Johannes Lindman: Failing Safely, Tips for Successfully Implementing Extreme Programming in a Team Environment

In this podcast episode, Johannes shares his experience with extreme programming and test-driven development. Johannes recounts his experience working with a team where he assumed a lot of things about their needs and desires. He quickly realized that his eagerness to bring his own value to the table was getting in the way of the team’s success. Johannes learned that it is essential to listen and watch the team and to ensure that they are asking for help rather than assuming that he knew what they needed. He advises that it is essential to slow down, be humble, and not be pushy.

Johannes also shares several tips for helping teams to fail safely, turning up the volume on transparency, and showing small failures. He notes that it is important to reflect on what is happening and to determine if the possible failure is catastrophic or not. If it is not catastrophic, then it is best to let it go and be patient for the right moment.

The inspiring story of how a failing hospital turned things around with Agile and Lean

Recovering from failure, or difficult moments is a critical skill for Scrum Masters. Not only because of us, but also because the teams, and stakeholders we work with will also face these moments! We need inspiring stories to help them, and ourselves! The Bungsu Story, is an inspiring story by Marcus Hammarberg which shows how a Coach can help organizations recover even from the most disastrous situations! Learn how Marcus helped The Bungsu, a hospital in Indonesia, recover from near-bankruptcy, twice! Using Lean and Agile methods to rebuild an organization and a team! An inspiring story you need to know about! Buy the book on Amazon: The Bungsu Story – How Lean and Kanban Saved a Small Hospital in Indonesia. Twice. and Can Help You Reshape Work in Your Company.

About Johannes Lindman

Despite many years of experience Johannes still learns new things every day in order to stay relevant. This aligns with his curiosity on life and people.

You can link with Johannes Lindman on LinkedIn.

Dennis Mansell talks how a semi destructive team is even worse than a complete destructive team

Dennis discusses that most of the times when we start to work as a team, we simply put people together expecting that everything will work. We even forget to ask if people do actually want to work together. In this episode he explains how that can go wrong.

About Dennis Mansell

Dennis did not start his working life as a developer, but as a sailing yacht skipper and owner of a sailing school and he still trains yacht-racing teams. He always supplemented his sailing job with application maintenance, web development and project management. He has since settled down: based in Amsterdam with his wife and son. Now he works as a full-time Scrum Master and Agile Coach for companies ranging from start-ups to the Dutch governmental institutions. His linkedin and twitter: @dennmans.

Dmytro Orlyk talks how bringing more people to a project usually results in a disaster

Dmytro explains that one of the big reasons for team failures appears when a management put extra people into an ongoing project that is late. He mentions this approach was proven many years ago to not be the right approach, yet many teams suffer from this mistake.

About Dmytro Orlyk

Dmytro have an overall 4 years of experience in PM. His latest project has been shown to the Google company. He is an Agile Expert with a strong knowledge of Scrum, Kanban and XP. Few of the engineers that inspire me are Martin Fowler and Chris MacConnell. He can be found in linkedin.

Pedro Torres talks how Ego is one of the common problems that can cause teams to self destroy

Ego is one of the common problems that can cause teams to self destroy. If team dynamics are not well handled it´s quite easy to see brilliant developers becoming “prima-donas”; they feel they are like a god on the earth. At the end, it does not matter who does the work, what matters is a team´s outcome. When there are such “divas” on the team they feel that everyone should be thankful for having them on the team.

About Pedro Gustavo Torres

Pedro Gustavo Torres is an Agile Coach @ SONAE, in Porto, Portugal.
He started his agile quest in 2010. He’s a seasoned Scrum Master, Agile Coach and Trainer. He also has experience acting as a Scrum Product Owner. He’s passionate about scrum, agile and all the practices that can help teams deliver early value to their customers. He is also quite techie and a gadgets fan. You can find him in linkedin. He writes his learning’s on his blog. His twitter: @_pedro_torres

Gil Zilberfeld advises: as a Scrum Master check your Ego at the door

Working as a Scrum Master requires a healthy dose of humility, and this is what Gil learned in this story. This lead to him learning about the importance of gaining trust, and also how to do it! He shares with us some practices on how to gain trust in teams that have a hard time trusting.

About Gil Zilberfeld

For over 20 years, Gil has developed, tested, managed and designed software products. He’s gone through failures and successes, in different types of projects and companies.
He has trained and coached developers how to write tests for their untestable code. He has worked with testers on complex applications and with very tight deadlines. He’s helped release products that fit customer needs, by testing the waters, and getting their feedback integrated. He has implemented agile, kanban and lean principles and adapted them to fit teams better.
You can link up with Gil Zilberfeld on LinkedIn, or find Gil Zilberfeld on Twitter.
Gil is writing a book on Unit Testing. Check it out.

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This handy Coach Your PO cheat-sheet includes questions to help you define the problem, and links to handy, easy techniques to help you coach your Product Owner
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This simple checklist and calendar handout, with a coaching article will help you define the minimum enagement your PO must have with the team
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This simple checklist and calendar handout, with a coaching article will help you define the minimum enagement your PO must have with the team
Internal Conference
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Internal Conference
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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