teams that self-destruct Archives - Page 22 of 58

Wouter Gheysen: How to help teams improve, even after an Agile transformation

When we work in a company that is in, or has just gone through an Agile transformation, we often see that external coaches leave and slowly the good behaviors fade away. The pressure of delivery takes over, and the teams start skipping the good things that had helped them before, like the retrospectives. In this episode, we discuss what Scrum Masters can do to help teams stick to the good practices they’ve learned and how the collaboration with the PO is so critical in keeping the process going, and the team improving.

Featured Book of the Week: Coaching Agile Teams, by Lyssa Adkins

In Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins, Wouter found instpiurational and practical tops that he wanted to try in his work. It helped him understand the importance of coaching and gave him methods and tools to deal with conflict in the team.

How can Angela (the Agile Coach) quickly build healthy relationships with the teams she’s supposed to help? What were the steps she followed to help the Breeze App team fight off the competition? Find out how Angela helped Naomi and the team go from “behind” to being ahead of Intuition Bank, by focusing on the people! Download the first 4 chapters of the BOOK for FREE while it is in Beta!

About Wouter Gheysen

Wouter is a creative generalist with a broad area of interest beyond agility, a focus on people, and working with teams. He is a coach, guide and life long learner with a keen interest in facilitation, design thinking and systemic coaching.

You can link with Wouter Gheysen on LinkedIn and connect with Wouter Gheysen on Twitter.

Kamal Hans: How the Scrum Master can help teams work through their fear of taking risks

In this episode, we talk about a team that everyone felt was “high performing”. However, when Kamal joined he started to notice that something was off. The team members themselves had started to feel the “burden” of being seen as high performing. At the same time, Kamal was working with another team that was not considered to be high performing, and the contrast became evident: the “high performing” team had started to fear taking risks. This is when the job of the Scrum Master is so important: how to help teams work through their fear of taking risks!

Featured Book of the Week: Permission To Screw Up, by Kristen Hadeed

In Permission To Screw Up, by Kristen Hadeed we learn how to embrace failure as part of our journey, and turn those moments into learning points that help us get better at our work. The book also talks about the “people first” perspective and how to be OK with vulnerability and asking for help.

About Kamal Hans

Kamal Hans believes people are capable of incredible things if they have the support they need. He is at his best when he gets to connect people with each other and their vision, create a structure of support, build a system to achieve their goals to accomplish bigger things than themselves. As an Agile Coach and disciplined facilitator, he has worked with global organizations like Ericsson, and Bose to name a few.

You can link with Kamal Hans on LinkedIn and connect with Kamal Hans on Twitter

Nagesh Sharma: How to solve the “It’s not my job” anti-pattern in Scrum teams

This story starts with a team that wasn’t making their customer happy. As Nagesh and his colleagues looked at the situation, they found out that the team members did not feel accountable for the success of the whole team. The team members thought they were only responsible for delivering on the tasks they were assigned. In this episode, we explore how to address this “it’s not my job” syndrome that affects so many teams.

Featured Book of the Week: The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, by Patrick Lencioni

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, by Patrick Lencioni, helped Nagesh understand what are the things that need to be in place for a team to achieve high performance. Patrick Lencioni’s easy-to-read style is a great introduction to the model he builds in the story that helps us pay attention to the different interactions in the team, and be ready to analyze those in a way that helps the team succeed.

About Nagesh Sharma

Nagesh is a Professional Scrum Trainer by Scrum.org, He is Co-Founder & CEO of Flowsphere India. His mission drives him in increasing the joy and accomplishment people feel with agile ways of working. Nagesh is a Management 3.0 & collaboration Superpowers Facilitator. Trained more than 3000 people across the globe and an active speaker at various international conferences.

You can link with Nagesh Sharma on LinkedIn and connect with Nagesh Sharma on Twitter.

Rob Cooper: Helping a team in an impossible situation, a Scrum Master story

Rob joined this company at the tail end of this team’s story. As Rob entered the organization, he understood that the organization was still stuck in the “old world”. The company had fired many of the people who had developed the legacy app that the team was trying hard to maintain. On top of that, there were many things going wrong at this organization. What could Rob do to help this team? Listen in, to learn about what we, as Scrum Masters, can do in very difficult situations, when everything seems to be going wrong for the team.

In this segment, we refer to Reinventing Organizations: A Guide to Creating Organizations Inspired by the Next Stage of Human Consciousness by Laloux, and Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink.

Featured Book of the Week: Two surprising recommendations

Rob leaves us with two surprising recommendations that are worth an listen, to understand why he recommends these books. The first book, a book about the full complexity of human behavior and change aversion is The Bible. As Rob puts it: “it’s about human behavior”. The second recommendation, no less surprising is The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a book that helped Rob understand storytelling and how a story can crystalize the direction for a team.

About Rob Cooper

Rob is a Lead Agile Coach at Sainsbury’s, focusing on how the whole business uses Agility. Rob is an experienced Agile Coach at Enterprise, leadership, and team levels. In this career, he worked with change in organizations using a range of frameworks, including Scrum, Kanban, SAFe & LeSS approaches. He’s experienced in program & Project Management and has helped multiple teams transition from waterfall to Agile.

You can link with Rob Cooper on LinkedIn.

Susannah Chambers: Overcoming the waterfall reporting syndrome

In this project, the team was “forced” to report their work in a waterfall model: milestones, up-front plans, etc. This brought a series of problems that Susannah describes as “the joyless team”. This highlighted for her the important role Scrum Masters play in helping the team translate the information they have into a language that fits the needs of the stakeholders, but without going all the way back to waterfall plans and reports.

Featured Book of the Week: Chief Joy Officer: How Great Leaders Elevate Human Energy and Eliminate Fear, by Sheridan et al.

In Chief Joy Officer, Susannah found ideas and tools to help teams (and herself) find joy in the workplace. The book resonated with her, and offered ideas that fit the role of the Scrum Master very well. In the book, she also learned about using Joy as the metric that helps teams perform.

About Susannah Chambers

Susannah seeks joy and empowers teams to articulate how they add value. She is a Certified ScrumMaster and Agile Team Coach for 3 software development teams for a major retailer. Susannah is also a Personal Agility Recognized Ambassador for the Personal Agility Institute and she helps people identify what really matters.

You can link with Susannah Chambers on LinkedIn and connect with Susannah Chambers on Twitter.