A Poor Performer?

Mark Levison has an interesting post in response to a Scrum Development discussion about “bad apples” on a team.Before applying the label, look for reasons the person might not be performing. There are lots of reasons for a temporary dip in performance....

Working Hard or Hardly Working

George Dinwiddie is considering a discussion about velocity as a performance measure and how to tell whether people are working hard that started on the scrumdevelopment yahoo list.Here’s the original question, posted by Graeme Matthew. The unknown in all of...

What’s a Manager to Do?

When the team self-organizes, the manager needs to step back, but not too far back; she needs to step in, but not to quickly.My article on the manager’s role in self-organizing teams is on the cover of Better Software Magazine and available on-line here. (link...

Magic Chemistry of Teams

George Dinwiddie has posted his notes from one of my AYE 2008 sessions, Magic Chemistry of Teams.During the session, I asked people to draw a time line that represented their experiences working on teams, then, working in small groups, identify the factors that were...