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Joseph Pelrine was present when XP took its first steps, was Europe's first Certified Scrum Trainer, and today is still breaking new ground. In this 2007 InfoQ interview, Joseph talked about Network Analysis and how Social Complexity Science informs his work with teams; the usefulness of the Dilbert archetype; & a speed-dating technique to help teams get started (creating software, of course).
Too often leaders, pressed for time, throw the easiest question at a team. But a moment's reflection, followed by a wise open-ended question can generate new possibilities when a team is stuck. This centuries-old educational technique, sometimes called "Powerful Questions," is a great tool for all team members, to transform "stuck" situations into learning opportunities.
Are family celebrations a challenge? You get together to catch up and swap stories, and invariably something gets "taken the wrong way." It's not restricted to families is it? So it's not surprising that the Satir Communication Model jumped the fence from family therapy to team building! J.B. Rainsberger uses an amusing Christmas-at-Walmart anecdote to illustrate its use.
Many software project management and architecture approaches tend to parcel out work on a project in a way to create hierarchical layers. This helps simplify both developers’ work and management. However, the underlying information shielding among layers can potentially create a gap between developers and the software they are building, if their tasks are totally taken out of functional context.
The Agile “self organising team” paradigm demands new skills of team members – including the people skills for which they may once have depended upon their Project Managers. Far from being redundant, management can now play an important role in helping teams learn new ways to communicate and collaborate. This article proposes some strategies for imparting new skills and suggests some resources.
Management consultant Johanna Rothman helps her clients manage risk: be it risk in a project's people, risk in how the people are managed, or the risk in the projects themselves. In this interview she talked about strategies for risk reduction, useful for teams in all stages of agility, contained in her new book "Manage It! Your Guide to Modern Pragmatic Project Management."
In this InfoQ interview, author and coach Linda Rising reflected on scientific research suggesting that we may be hardwired to work in small, collaborative teams. She also explained what led up to her popular Agile2006 talk "Are Agilists the Bonobos of the Software World?" which focused on their "make love not war" social rituals. The apes' rituals, that is.
At NFJS Venkat Subramaniam, author with Andy Hunt of "Practices of an Agile Developer," shared his pragmatic approach to some of the important technical and non-technical factors contributing to project success, including: coding, developer attitude, debugging, mentoring and feedback.
Here is a story about Agile's use in a governmental organisation: at the 2006 APLN Leadership Summit Mark Salamango and John Cunningham looked at the problems and opportunities of introducing Agile in Army environments. True Agile practices cannot be 'commanded' or 'directed’ but frequent delivery offers Agile leaders a "soft" kind of power that is, in fact, very effective.
