The Light on Maple Street — A Holiday Story About Small Acts That Become Everything

It started with one string of lights.

Maple Street was the kind of block where porches still had rocking chairs and everyone knew which mailboxes belonged to which dog. In late November, between the first frost and the rush of the season, the Wilsons put up a single strand of blue bulbs across their porch. They’d just lost a little money that month — a car repair, a missed shift — and the lights were the smallest, cheapest way to say, “We’re here. We’ll try.”

On Tuesday a neighbor named Rosa walked by with her kids and stopped. “Those lights make the whole block look cozy,” she said. She dropped a thermos of cocoa at the Wilsons’ door — a thank you for the lights, she said — and left a handwritten note that read: “For the nights when things feel dim.”

That note stayed on the porch through rain and the first snow. People started to notice it: the teenager who left a bag of dog food, the retired teacher who put a stack of winter scarves on the bench, the teenage boy who shoveled the Wilsons’ walkway without being asked. One house added a cheap wreath. Another strung a second strand of lights. Then one night, the whole block blinked on like a small constellation: a neighbor had borrowed lights from a friend, another had fixed the broken extension cord, and Maple Street was suddenly a warm ribbon of color seen from three houses away.

Word got out. A woman from across town — one of those people who kept a list of local good deeds — saw the photos on a neighborhood group and showed up with a box of food. The church two blocks over called around and quietly matched families who had extra with families who had less. A local small business owner left a stack of gift cards for people who might need them. None of it was loud. None of it was orchestrated. It was a thousand tiny nervous yeses — people doing the sort of small, awkward, neighborly thing that begins with “I don’t know if this helps, but….”

At the center of it were the Wilsons. Mr. Wilson had been quiet for weeks — the kind of quiet that didn’t get better with “how are yous.” He had been avoiding the mail, the phone, and, for a while, the very idea that the world still held space for him. The lights were small, but every night when he came home, he found someone had cleared his walkway or taped an encouraging note to his door. The pile of kindnesses wasn’t a single miracle; it was a slow, steady stitch that rewove the frayed edges of his life.

On the Saturday before Christmas, there was a knock on the Wilsons’ door at 6 a.m. It was cold. The teenager from next door stood there with a thermos and a grin. Behind him, whole families appeared — neighbors in boots, kids still in pajamas, people holding casseroles, scarves, and a hand-written flyer that said, simply: “Maple Street Holiday Potluck — Everyone Welcome.” They set up folding tables on the sidewalk and, because it is a holiday and because it was Maple Street, two dozen people who had never sat at the same table shared coffee and casseroles and stories. Someone had fixed the Wilsons' ancient radio. Someone else had printed out a photo album of the street’s year: broken steps mended, birthdays celebrated, small triumphs memorialized in Polaroids.

Mr. Wilson cried. Not a long, dramatic thing. A short, honest surprised sound, the kind you make when you realize you’ve been seen. He stood up and said, “I didn’t know you all would do this.” No speech, no grand reveal — just the quiet gratitude of a man who had been given back a sense of belonging.

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So, what does a Project Manager actually do?

Ah, the eternal question. What does a PM actually do?

Well, most people think it’s the easiest job in the world — after all, you just tell everyone else what to do, right?

Sure, if you also enjoy being the middle child in a family of stress-addicted workaholics with a taste for crises.

In the last decade or so, I’ve worked in everything from Fortune 500 companies (you know, those lovely corporate havens where everyone’s too busy pretending to be productive) to fast-moving startups (where the idea of “sleep” is a myth).

Every time I casually mention my job, I get the same baffled response: “So, what exactly do you do?”

Let’s break it down, because clearly, that’s the only way to get it across.

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Are You Protecting Your Team Against

the Right Thing? - Mike Cohn

A lot has been written and said about the responsibility of a Scrum Master to protect the team.
Examples of protecting the team typically involve running interference with well-meaning but overzealous product owners, stakeholders, and managers. Teams run into trouble all the time from people who want it all now or who keep adding more work in the middle or a sprint. Scrum Masters keep all that noise away so that the team can focus on delivery.
But if you are only focused on problems coming from squeaky wheels, you’re missing one of the biggest dangers out there: complacency.
Agile is about continually getting better. I don’t care how good a team is today; if they aren’t better a year from now, they’re not agile.
Complacency can creep in when a team sees some initial improvement from adopting an agile approach. Team members will notice how improved they are and think that’s enough.
But there’s almost always room for further improvement.
Some teams become complacent about their process and stop looking for ways to deliver more value each iteration. Still other teams become complacent in seeking out new engineering practices that could make the team even better.
Protect your team from complacency by setting high expectations and encouraging the team to set even higher expectations of their own performance.
Teams that refuse to settle for the status quo are teams that advance from good to great.

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