What a great time and conversations at Lean Coffee!  Again, some old friends and new faces appeared.  Here’s what we discussed:

• How do you plan your sprints over the holidays (and associated vacations)?  Tis the season for holidays and vacations.  What do you do?  Many great ideas.  Overall, you can still keep a sprint going with holidays (and vacations), but this might be a time to consider more research-oriented work that helps explore innovation.  How can you set some innovation goals for the holidays and and how can you set up individuals for success in exploring innovation ideas if they are not taking vacation around the holidays?
• How do I keep a remote part-time team motivated?  Some of us still struggle with part-time team members and it makes it difficult to make iteration commitments every 2 weeks.  One of the most useful tools I’ve found is Christopher Avery’s Team Orientation approach.  If you can understand what motivates each individual (whether part-time or full-time), you can help them align the work to their motivation.  Also, we found there was more to this question as the “team” was a group of independent contractors who are trying to develop some new products while consulting with their regular clients.  One of the best tools I know to help focus such a group is the Business Model Canvas.
• What should Agile Orlando do in 2014?  Many fantastic ideas.  Stay tuned in the coming days as we share some of those ideas.