I recently gave a talk at Desert Code Camp titled “Executable User Documentation: Mapping User Stories to Cucumber Features“.  Well, it wasn’t just me.  I co-presented with Jared McFarland, but lets pretend I did it by myself so I get all the credit, okay?  Here’s something that surprised me: I didn’t feel nervous at all.  I didn’t feel nervous when I recently spoke at the Rails user group meeting about Juggernaut either.  I’ve spoke to groups before, but I’ve always felt nervous, or overly emotional or awkward in some way.  But now suddenly, “Zap!”, gone.  All gone.  Where’d it go?  I figured it out and I am here to share the secret with you:

Facilitate a Retrospective

Every week, (actually, I skipped the last two weeks because I’ve been over stressed (I have felt like a blind person trying to land a 747, and yes, you are now in a nested parenthentical), but let’s just pretend that I never miss retrospectives so that I get all the credit, okay?) Every week, we gather together as a team and try to figure out what we can improve upon and I try to facilitate through some introspection to a small room of a lot of developers who aren’t always interested in the finer points of commitment driven planning.  That’s a hard crowd to play to, let me tell you.  It makes me nervous to the point of sweat - and stink, and yes, I plan on bringing deodorant to retrospectives in the future . . .

Awkward.

So, at the worst, my co-workers want to get back to work, are annoyed at the interruption, feel like it is just a “bitch-fest”, don’t feel like we follow up enough and on and on.  It doesn’t always go this way, of course, but 10 really smart people in a room that could be billing for the time, like i said, it can be a tough crowd.

Compared to what I have to do every Friday at retrospectives, talking about Cucumber at a developers conference is as simple as using Apple’s Time Machine to get the dock back after moving it out of the Core Services folder just to see what would happen.

Just Sayin.

Tags: Public Speaking, Retrospectives