Justin York – Simdesk

“Del's leadership was instrumental in bringing agile methodologies to our development team. While transitioning to scrum, I often consulted with Del about how to handle things in the scrum framework. Once our team was fully running on scrum, I felt that we were at least twice as productive as we had been in the past.”

Matt Willson – Pervasive Software

“As Delmar's manager for over a year, I was very impressed with the simplicity of his designs, the quality of his software, and the tenacity he brought to problem solving, especially customer issues. Delmar provided strong leadership for the developers who worked under his tutelage.”

Steve Mook – Pervasive Software and Simdesk

"Del is experienced,enthusiastic and tenacious - an excellent team lead with expertise in UI design and development and Scrum project management. He is willing to learn new technologies, challenge assumptions, take risks, and be accountable for results. His skill and leadership would benefit any team that seeks to improve its ability to deliver value to customers and to the business."

My Agile Experience

What was really exciting was to see the Scrum methodology adopted company wide at Simdesk. Because of the success of our team I was able to train and mentor other team leads, managers and corporate executives to use Scrum. This lead to increased productivity and better communication among the teams, support, product managers and upper management. Goals are well defined and consistently meet.

Tags

adoption architecture books build change collaboration deploy design integratoin learning management release safety team Team Member team safety training user stories

My Reading List

Coaching Agile Teams: A Companion for ScrumMasters, Agile Coaches, and Project Managers in Transition (Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Cohn)) by Lyssa Adkins (Paperback - June 14, 2010)

Available on safaribooksonline.com as a Rough Cut.

Succeeding with Agile: Software Development Using Scrum [Book] by Mike Cohn - Addison Wesley

The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick) by Seth Godin

Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work and in Life One Conversation at a Time by Susan Scott

Collaboration Explained: Facilitation Skills for Software Project Leaders - Paperback (Jan. 16, 2006) by Jean Tabaka

Agile Product Management with Scrum: Creating Products that Customers Love (Addison-Wesley Signature Series) Roman Pichler

Practices of an Agile Developer by Venkat Subramaniam and Andy Hunt - Pragmatic Book Shelf

Apr
11

Team Formation

By Delmar Hager

I have been helping a new team form over the last 2 months. As the ScrumMaster I have been really interested to see the team become a high performing team. Team dynamics are really hard to understand especially in a new team. Here are some principles I believe are really important to help the team become a performing team.

All Teams Go Through the Storming Phase

Why do team members try to fool themselves that they do not need to go through a storming phase? I see this in many teams with which I have worked with. They will tell you that they get along and they have passed the storming phase. I know it is not so. We have not experienced “Fierce Conversions“, conversations that are courages, authentic an clear. We definitely need these during the storming phase. And without them we will never really get out of the storming phase.

Confidentiality

It is so important that what is discussed in the team and how we come to our decision is held in strictest confidence. Because I have worked with teams in multiple environments at work and outside of work I learn to live by this principle. But that is not so in a new team that is going through the storming phase. During this phase difficult issues are faced and not all team members agree with the team decision but will abide with the decision to see if can work. Team members must not express their displeasure to management for a decision that team has made.  Team players keep it within the team.

As a coach I have challenges ahead of me to help the team. They are great people and make a great team. Helping them requires that I understand my own style of coaching better that I can lead them to understand these principles.

Categories : Adoption, Agile