Tag: effectiveness

Rayyan Karim: Measuring Success in Agile, Why Story Points Don’t Always Tell the Full Agile Story

In this episode, Rayyan discusses two main categories for measuring performance in organizations: hard and fast business results and effectiveness. The first indicator for effectiveness is happy people who can be themselves, which Rayyan refers to as “Shiny Happy People.” Rayyan suggests that instead of focusing on story points, teams should focus on cycle and lead time and examine the variation in the system to determine how to remove it. He recommends conducting team surveys or squad health checks over time and paying attention to how people talk at retrospectives. Additionally, Rayyan suggests setting up one-on-one meetings with team members to get a better understanding of how they are showing up for retrospectives.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: The Squad Health Check retro benefits

In this episode, Rayyan discusses his favorite agile retrospective format, which is the Squad Health Check. He mentions that while the Sailboat retro is the most commonly used, he prefers the Squad Health Check as it quickly gets everyone on the same page and can be used in larger teams and teams of teams. Rayyan notes that the Health Check is short, focused, and highly adaptable, and it gives a good understanding of where the teams are. He also gives tips to adapt it to the program or team you are working with and to remove the “neutral” option.

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About Rayyan Karim

Rayyan is and Agile Coach & Trainer and the founder of Design Your Future with presence in the UK and the UAE. Rayyan is known for supporting leading executives of FTSE100 and NASDAQ corporations to create transformational results quickly.

You can link with Rayyan Karim on LinkedIn and connect with Rayyan Karim on Twitter.

Top 5 of 2015 BONUS: Bob Marshall on Empathy, NVC and the key skill for Scrum Masters

In this very special episode we talk with Bob Marshall, aka Flowchainsensei on twitter. We discuss some of his outstanding work:
The Marshall model, where Bob Marshall explores the different types of mindsets and their influence on the effectiveness of organizations.

Simply put, the Model explains how the effectiveness of any knowledge-work organisation is a direct function of the kind of mindset shared collectively by all the folks working in the organisation – managers, executives and employees, all. – Bob Marshall

The Anti-matter principle, where Bob explores a single, overarching principle that could guide the actions of those that take Agile seriously.

“Attend to folks’ needs.” — Anti-matter principle

Empathy as a key skill for Scrum Masters

We also discuss one of the key skills for Scrum Masters: Empathy. How to develop it, and what resources are available for those that want to grow their ability to experience empathy.
We mention resources such as videos by Marshall Rosenberg and Carl Rogers.

The Story of the Anti-matter principle

If you are familiar with the anti-matter principle, you have probably wondered where the idea came from. Bob explains the organizational setting that led him to develop what he later called the anti-matter principle. In this section we also discuss the Theory X and Theory Y contrasting theories of management, developed by Douglas McGregor in his famous book: The Human Side of the Enterprise.

A special attention is given in our conversation to the impact of Extrinsic Motivators on the degrading of organizational performance over time. A must listen, if you ask me 🙂

Enjoy this first special episode of the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast.

About Bob Marshall

Bob Marshall has been at the forefront of Digital Business for more than twenty years.
Throughout, he has consistently inspired people to improve their effectiveness – along with the effectiveness of their teams and organisations. He spent three years as founder and CEO of Familiar, Europe’s UK’s first one hundred percent Agile software house and digital consultancy start-up, serving major Digital Business clients in Telecoms, Finance, Travel, Media, and eBusiness.
He has for the past fifteen years headed Falling Blossoms – a Digital Business Consultancy advising organisations how best to go about applying Digital to achieving their business objectives.

He is also the co-founder of the Rightshifting movement, and the creator of the Marshall Model (Dreyfus for the organisation), as well as Prod•gnosis, Emotioneering and FlowChain; the enterprise-wide approach to developing software-intensive products and services.

He has also pioneered the application of psychology and psychotherapy techniques to Digital Business and Digital Business Transformation.

You can find Bob Marshall on Twitter, and link with Bob Marshall on Linkedin.
You can read his regular postings on the Flowchainsensei blog.

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Download a detailed How-To to help measure success for your team
Motivate your team with the right metrics, and the right way to visualize and track them. Marcus presents a detailed How-To document based on his experience at The Bungsu Hospital
Download a detailed How-To to help measure success for your team
Read about Visualization and TRANSFORM The way your team works
A moving story of how work at the Bungsu Hospital was transformed by a simple tool that you can use to help your team.
Read about Visualization and TRANSFORM The way your team works