Katherine Was in Hot Water at Hot Pot

I set the alarm for a little bit later and slept in a bit since I wanted to recover from the weekend. I think it was the most sleep I’ve had since I got here. After breakfast, the A Team piled over to Han Te for the start of our third week.

Carosa was out this morning, so Matthias and I spent quite a bit of time with Jat talking about the Kanban board, handling crisies when they come up (including backups), and how to enable the team to continue progressing with our practices after we leave. Jat and I will also plan to get together at some point to work through his EIP demo at some point as well.

For lunch, we decided to try out the local hot pot restaurant that was on the way to the normal restaurant. We ordered then started to get sauces. Katherine and Zoey first, then Matthias, Maria, and I went. Then Katherine and Zoey came back. And then things got crazy for a few minutes. Maria then realized we left all our things at the table so I went back to the table. However, when Katherine came back, she realized her cell phone was missing. She tried calling it and it was off… Not a good sign. She tried to look at the security video, but apparently our table was in a blind spot.

We were thinking it had to be an inside job. Eventually we got FindMyiPhone to work, only to find out that her phone was really just back at the office. We all breathed a sigh of relief and then could enjoy what turned out to be a really nice lunch for under the equivalent of $5.

In the afternoon, Matthias and I got back together with Jat to talk about the importance of iterations and having a fixed scope so that you can actually deliver something.

Matthias was then on again to go through some more of the Agile training. Today we went through topics on Scrum and the Kanban board. We all also did an exercise about self-directed teams — the tennis ball game. It was a lot of fun to watch, and then Katherine, Maria, and I ended up doing it too. It was definitely interesting to see how the teams were able to figure things out on their own, improve their estimations, and improve their production.

In the evening, some people were going to a night market, but in the end, I decided to go for a run instead to get my steps in. I also wanted to talk to Korey about what she might like before going and picking something up there. It was a beautiful evening for a run. The air was really clear, so you could see the entire skyline (and a really nice reflection on the water from the boardwalk) — the main picture above.