Accelerating Positive Culture and Engagement with Agile Coach Training

Written in 2001 the Agile Manifesto states that in-person interactions are the most effective way to facilitate communication. As technologies and connectivity have evolved, so has the ability for teams to work in different ways. Successful organizations are embracing these new ways of working and reaping tremendous benefits as a result.

Since 2001 it’s become more and more common for team members to be geographically dispersed to the extent that throughout 2020 most teams have been working remote. We have found that not all remote teams perform at the same level; in addition it’s clear there are teams that are working even better remote while others are struggling to cope. With the recent pandemic, it has forced a new way of thinking and working making it critical that agile teams not only survive but thrive during this workplace transition.

Check out this webinar to learn about the practices, tools, and values at agile coach certification online that have allowed many agile teams to thrive while working remotely and the steps that your organization can take if you have teams or individuals who are struggling.

We’ll discuss:

• What great can look like

• Signs that a team or team member may be struggling

• The role tools play in helping organizations navigate and stay productive

• Steps your organization can take to boost engagement and build positive culture

Speakers

Eric Naiburg - VP of Marketing and Operations, Scrum.org

Eric is co-author of UML for Database Design and UML for Mere Mortals. Eric is responsible for all aspects of marketing, support, outbound communications, Professional Scrum Trainer programs, partners and operations for Scrum.org. Eric was program director at IBM and Rational Software where he was originally hired in 1999 by original Scrum Team member John Scumniotales for who he worked for several years and worked closely with another original Scrum Team member Jeff McKenna sitting in the next desk. At IBM and Rational Eric was responsible for application lifecycle management (ALM), DevOps, Data Governance and Agile solutions.

Danny Presten - Chief Methodologist, Digital.ai

Danny has several transformation tours of duty behind him in which he's worked in agile organizations, consulted with senior leaders and led training initiatives. He is an entrepreneurial self starter with over 20 years experience successfully addressing complex delivery challenges in a variety of industries including web development, e-commerce, healthcare, non profit, supply chain, and legal.

Derek Holt - General Manager, Agile & DevOps, Digital.ai

As General Manager of Agile and DevOps at Digital.ai, Derek brings nearly 20 years of experience leading large enterprise and startup technology companies with a consistent focus on the digital transformation. Derek joined Digital.ai after serving as President & COO of K4Connect, a venture backed IoT software company focused on bringing digital solutions to empower older adults and individuals living with disabilities. He received a BS in Computer Engineering from The Pennsylvania State University and an MBA from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, where he was named a Fuqua Scholar.

Resource: https://www.scrum.org/resources/accelerating-positive-culture-and-engagement-distributed-teams 

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Scrum Certification Online: Contract Your Team!

In this blog series I would like to address topics that relate to professional team coaching as well as Professional Scrum. In the course of becoming a Professional Team Coach, I noticed a lot of interesting topics for Scrum Masters who want to improve their coaching stance. I'd like to note that models and terms I am using and discuss are not mine. They come from training and coaching sessions belonging to Vroemen from Teamchange. The connection I make to Scrum is my interpretation.

Contracting and containment

The word contract often triggers some raised eyebrows in the Scrum community. It may feel like something strict that prevents people from collaborating, referencing back to the agile manifesto for software development. The fact that this manifesto motivated us to collaborate with our customers instead of negotiating contracts, was a sign that collaboration and contracting were out of balance. However, there is a new need for a contract: a (psychological) contract between the Scrum Master and the Scrum Team (including the Development Team).

By this I don't mean a big contract upfront with the signature of the whole Scrum Team. There are more ways to contract a team.

A couple of examples:

- You have a certain objective in mind for this Retrospective. At the beginning of the session you're transparant about this and check if the Scrum Team is ready and willing to achieve this objective together;

- You're an hour into a refinement session and you read the room. There is tension in the room, discussions are hardened. You suggest a short break and you do a check-in before continuing;

- You start with a new assignment as a Scrum Master. You're assigned to the marketing team. The marketing team never asked for Scrum, let alone a Scrum Master. So this is the first thing you bring up when you meet the team. Together you set up some rules of engagement during professional agile leadership certification, so you can be a servant leader to the team. Or maybe you don't take on the assignment at all?

