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
15

Team vs Team

By Delmar Hager

I have been thinking about teams and teamwork. Every company I have worked for will say that they have teams of developers working on a project. But what type of team are they working on?

Growing up I participated in teams sports. As I reflect on my high school years there were two types of teams I played on. I participated on both a track team and a football team. Let’s look at these teams.

Track Team

On a track team each team member has their own specialty and tried to excel at it. We as individuals tried to finish high in our event so that we could get points for the team. The team that had the most points in the end won the meet. When I ran the two mile run it was up to my performance in how I finished. During training I would get suggestions from others on technique but individual performance was key to creating team success. No real collaboration was need when we participated in the meet. The only place you saw collaboration was in the relay races.

Football team

I also played football in high school. This is a team sport where collaboration was critical. We had a play book to memorize. Each team member had to know their position on the team and usually several other positions in the event someone got hurt. We huddled together, heard the play and then we executed. Practice during the week focused on the execution of the plays in order to prepare for our game on Friday night. We worked on perfecting our “product” so it we could have a good “demonstration” for our “customers”.

In my experience most teams in a large organization are like a track team. The teams are made up of highly skilled developers with very little collaboration between the developers.

A Scrum team is more like a football team. We have a play book we must execute against. Our understanding of the play book and our role on the team is important for success. Also, being able to learn other roles and assist where ever needed is important for a team.

What type of team are you on?

Categories : Agile, Scrum