finding the compelling because you've got so many stories and so much but it's apopery isn't it the reason why I never published it was I felt it was a semi-random collection of ideas more than something cohesive yeah did you publish the book collection of essays and thoughts and things maybe yeah the other ideas were good I think when I wrote it I thought these ideas were a bit controversial turns out they weren't controversial they were quite good which is nice now but at the time I wasn't that person to put that out there I didn't have much evidence for it didn't have the courage there's courage is taking the risk but also there's an aspect of jumping off a cliff yes that shows you have courage it also shows you're stupid because there's a big old drop at the bottom I've just known you for quite a long time imagine that process would be quite cathartic for you you quite like to get your thoughts down I enjoyed writing the book at the time I enjoyed that it was very good but what I just need to do is come back with that compelling thing I want like an art, a vision the Panini album not the stickers and it's just finding that really I could use Scrum Mastery too you could rip it off that would be one of my major things I would do the wonderful nitrogen scale because I think you could potentially because of your story telling nature you could write a work of fiction a business novel I think you'd enjoy that as well there we are I think I you'll see the reason why I didn't want to say it on public, on pubcast I'm pretty sure I've got a novel in me I quite enjoy telling a story writing a story maybe that will be my next one I'll say on the pubcast I will write a novel have you started writing one? you've got some ideas behind something science fiction I think you'd enjoy that I think you'd actually be quite good at it but that's something for me to look forward to that's the first I want to do something on Agile put something there down on paper but just find the time and the effort and it's all coming together I did quite a lot of essays online on LinkedIn if you remember last year I did like 15,000 words something ridiculous like that there's a lot of words out there just doing something with that and getting that into her I'm feeling my way gradually into ideas and a shape which require experiments so anytime I do a conference I think I move it on a notch move my ideas on a notch okay this is where they're going, it's quite interesting so it's all coming it's good, we best wrap this up for now so what we might do, no promises but we might try and add a few more bits of colour pubcast material later on as the day unfolds there's a lot of organised fun for us he's organised at all we will, you will it's timetabled very heavily there's very little like we've got to get these stories out we're very grateful to Jeff for organising today we're going to keep you updated on what we're up to and you might hear from us a bit later on alright cheers for now oh there you go I hope you enjoyed that last episode of the year we certainly had a good time and if you want to see a little bit more about what happened that evening including the presents that we all got for one another then my last plug will be head on over to patreon.com slash the agile pubcast where you can see an extra video we wish you all a very merry Christmas and we will be back again in the new year cheers everybody