13. Your Assignment
Create a presentation that addresses the top 3
teamwork issues that you face in your organization
and ways to overcome them.
Steps
1. Create a list of the teamwork issues that you
face today
2. Agree with your group on the top 3 Issues
3. Create a short presentation that illustrates
strategies to deal with these issues
15. Check-In –Why?
Individuals commit to being present in a
meeting
Great team diagnostic tool
Understand the emotional context of your
team’s words and actions
Connection is the basis of great teams
16. Check-In
Speaker says “I feel [one or more of MAD,
SAD, GLAD, AFRAID].” Speaker may provide
a brief explanation. Or if others have already
checked in, the speaker may say “I pass.”
Speaker says “I’m in.”
Listeners respond, “Welcome.”
cbde Gino Marckx - Native Child and Family Services of Toronto 14th Annual Community Pow Wow
18. Check-In
Speaker says “I feel [one or more of MAD,
SAD, GLAD, AFRAID].” Speaker may provide
a brief explanation. Or if others have already
checked in, the speaker may say “I pass.”
Speaker says “I’m in.”
Listeners respond, “Welcome.”
cbde Gino Marckx - Native Child and Family Services of Toronto 14th Annual Community Pow Wow
19. Decider –Why?
Everyone’s voice matters
Commitment comes with 100% buy in from
the team
Eliminate unproductive discussion time
20. Decider
Proposer says “I propose [concise,
actionable behavior].”
Proposer says “1-2-3.”
Vote using either Yes (thumbs up), No
(thumbs down), or Support-it (flat hand)
For Outliers (No Votes)
“What will it take to get you in?”
cb Sarah - http://www.flickr.com/photos/sarahreido/3120877348
22. Decider
Proposer says “I propose [concise,
actionable behavior].”
Proposer says “1-2-3.”
Vote using either Yes (thumbs up), No
(thumbs down), or Support-it (flat hand)
For Outliers (No Votes)
“What will it take to get you in?”
cb Sarah - http://www.flickr.com/photos/sarahreido/3120877348
23. Perfection Game –Why?
Use it whenever you desire to improve
something you’ve created
A feedback mechanism based only on
positivity
Actionable items provide value to whoever
asks for feedback
24. Perfection Game
Rate on a scale of 1 to 10, based on how much
value you can add.
“What I like about it...” List the qualities you
liked
“To make it perfect...” Offer the actionable
improvements for it to be rated a 10
cba Nick McPhee - http://www.flickr.com/photos/nics_events/2350462798
25. STEP 3.
CREATE A SHORT
PRESENTATION THAT
ILLUSTRATES STRATEGIES TO
DEAL WITH THESE ISSUES
26. Perfection Game
Rate on a scale of 1 to 10, based on how much
value you can add.
“What I like about it...” List the qualities you
liked
“To make it perfect...” Offer the actionable
improvements for it to be rated a 10
cba Nick McPhee - http://www.flickr.com/photos/nics_events/2350462798
Ask the audience to show hands if they’ve been on a great team, a team that thrives, that can get anything done!Then ask if they’ve been on a crappy one…
Ask them to explain what the differences are, what they observed in those different teams.We have seen the following on great teams:People have funThey respect one another and sometimes socialize outside of workThere is no egoEveryone is heard, opinions are not dismissedPeople are not afraid to get into conflict and resolve itPeople keep each other accountablePeople step upPeople trust one another and aren’t afraid to ask for helpThey can get anything done, build great productsTeam is loud ;)We have seen on not so great teams:Blaming cultureSilo thinkingLow accountability‘doing my time’ mentality
Software is all about shipping intellectual property, about putting some intellectual property in a box. So what’s important here is intellect. Where does that come from? It comes from the team members, and the challenge is to get that intellect from your team to put in a box.The thing is that it doesn’t come from 1 person alone, team intellect is greater than the intellect of the individuals in the team. So the question becomes, how can we get the intelligence from all the individual team members and aggregate that into an even better intellect?
We strongly believe that team = product. That basically means that, when you have a strong team, you will also have a strong product. This is very similar to Conway’s law:Conway's Law is an adage named after computer programmer Melvin Conway, who introduced the idea in 1968:...organizations which design systems ... are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations.[1]So we can even take it further: we believe that the communication structures within your team, will be reflected in your products. So if you have a team that communicates well, and all necessary information is known to anyone, and it’s easy for everyone to get the information they need to do the job, their products will reflect this.If however, the team doesn’t communicate well, and there is a lot of handoffs, the product will reflect that too.
So how does all of this relate to agile? Why am I here at this conference to present this?
Well, first of all, it really reflects the first value in the agile manifesto: Individuals and interactions over processes and tools.But there is more. This is not only valuable because 17 people decided that this needed to go in the agile manifesto, the practices themselves almost rely on the team to be great, on the team dynamics to be effective and efficient. In most cases, implementing the practices on a team that doesn’t really gel will only give you some of the benefits, but definitely not the benefits that you are promised and probably expect.If you want more background on that, please feel free to talk to me after the session, I’m only leaving tomorrow.
So it’s all about communication, communication makes your team gel, makes your team a great team. So if you can improve the communication in your team, you basically improve how the team works together and build a better foundation for the agile practices to work and give you the full benefits.You heard Neil’s keynote this morning: We’re not that thrilled about communication! But don’t worry, this will not be painful, uncomfortable at most.
To improve communication, it’s important to understand what is impeding good communication. When communicating, as the sender, you send a signal to the receiver. But there is always noise on the channel. Noise is the waste in your communication and comes from physical things like distance, environment, name it. But it also comes from other things like drama.The signal to noise ratio is the amount of the message that is transferred in relation to the amount of noise. The more noise, the worse the signal to response ratio is.To improve the communication, we will try to reduce the noise, the waste in your communication.
Took the knowledge from computer language and put communication patterns in protocol form, easy for everyone to use, even programmers, so people who don’t like communication all that much.There is a
Talk about pass, everybody can pass at any time. Learning happens in a safe environment, so it’s important for everybody to feel safe. It’s ok to leave now or at any time during the session.
Create teams of about 4 to 7 people and do a check in. Preferably stay around your tables.