In response to a tweet on the benefits of stable teams, someone asked whether I’m against changing teams (aka re-teaming) in response to business needs. I am not. I’m against churn. There are plenty of good reasons to re-form teams to meet organizational...
I visited an organization making an Agile transformation. It looked like the teams were making great progress. But the managers asked, “How can we tell they are working hard?” Team members seemed happy with their cross-functional teams. They solved...
Improvement requires three factors: Information. People need information about the context and how their work fits into the big picture. They need information from the work so they can self-correct. Without this information, systematic improvement is impossible. A...
Hiring new people for a team should always be a joint decision that involves team members. After all, who has more at stake than the people who will work with the new person day in and day out? Consider what happened when a well-intentioned manager decided to hire...
I have seen situations where both senior level and middle level management saw the value in Agile. Moving towards a team-based organization and iterative incremental delivery brings benefits. In my experience, it’s a little more common for middle managers to...
Last week, I posted a mind map that shows the benefits of the team effect. But what about the costs of a team that is not doing well? A team that isn’t working well doesn’t have a neutral effect. A struggling team costs the people and the organization in...
A while back, I posted a little mind map about business costs of a struggling team. But what about the benefits of the team effect? What does a business gain when teams thrive?
Do you need a ScrumMaster, Coach, Agile Coach? No matter the name, the intention behind the role is to help teams learn new skills, continuously improve, and make the transition to a new way of working. Some people say it’s a technical role, others claim that...
Agile methods depend on effective cross-functional teams. We’ve heard many Agile success stories…at the team level. But what happens when a product can’t be delivered by one team? What do you do when the “team” that’s needed to...
Many companies have policies that govern the selection and hiring process for new employees. Not a bad thing. But I’ve noticed that in many of the companies I visit–especially the big ones–the guidelines put far less rigor around hiring people for...
A managers role regarding effective teams starts long before the work actually begins. It starts with team designing and forming the team. The 60-30-10 Principle J. Richard Hackman, studied teams for decades. One of his most significant findings is that 60% of the...
If you are hiring a ScrumMaster or Agile Coach, Resume keyword searches for won’t find the right person for your teams, and your organization. Start thinking about the work, the role, the team, and the job. Here’s a job analysis of the role for a client I...
Many of the companies I work with want the benefit of the team effect in software development. The managers in these companies recognize the enormous benefits teams provide to the company–creativity, engagement, learning. They want to support team-based work....
A participant in one of my workshops of my workshops declared that in every team there is pecking order….and every one knows what the order is from one to n. Peck, peck, peck. Since this is the case, he reasoned, it follows that ranking people in organizations...
A group of managers in organizations adopting agile methods pondered who should fill new agile roles. Why can’t the managers become ScrumMasters, they asked. In my experience, that’s a risky road. However, one manager was adamant. After all, the managers...
“A talented employee may join a company because of its charismatic leaders, its generous benefits, and its world class training programs, but how long that employee stays and how productive he is while there is determined by his relationship with his immediate...
How can managers support teams to truly support team responsibility? In the early days of Agile, some pundits (and developers) declared, “We don’t need no stinking managers.” They asserted that if teams were self-managed, management work was waste....
Every team needs leadership, even self-organizing teams. When I make this statement, some people assume I mean that every team needs a designated leader. I can’t blame them, most people are accustomed to thinking of leadership residing in a role or a charismatic...
Slides from a talk I gave on Double Loop Learning in Retrospectives: Double Loop Learning in Retrospectives View more presentations from Esther Derby And take a look at PROMOTING DOUBLE LOOP LEARNING IN RETROSPECTIVES.
Some pundits proclaim that leadership rests on charisma, the ability to create a vision, or “presence.” Teams do need a vision and a compelling goal. But do teams need one charismatic leader? No.Teams need leaders of a different sort. Teams need leaders...
