I had a terrific time with Chris and Austin on the Mob Mentality Show: Modern Management with Johanna Rothman. Is “mobbing” is the right word for management collaboration? Maybe. I’m not sure. However, the reasons we mob—to get all the people we need to learn and think together—those reasons work as well in management decisions. […]
I know of a geographically dispersed team across three continents and many time zones collaborating on a product. They work in one-week iterations and have weekly virtual meetings to collaborate in real time. They never have standups because the logistics are impossible. They have handoffs instead. They retrospect at a month-long cadence. (I might like
One of my colleagues wants to standardize all his agile teams on one process. He happens to like iterations, so he wants everyone to use two-week iterations. He wants them to use Scrum rituals and ceremonies. I understand what he wants to accomplish: gaining the ability to look across the projects and see the same
As more of my clients transition to agile, many of them have a fascinating question: How do I assess who is doing what on my team? When I ask why they want to know, they say it’s all related to reviews, rewards, and general compensation. They are still discussing individual compensation, not team compensation. When
I’ve been talking with clients recently about their managers’ and HR’s transition to agile. I hear this common question: “How do we manage performance of the people on our agile teams?” Reframe “manage performance” to “career development.” People on agile teams don’t need a manager to manage their performance. If they are retrospecting at reasonable
I had a great conversation last week with someone taking a leadership course. (Not one of my courses. His instructor wouldn’t talk to him!! He’d seen one of my posts and emailed me. Of course I talked with him.) He was confused by the word “Handoff.” He thought it meant that people hadn’t done their
I just read Scott Berkun’s The Year Without Pants: WordPress.com and the Future of Work. For me, it was a mixed read. Yes, you can make a totally distributed team work. What you need to do: Make all of the work visible Keep everyone focused on one project at a time Keep all of the
By Lisamarie Babik, and Johanna Rothman – October 23, 2012 If you walk through a high-performing agile team space, you’ll hear a buzz about the product: “Do you see this?” “Bump that.” “Ah ha!” “Tell me more about what you want.” “But that is part of the acceptance criteria.” “We should do it this way.”
I’ve been working with several management teams who want me to train them or their project managers to take over the agile training. It’s not unreasonable from their perspective—it’s how they’ve transitioned to all the other process improvement approaches over the years. Except, none of the other process improvement approaches have been built on the
I’ve been working with teams and been a part of teams my entire work life. Not so much at university, but certainly when I started working professionally. I’ve been confused by what some people claim are self-organizing teams. To me, they don’t look particularly self-organizing. I read Brad Appleton’s excellent series of blog posts on