- You meet with a new team and you create a set of team rules that everybody can agree on.

I'm sure now that I've given some examples, you can think of a couple examples of you're own?

So this contracting doesn't happen just once. It happens over-and-over-again.

Creating a contract like this will create containment and safety for the team to freely express themselves because of the containment of this contract.

Contract the team, not (just) the manager

You will often encounter managers or customers you work with to take on some improvements regarding a specific Scrum Team. Things have not been going that smooth and you're the perfect match to solve this teams' problems. Before you agree to take on the assignment, take a moment to talk to the team first to assess their view on the situation. If this team does not want to be coached, chances are you will be having a very hard time doing so. Find out what the needs of this team are. What do they think/feel? What's the relationship between them and management? All of these things affect the ability of you being able to help this team grow or not. 

I was once the Scrum Master of two teams that started out with Scrum. I was hired by the CEO to help these teams become better Scrum Teams. Or actually, the CEO thought I would help the team perform better on their targets. Management started putting more and more pressure on the teams and they wanted me to do the same. This led to the situation that I had to end my contract with this company. The CEO did not want Scrum, he wanted to get results as fast as possible by pressuring the teams. No sustainable pace what so ever. My contract with the CEO was in conflict with the contract I had (not) made with the Scrum Teams.

Contact and contract

Contact and contract are not that different. Making contact with the people in your team is like making a psychological contract. Sometimes this is done by a subtle check-in, sometimes more clearly by asking for permission to proceed with the agenda for a session. Or having a conversion on the expectations of your role as a Scrum Master in a team. If you treat a contract in this way, you and your Scrum Team will most definitely benefit.

Resource: https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/scrum-master-contract-your-team 

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How Tools Condition Our Way Of Working In Certified Scrum Master Training?

This week twitter was full of comments about the latest update from JIRA, the dictator of the way we work, the world's most famous Ticket Management tool. I put Ticket Management because it is what it is. JIRA is super vitamin with plugins but what it does really well is ticket management.

Returning to the topic, I put here the update, sorry because I only found it in English and I prefer to show the speech from the original source.

This is the most impressive thing I have seen in time. We put decimals in the story points. We have gone crazy! Various things here. The first is that in good professional scrum master training the story points are a complementary practice.

From what you see and what I have seen in many organizations that I have helped, JIRA makes you a slave to the way you work. Epics, Story Points, Versions, JIRA is assuming that all teams in the world use story points. Big mistake! I'd like to ask the audience a question. How many people who are going to read this newsletter are comfortable with the story points?

It's more. How many people have had to explain to their hierarchical superior who is in the orbit of the development team that a Story Point is? And finally, how many people in the audience are slaves to these JIRA setups? Unfortunately, JIRA imposes our way of working.

I have been endless times trying to answer these questions. And I have always had to make a break, like the day from Messi to Boateng, to have a kind of board for converting hours to story points…. until I discovered Kanban with Scrum.

Kanban with Scrum gave me what I needed. Go back to talking about days instead of story points. In Kanban, we planted 4 metrics; we planted Work in Progress, Throughput, Work Item Age and Cycle Time.

With these 4 metrics you will not need anything else. The most important thing is that you are going to think again in days and not in points.

I made a video explaining how to ditch the story points and move on to more realistic metrics for team day. I am attaching the video below in case you want to see it. I recommend it to end your "nightmare" of story points. Flow control is basic and strategic for any team. There, conversations change and better decisions are made.

Bottlenecks are better observed from the flow analysis and also with the 4 previous metrics we can better manage future predictability. You do not believe me? I recommend you watch the video that I am attaching to you in this newsletter. Make a game of Twig and you will see how these metrics help you.

As professional advice, I also tell you that your life will be better with JIRA faraway since it is to capture the dictatorship imposed for our way of working in the 21st century.

Resource: https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/como-las-herramientas-nos-condicionan-nuestra-manera-de-trabajar 

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