People and team member management for Agile project management and Scrum software development teams.
Training and certifications are an important part of the Scrum and Agile movements. In this article, Zuzana “Zuzi” Šochová shares some tips to improve training session. While they are more focused on the Certified Scrum Trainers (CST) needs because of her experience, they are useful for to any type of (Agile) training.
Holacracy defines itself as “a customizable self-management practice for organizations”. This idea is not very far from the self-organization approach of Scrum, but it proposes a different framework to deal with issues. In her article “Decentralising Leadership: Holacracy in Practice”, Sandy Mamoli shared the story of implementing Holacracy in an Agile organization.
If the title of this book is a clear reference to the current trendy approach in software development, readers should be aware the that most important part is maybe in the subtitle “Systems Thinking and Organizational Legacy”. Not that Agile minds will be disappointed by reading it, but this book discusses the more important fact that from time to time software developers tries to adopt a new set of best practices and most of the time they fail.
An important part of agile leadership is improving communication between people. M. Spayd and M. Hamman are talking about shifting from directive – “managing for results” leadership style to catalysing – “designing environments that create results” style. Lyssa Adkins recommends avoiding asking ”Why don’t you…?” questions when coaching, as being too offensive.
One of the key benefit for organizations that adopt an Agile project management framework like Scrum should be the shortened value delivery cycle. Providing a quicker feedback, this should lead to continuous improvement the development process. This is however not always the case. In this article, Ronit Eliav discusses six issues that can cause static Agile.
Agile software development teams often use the notion of “velocity” to measure their ability at delivering value to the customer. In his blog post, Norberto Herz discusses the concept of “predictability” as a measure of the team’s health. His blog post starts with a series of interesting questions: can the company sell “predictability” to its customers? Is predictability a new application feature? Is predictability A team quality or a team goal?
Who says you need “stable” Scrum teams in order to build a successful software company? While the addition or removal of one person from a team means you have a “new team”, there is a myth out there about “stable” teams. When your Agile team compositions change it doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong – it could be the secret to your success. Different companies have thrived through reteaming – the act of moving people around teams in different ways. This talk goes over the what, why and how of reteaming and shares stories from different companies who are living this reality.