Mike Bowler

You’re likely on this page because you’ve seen me speak recently and you want more information on something I mentioned. If what you’re looking for isn’t on this page then reach out to me directly and I’ll be happy to help.

Contact me

Topics I speak on

Anxiety & Psychological Safety
Exploring the Anti-Anxiety Toolkit. All the tips for releasing anxiety, along with an older recording of me giving the session
Polyvagal Theory: Understanding safety An introduction to Polyvagal Theory, which I reference in the session.
→ My presentation on the Neuroscience of Psychological Safety
→ The SAFETY model in more depth
→ Google’s Project Aristotle where they identified psychological safety as being the single biggest contributing factor towards team effectiveness.
Polyvagal Theory: Understanding safety An introduction to Polyvagal Theory, which I reference in the session.
Clean language - A language pattern for deeper conversations
Introduction to clean language
→ The handout that I use when teaching this.
→ The power of words, a different look at how words direct attention.
How we think - Systems 1 & 2
Article describing systems 1 and 2
→ The questionnaire titled “Are you a fast decision maker?” that I use to introduce the topic.
Kanban: Simple, but not always obvious
Article describing the same ideas.
The Kanban Guide and my visual one-pager of the same, that I think is an easier starting point.
Motivation
→ The Self-Determination Theory motivation model
Not motivated to do anything, a look at lack of motivation
My people aren’t participating, a look at why people may not be stepping up.
Retrospectives
Retrospective magic Tips and tricks from neuroscience and psychology to make your retros better.
Moose on the Table Retro using LEGO Serious Play®
Six Thinking Hats Retro using DeBono’s Six Thinking Hats approach
Technical Practices in LEGO
Introduction and overview to the LEGO exercises
→ Exercise: Simplicity
→ Exercise: Test Driven Development
→ Exercise: Clean Code
→ Exercise: Technical Debt
→ Exercise: Continuous Integration
→ Exercise: Collaboration

Blogs - Where I write content

I also write about a lot of things that I don’t have presentations for. Check out my blogs:

Blog Topics
Unconscious Agile The intersection of unconscious behaviour and agile. Covers neuroscience, psychology, hypnosis and many other things.
Agile Technical Excellence A variety of technical topics from TDD to ensemble programming and more.
Improving Flow Primarily kanban focused content although it touches on anything you need in your process.

Tools

Tool Description
jirametrics Pulls data out of Jira and generates reports.
The reports that Jira natively provides are almost useless and this tool gives you actionable reports that you can use to guide your decisions.
HtmlUnit A “GUI-less browser” to help with testing.
Note that while I no longer support this, I was the original author. It’s used as the underlying “browser” by different Open Source tools like WebDriver, Arquillian Drone, Serenity BDD, WETATOR, jenkins-test-harness, Selenium Foundation, Spring Testing, JWebUnit, and JSFUnit
mob.sh Required collaboration tool for remote mobbing / ensemble work.
Not my work, but highly recommended.

Book recommendations

Lastly, people often ask for book recommendations