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

May
27

Command and Control

By Delmar Hager

I have just started reading Collaboration Explained: Facilitation Skills for Software Project Leadersby Jean Tabaka. Over the next several posts I will basing my comments on material I have read from this this book.

As you know, I am very interested in what is involved in creating a high performing team. Why do we not see more high performing teams in corporate America? I believe that the “command and control” management philosophy contributes to this.

Now if you ask most ScrumMasters if they use command and control and they will say no they do not. But is this really the case when they are working with teams?

Here are questions you should ask yourself about you interaction with the team:

  1. Are all decisions involving the team made by the team?
  2. Does the team feel they control their destiny?
  3. What are the factors that prevent the team from being empowered?

Review you own style of facilitating. Then ask the team to evaluate you style of facilitating. As with all Agile processes this constant inspection helps us to improve how we interact with the team.

Categories : Adoption, Agile, Uncategorized