Tag: team dynamics

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Featured Product Owner

Even Happier Product Owners

The Role of a Product Owner

[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”3.22″][et_pb_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 _builder_version=”3.27.4″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat”] Many years ago I suggested a noble cause for Scrum Masters…to create an amazing workplace and to have happy product owners. Pretty simple right? While measuring the happiness of others will always be subjective, the premise of this noble cause […]

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Culture Featured Incredible Teams

The Togetherness of Agile

people-in-a-park

[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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Scrum Master

An Important But Uncooperative Team Member

The following question was posted to the Ask Anything page. Feel free to ask your own questions here or contribute your thoughts to this question in the comments section below. From: A New Scrum Master Location: England Subject: Important but uncooperative team member Hello. My company is new to scrum and agile, and I am […]

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Scrum Master

8 Rituals of Amazing Scrum Masters

Having worked with many Scrum Masters, I am beginning to recognize patterns and behaviors of some of the best. It appears to me that the Scrum Masters having the most impact with their teams and throughout the organization establish strong rituals for themselves. These rituals provide the momentum to overcome the challenges and busyness of […]

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Scrum Master

The Heart Rate Monitor

My desk where I’m currently coaching is surrounded by three Agile teams. Periodically, I’ll just watch and listen to each of them and before long, the heartbeat of each team begins to reveal itself. Under “normal” conditions the teams will have a nice steady pulse. They have planned their work effectively, they are having fun, […]

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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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In Practice

The Gravitational Pull of an Enterprise Architecture Vision

As organizations create new products, grow their workforce and add new teams, keeping them in sync becomes difficult. This becomes even more challenging as the demands of a fast-paced marketplace require greater agility and flexibility. Throw in the growing complexity of technical solutions, service-oriented architectures and dependencies between teams to deliver pieces of a larger […]

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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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Leadership Most Shared

A Managers Guide to Attending Agile Team Events

I have always been a proponent of keeping most Agile events and rituals open and transparent. If anyone in the organization would like to stop by a daily stand-up session or experience a sprint review, the more the merrier… …with one exception. If you are a manager with direct reports on an Agile team (you […]