Topic: Project Manage

Building a High Performance Agile Team: Assume You Will Be a One Hit Wonder

Michael Walkden, Tuesday, August 25, 2009 @ 9:34 am

One thing about agile teams is that they constantly strive to get better. In my experience an Agile team takes 2-4 iterations to work through the forming stage. By iteration 10 or so the team is past forming and storming and is well into norming. At this stage the team is often moving fast enough or better than expected for the business’ needs. Now the team faces a dilemma: How to become a high performance team and why.

If you don’t keep improving and innovating your competitors will.  However, there is another reason to keep improving that is often missed.  The current success might be temporary or an anomaly.

Don’t fall into the trap of a one hit wonder.

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Software Development

We don’t have time for all of these meetings!

Michael Walkden, Monday, July 6, 2009 @ 10:03 pm

The majority of people who develop software utilizing agile practices find that they spend much less time in meetings than they did before they discovered Agile thinking. However, time and time again teams that I have coached hear about Scrums (stand-ups) and half-day iteration planning meetings quickly exclaim, “We don’t have time for all of those meetings. What’s wrong with our weekly status meeting?” Frankly, a lot.

This meeting phobia, in my experience, stems from the fact that people aren’t accustomed to using communication as a tool in order to solve problems, build good architecture, and complete work. Secondly, they likely scarred by meetings that meander and are longer than they are useful.
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Software Development