What would you ask an Agile coach if you met one?

What would you ask an Agile coach if you met one?

Tuesday, Sep 18, 2018, 5:30 PM

K Town Tavern
320 North Peters Road Knoxville, TN

3 Members Attending

Have you faced challenges working in a software development environment and wondered how other teams and organizations deal with similar situations? Have you and your team often debated the impact of communication, team dynamics, and organizational context on your day-to-day work? Did you ever wish you could discuss these and similar topics with so…

Check out this Meetup →

Let’s Meetup and discuss techniques and strategies for Agile team building II

You do NOT need to have made part I for this to be relevant to you! 🙂 We gathered so many insights that we decided to break them down and create action item/ solutions THIS session.
The insights are listed below. Please review and think of which ones are best for brainstorming action items. I’ll have them all up again and an opportunity to add to it and then we’ll dot vote and the 2-3 that get the most votes we’ll discuss. Here are the insights that are up for discussion;

Not Working

• Team fears stakeholders reaction at Sprint review

• Lack of Product Owners

• Project Management too much work in progress

• Every thing is CAP-EX No OP-EX

• Everyone owns quality

• Overcoming “Scrumerfall”

• Communication goes dead, people don’t like to talk about problems

• Some individuals may have burn out as evidenced by low attendance at meeting = lost motivation

• Project was not profitable last year therefore long term sustainability in question

• Project budgeting and scheduling

• Speed of administrative steps/ processes

• Trying to keep waterfall project’stage gate’ structure with Agile project (check out https://www.stage-gate.com/resources_stage-gate_agile.php)

• Managing resources and priorities

• Executive Stakeholders Mindsets (not creative, outside the box, already has solution in their head)

• No business or customer requirement

Kinda Working

• Trust from management on team’s expertise to come up with best solutions

• Cross team retrospective sessions (e.g., after a major release /project)

• Too much bad tech debt, starting to pay some off

• Dev ops/ Build automation

• Team learning not to follow PO but to collaborate

• Implementation of Agile practices and principles

• We have a great team meeting with new ideas but then everything stays the same

• Weekly status meeting

RecruitWise is graciously providing pizza and beverages at 6:30. Feel free to bring your own drink if you don’t want soda.

Let’s Meet up and learn about how CMMI can help in evaluating agile performance

Jeff Dalton, President of Broadsword (www.broadswordsolutions.com) will be sharing on the topic of ” Finally! A model for evaluating agile performance: The Agile Performance Holarchy.”

Jeff is Broadsword’s President, Certified Lead Appraiser and author of “agileCMMI,” Broadsword’s leading methodology for incremental and iterative performance improvement. He is  principle author of the CMMI Institute’s “Guide to Scrum and CMMI: Improving Agile Performance with CMMI” and is a sought after keynote speaker and author whose career spans over two decades in the technology industry. Jeff is a jazz bassist who builds experimental airplanes in Michigan.

We will be meeting at Saw Works but this time it will be a Thursday, and there will be a food truck,  Chef Box parked outside for your dining pleasure. We will do our usual eat and hang out from 6:30 – 7 and Jeff will begin at 7. This will be a fantastic opportunity for us to learn from a true leader and visionary in Agile!

Also Saw Works will be open so this is an experiment to see how this works with the potential for others to be there.

As always let me know if you have any questions and I hope many of you can make it out for this great learning opportunity!

Let’s Meetup and talk how to handle challenging personality types

Based on survey results THE most popular topic is how to work with challenging personality types in a team setting. So that is what we will discuss for February’s Meetup!

Please email me at agileinitiatives@gmail.com if there are any personality types in particular that you want to learn how to handle better. Feel free to throw some out at the last minute or during the Meetup as well, AND bring your ideas:)

I will be sharing some common ones, some games and exercises to help deal better, and some other resources as well.
This will be interactive for those that want to participate, but you don’t have to 😉

  • We will have some hang out, eat some pizza, the bar is open, and get to know each other better time from 6:30 – 7.
  • Workshop will be from 7-8

The goal is for everyone to have fun while learning some practical try tomorrow how to tips and ideas to better handle some of the most challenging personality types on your team.

As always, please connect if you have any questions and thanks again!

Help Agile Knoxville BE Agile – Survey says!

Let’s not just Do agile, let’s BE agile!
Transparency is the stem that everything comes out of.
Adaptation and Inspection are the other two foundation principles.

scrum-flower

So let’s practice inspection and adaption with Agile Knoxville Meetup and help me make it better or at least get a few more people to come! 😉

Just takes a few moments of your time
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/HV8R56L

Thanks!

Survey says….

See the results yourself below! Some initial action items I’m taking are:

  1. I’ll continue to try and find a place in West Knoxville – Cedar Bluff area mid-week and experiment with trying to start earlier as well especially if more say they want to. If anyone knows of a good place, let me know!
  2. This month’s retro will be about how to work with challenging personality types in a team setting. Please start thinking of what you’d like to learn how to handle better.
  3. I’ll be sending out reminders through Meetup, LinkedIn, AgileKnoxville.com, and AgileInitiatives.com, and Twitter and Facebook. I also post links and helpful articles and videos through all of these throughout the month. Plus, if anyone wants me to add your email to a reminder please email agileinitiatives@gmail.com.
  4. I’m going to incorporate more opportunities for hands on learning as well.
  5. I’ll continue to do all of the other topics as well and if anyone has anything at any time let me know – no one had any other suggestions, so we are doing the things I see the most often.

Thanks to everyone who took the time to reply – I sure do appreciate it!