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 performing productivity quality release safety sprint 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

Aug
20

Safety of the Team (part 1)

By Delmar Hager

This issue of safety is being explorer by the Agile coaching group I participate in. How do we provide a safe environment for our teams? Here are some ideas on what it means to have a safe working environment.

  1. A team member as an individual
    Team members are not just resources to be used to create a product for the company. Each of them has goals and passions. Helping the individual to realize his or her goals and taping into their passion make for a much more resilient individual. When the team member is doing something they really want to do and are passionate about they will overcome the obstacle they encounter.
  2. The team encourages each other
    Every team member has insecurities and areas they feel they are insufficient in. When these are manifested in a team the other members find way to encourage the other member through mentoring or helping them through difficult tasks. The goal is to have well rounded team members who excel at what they do.
  3. The team is protected from outside intruders
    There are intrusions on the team from management, product sponsors, other teams and other projects. Management has expectations and many time the teams method of meeting those expectations does not match the way management expects a project to be done. In this scenario it is important to over communicate with management. Have them understand that the team is progressing toward the goals management has set. This is difficult for a ScrumMaster steeped in Agile technology. We many times have to provide more documentation then we feel is necessary.
Categories : Agile