Steve, a software development manager, thought John was a “10x” developer. He explained that John could: Coded faster than anyone else. Write and release full applications over a weekend. “Mind-meld” with the users. No one else in Steve’s group could do this. Was I willing to support and coach the other people in Steve’s group […]
When Mark Kilby and I wrote From Chaos to Successful Distributed Agile Teams, we suggested teams add a text backchannel. Even when the backchannel is asynchronous, the information in it increases the value of all the team’s communication. The backchannel helps everyone see all the information. That helps all the team’s communication. Some of my
My agile transformation clients struggle with this big question: How do we effectively reward managers? The more the organization wants or needs an agile transformation, the less the current reward structure works. How do you incent the managers? What makes sense for management compensation? Cindy, a director in a 500-person IT organization struggles with this—for
Your team says they use Scrum in two-week iterations. And, in order to “finish” everything inside the timebox, you don’t do any of these things: Refactor to simplify the code or the tests. Create automated tests. Use formal acceptance criteria on a story or for the iteration or the project. That means you have work
I encourage managers to delegate work. When managers insert themselves into the middle of the work, these problems occur: Managers slow the team down. Managers prevent people from learning. Managers don’t do their management work. That environment creates problems for everyone. Then I read Elisabeth Hendrickson’s original Delegation is Overrated. (She has removed the original
We’ve all heard of big organizations where the top management said, “No need to ever be back in the office. Work from home, as long as you want.” And, the Wall Street Journal has this article, Business Travel Won’t Be Taking Off Soon Amid Coronavirus (you might need to subscribe to see the article). (I
I’ve worked with several managers and team leaders over the past few weeks as everyone is suddenly remote. Every single person in a leadership position struggles with (agile) team transparency. These leaders think the team members work alone. (I think they’re correct.) The leaders worry that the team won’t finish the team’s work. (Correct again.)
Are you a manager accustomed to Management by Walking Around and Listening (MBWAL)? You can use MBWAL with collocated teams. MBWAL doesn’t work for distributed or dispersed teams. Remember, working remote is Not Business as Usual. (And won’t be for a while.) And, you might still have this question: “If no one’s in the office,
Three Tips for Coping when Change Might Make You Nuts (Support Others) We’re still living in substantial uncertainty and chaos. We don’t know when we might be able to return to work. The kids are home from school for the foreseeable future. Where I live, in Massachusetts, all “non-essential” businesses are closed. (I did not
Three Secrets to Building Your Influence, Part 3, Shared Interests If you want to change anything in your organization, you need to influence at least one other person to succeed. I wrote about showing your competence in Part 1. Part 2 was about building trust. Now, let’s talk about creating win-wins with shared interests. I bet you’ve met people who