Making Feedback More Effective

Patrick Kua recently wrote a Guide for Receiving Feedback. He mentions that one way to understand how to receive feedback is to understand how to give it.
Here are some suggestions for giving feedback that will help to anchor desirable behaviours and enable change in less desirable behaviours.
Give feedback in the second person
One purpose of feedback [...]

Do you have enough oil?

I was talking to someone who had had a project manager mention in a retrospective that he felt that the testing was slowing down the delivery. They wanted to stop “wasting time” on testing and refactoring.
When I heard this, I said “That’s a bit like going on a car journey and your passenger telling you [...]

Forming good habits requires discipline

A long time ago, I went on an advanced driving session. One of the things that my instructor taught me was a mnemonic for checks that you should do before every journey. The mnemonic was POWER[1][2], which stands for:
Petrol – (or Phuel for diesel cars) check that you have enough
Oil – Check the dipstick level
Water [...]