Best Of- you've listened to me ramble for over a year!

For those of you who follow this blog, I apologize for my recent calm. I've tried very hard to provide you value, and you've rewarded me with wonderful support, great conversations, and plenty of good feedback. But... in case you haven't heard, I do have a good reason. Before her arrival, I knew this might happen and tried to combat it with my pre-written Quote Series... but I underestimated how long it might take to regain normal life flow (this topic was raised in my last personal retrospective).

I've had the energy and sleep to continue absorbing from the community; but the only thing I've been able to contribute back is my agile focused Twitter stream. It has been over a year since I started blogging and I'm pleasantly surprised by the traffic and global coverage of my visitors. Until I can get back into the rhythm of things (hopefully in the next month), I wanted to leave this "Best of Agile Commentary" list in case you joined me on this journey mid-stream.

Top 10 blog posts in the last year based on your clicks (in reverse order)!

1. Participate in change, don't expect it to happen Agile is not just about managers changing
2. Cadence... I used a metaphor of cadence from the military to understand stand ups and feedback loops in agile
3. What is Shu Ha Ri? An overview of Shu Ha Ri… a very important learning principle
4. What is sprint planning about? Focus on the core intent behind sprint planning
5. Shorten your iteration... One of my first posts… shortening your iteration avoids mini-waterfall
6. Walking the board... We were one of the early adopters of the "walking the board" approach where we don't follow the "3 questions" in our stand up
7. Create a proper estimate scale... Popular how-to on creating a story point estimation scale
   
8. UX and Agile, how do they mix? Riding on my past usability experience, one of my first posts about User Experience within Agile
   
9. Snake on the wall! A great way to easily put your finger on waste and distraction with the team… every time this post gets quiet, it suddenly fires up with traffic again after a few weeks from a new source!
   
10. Post agile, one third of you will be gone... Most popular blog post ever about my first agile transition. It created controversy, was picked up by Kent Beck and flagged high on Reddit. Some even went so far as to say I sounded like a cult-member! You either get it, or you don't. When it happened to me, I was a convert, I'm now a pragmatist.
    

And here are three of my favorite notables that didn't make the traffic-based cut:

1. Puppy vs. Pitbull... One of my first posts about team dynamics and personalities
2. Before agile came along, life was easier for me... Reverse psychology at its best about the good old days
3. Bored in the standup? Raise your hand! How we combat tangents during our stand up

Thank you for your continued reading, challenges, and criticism!