Category: Incredible Teams

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The Togetherness of Agile

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[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ admin_label=”section” _builder_version=”3.22″][et_pb_row admin_label=”row” _builder_version=”3.25″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”3.25″ custom_padding=”|||” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text” _builder_version=”3.27.4″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat”]Sometimes, all you need to do is listen. Stop what you are doing for a couple of minutes and just listen. Can you hear it? If you are striving to create a culture of agility, the sound you’re […]

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Incredible Teams Organizational Change Scrum Master

Is “Protecting the Team” the Right Thing?

If you were to ask a Scrum Master what they do a common response is “we protect the team.” From the context of protecting the team from themselves or an aggressive product owner as Mike Cohn describes, I would agree. Protecting the team from complacency or overwork is a worthy endeavor. For many Scrum Masters, protecting […]

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Incredible Teams Scrum Master

Becoming a Radiating Team

An agile team was recently asked by a manager to prepare and distribute a weekly status report. What is your reaction when you read this? For some, this may seem quite normal. For others, you may need more context behind the request before reacting. If your reaction is anything like mine, you’re probably thinking something […]

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Incredible Teams

The Deliberate Practice of Being Agile

In Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers, he discusses the need to deliberately practice for 10,000 hours before becoming an expert in a chosen endeavor. Ten. Thousand. Hours. If all you did for the next year was practice something non-stop, without sleep, you would be about 90% of the way there. There is however, a raging debate […]

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Incredible Teams Most Shared Scrum Master Team Building

The Perfect Agile Team

In my soon to be released book, “Becoming a Catalyst, Scrum Master Edition,” I tell the story of a newly formed team working with Agile for the first time. This team had just experienced their first sprint together and, to put it gently, it didn’t go well. When the time came for the team to […]

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Incredible Teams Team Building

So, You’ve Just Joined a Struggling Team

It will happen to most of us eventually. We are asked (told) to join a team having difficulties and turn things around. The team may be challenged with missed deadlines, dysfunctional relationships and low morale, being over budget or behind schedule, or a lack of discipline and organization – and you are going to be […]

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Incredible Teams Testing and Quality

The Tester and Conversations About Quality

In two previous posts, When Developers and Testers Collide and Defending Your Position, we discussed the challenge Agile teams may have when shifting testing activities from a period of time after development is finished to become a collaborative activity occurring as close to the point of development as possible while the team is working in […]

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Culture Incredible Teams

Becoming a “Move Together” Team

One of the pleasures of what I do is having a front row seat for the adventure people experience as they form and grow into incredible teams. While working with these teams, I am often reminded of a technique groups of mountain climbers will often use. When navigating glacier routes prone to crevices, climbers will […]

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Incredible Teams Product Owner Transformational Leadership

Delivering the Vision (Part 3 of the Agile Leadership Engagement Series)

A compelling vision is in place, agile teams have been established, hopefully filled with amazing and fully dedicated agile teammates. Using an Agile methodology, the teams begin to build product roadmaps and backlogs geared towards delivering on the organizational vision and meeting customer needs. All sounds perfect…or is it? Often missing in a transformation to […]

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Incredible Teams Team Building

Encountering Team Turbulence

In 2007, I had the opportunity to join a team of 12 to climb Aconcagua, a 23,000 foot mountain in the Andes of South America. While returning from setting up a high camp at 18,000 feet, our team encountered a bit of “turbulence.” A fast approaching storm hit the group and in an instant we […]

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Incredible Teams Team Building

Conflicts and Collisions in an Agile Environment

Have you ever been on a team when everything was “perfect” and conflict was avoided? Decisions were delayed and unique perspectives rarely brought forth. Perhaps you have been on a team with the other extreme – constant debates and collisions between team members were the norm. Conflict or disagreement within a team is inevitable but […]

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Incredible Teams

Why the Rituals of Agile Matter

One of the common complaints I hear from teams moving to an Agile approach are the number of meetings they must now attend. Planning sessions, daily stand-ups, sprint reviews, retrospectives, and product backlog grooming are now populating their calendar and they wonder when they will actually have time to work. When statements like this come […]