When I was eighteen, and in my first year at Carleton University in Ottawa, I liked to party. A lot. Like most students entering post-secondary school, I was away from home for the first time and went a little, shall we say, bonkers? Uncontrollable? Uncaring? All descriptions apply, and repercussions were the furthest thing from my mind — until they weren’t.

Epically, I failed every single class in my Art & Architectural History degree except one, a second-year History class where I received a B+. At least the achievement signified some level of hope.

When I received the final marks…

Regardless if you’ve worked on an agile team for one day or 20+ years, clients have needs to be fulfilled. And requests generally come to the agile team via a feature request which has a specific value. Once the value is determined upfront, it is measured post-production to determine if the proposal became a reality.

Simple? Not always. What happens if the client doesn’t provide enough upfront feature details? Or the product delivery team doesn't ask the right questions. As many of you are reading this post can attest — all sorts of downstream issues arise:

• Misunderstood requirements = rework.
• …

Get your artistic juices flowing. Find a piece of plain A4 paper and follow the easy instructions. You do not have to follow the order of the bullets.

• Draw your family — no matter what your situation looks like.
• When drawing, include your parents, siblings, and you!
• Sketch a house.
• Don’t forget to add the glorious sun.
• And conclude by creating a tree.

Here is my example:

In order to adapt to the circumstances of our lives, we creatively adjust in the best way that we can manage with the resources we have at the time — ameaningfulmidlife.com

My Story

My parents divorced when I was twelve. During the process, my Dad broke, at times weeping uncontrollably, and struggled to control his emotions. I felt confused and decided to wear an adult mask of emotional repression, signaling that everything is OK when all was not well beneath the surface. Someone had to take care of business, and I naturally assumed the position.

At the time, my decision was an…

Ashley and I didn’t know each other. We met in passing in October 2020 when she dropped by to see the condo I was vacating with the hopes of becoming the next tenant. I recall her slender frame and light brown hair, a slight nervousness, and anticipation. She presented herself as kind. Our brief encounter ended, and I later discovered from my landlord, Ashley would be the next resident at a unit on 55 Stewart Street, Toronto. The site of the former Thompson Hotel under renovation to become a part of the exclusive 1Hotel chain.

The Challenge To Solve For

Help! My team recently moved from working in a traditional software development life cycle (SDLC) to the beginning stages of Kanban. Despite positive advances, we’re still operating our User Acceptance Testing in a waterfall manner. How can we integrate UAT earlier in our process?

What Does The Agile Manifesto Say?

The first principle of the Agile Manifesto, while written 20 years ago, still applies today:

Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.

Simply put, the end-user is who you need to satisfy and engage with as early as possible in the delivery process, especially in customer-centric organizations.

Repercussions Of Not Integrating UAT Early And Often

…

If you’re getting bored of the same-old morning video conference calls and unsure how to add a little Joie de Vivre — look no further.

Brain Tease Benefits

Regular brain teasers and puzzles that utilize your team’s cognitive skills help improve everyone’s ability to learn, problem-solve, and test memory using specific neural networks.

Brain games may also aid memory by building up a cognitive reserve. Cognitive reserve is like a rainy-day savings account in your brain that you can store away and use when you need quick thinking. According to Dr. Brody-Magid at Harvard Health:

Your reserve may even help provide resilience against…

All emotions are valid. And every individual on the planet has a right to feel their feelings, no matter where the sensations lie on the spectrum between hate and joy.

What happens if we can’t control our emotions and create unhealthy behaviors to manage how we feel? In this article, we explore emotional regulation in a Toronto based case study followed by a response from Gestalt Psychotherapy and examine a concept called introjections ending with techniques to overcome personal challenges in the Tech space.

Case Study

In mid-career, I worked for a Toronto based media consulting company and pulled long hours, at…