Assessing Team Improvement
I understand that managers who have invested effort and money in training teams in Agile methods may want to see how much those teams are improving. There are a handful of reasonable measures to look at to see whether the organization is improving over all (which I’ve written about here and here). You can apply some … Continue reading Assessing Team Improvement →
Agile and The Chasm
Someone posed the question: Has Agile Crossed the Chasm?, a reference to Moore’s work on marketing. Agile is no longer the prevue of pioneers and visionaries. Agile shows up in the popular business press. PMI is all over it. The big accounting/consulting firms are marketing agile. Clearly (at least the term) agile is reaching
The Elements of Improvement
Improvement requires three factors: Information. People need information about the context and how their work fits into the big picture. They need information from the work so they can self-correct. Without this information, systematic improvement is impossible. A desire to improve. Most people want to do their best and learn to do better–until that impulse
Self-Awareness Matters: Finding Your Filters
I remember sitting in a project meeting back when I worked for a Big Company. The project manager, Ted, announced the top three priorities. When I offered a different view point, Ted declared, “You’re wrong. We decided on these priorities yesterday.” He didn’t notice six out of eight people at the table shaking their heads
Alternatives to bureaucratic hierarchy
I don’t doubt that its possible to have an organization with out traditional managers. I’ve read about Semco and Morningstar Farms. I’ve talked to people who work at Gore. My husband works for a less well know firm that doesn’t have traditional managers. But those companies didn’t get there by happenstance. They got there by
What do middle managers do?
Last week, someone tweeted that the C-suite “gets agile,” but middle managers “resist” it. I also saw a tweet that the C-suite doesn’t get agile, but middle management does. I don’t doubt the observations of either of these tweeters. I have observed situations where both senior and middle managers saw the value in moving towards
Hiring is a Team Activity
In an earlier article, I said, “Hiring new people for a team should always be a joint decision that involves team members.” After all, who has more at stake than the people who will work with the new person day in and day out? Consider what happened when a well-intentioned manager decided to hire without
The Costs of a Struggling Team
Last week, I posted a mind map that shows the benefits of the team effect. But what about the costs of a team that is not doing well? A team that isn’t working well doesn’t have a neutral effect. A struggling team costs the people and the organization in engagement, quality, and money. © Esther
The Team Effect
A while back, I posted a little mind map about business costs of a struggling team. But what about the benefits of the team effect? What does a business gain when teams thrive? © Esther for esther derby associates, inc., 2012. | Permalink | 11 comments | Add to del.icio.us Post tags: agile, management, teams
But are they working hard?
Recently, I met with a group of managers who work in an organization moving towards agile methods. People seem to be happy working on cross-functional teams. They solve problems and work things out without management intervention. Best of all, they produce working software that the customers like. This makes the managers happy. But the managers