In his book, iTeams – Putting the “I” Back Into Team, author William E. Perry demolishes the cliché - "There is no ‘I’ in team." As Perry explains, the phrase is nonsense because it is the individual differences in team members that make teams great. In this interview, Ben Linders explores with the author the motivations for writing the book as well as some of the key thoughts.
Tony Wong, a project management blackbelt, enumerates some practical points on individual procutivity. This article wonders how well these apply to software development and contrasts his list with that of other lists.
Rashina Hoda achieved her doctorate researching self-organizing Agile teams. She recently spoke to InfoQ about the work she's been doing and the results of her research. She discusses some of the factors that enable self-organization, looks at some of the risks and pitfalls that self-organizing teams face and provides some advice on how to create a culture that nurtures self-organization.
Scrum defines just three roles, Product Owner, Scrum Master, and Team - not Manager. Pete Deemer explores the consequences for Managers, how the managerial role might be redefined (including a sample job description), and appointing the manager as Scrum Master.
Very little in our education or experience properly prepares a ScrumMaster or project manager for the role of agile coach. This leaves most wondering, "What is my role in a self-organized team? How do I help the team yet stay hands-off?" This chapter, excerpted from the book Coaching Agile Teams, shows you how to activate the journey toward high performance in both provocative and practical ways.
Self-organization is a tricky thing. Agile coaches are challenged with how to motivate/persuade/trick their teams into self-organizing and doing things, without telling them what to do. This tutorial presents an approach utilizing leading-edge research and techniques from social complexity science and team dynamics to change the dynamics of a team with the aim of optimizing their work together.
In this presentation filmed during Agile 2007, Mike Cohn talks about the transitioning process towards an agile organization, why the process is inherently difficult, and what it takes to see self-organization emerging in a previously tightly controlled environment.
In this interview, Agile management expert Johanna Rothman talks about the process of managing in Agile environments, particularly for distributed teams. Rothman also helps to distinguish between self-directed, self-organized and self-managed teams. And she stresses the importance of clear communication amongst team members, as well as the ability for managers to learn new skills.
Scrum creator Jeff Sutherland guesses there are 120,000 Scrum teams holding standup meetings on any given working day. But how many are really doing Scrum? At QCon London 2007 he talked about "the Nokia test" which he likes to use to distinguish whether teams are doing Agile or only iterative process - or neither! He also revealed the connection between Scrum and the Mars robots.
Scrum, arguably the fastest-growing Agile methodology, is well described in the original Scrum books, which tend to be read once and put aside. Scrum is a framework with simple rules. This Scrum Checklist will help you to remember these simple rules in the heat of daily work and stress. It enable you to create an enjoyable and productive work environment with your Scrum-Team.
