Ben Linders Consulting provides training, coaching, and consulting services related to agile practices, lean principles, quality improvement, and continuous development. Linders has experience training teams and organizations on agile methods and how to assess their agility through self-assessments. He advises managers on how to best support agile teams through servant leadership, trust, collaboration and focusing on outcomes rather than micromanagement. Linders offers workshops, assessments and game-based learning on agile principles and continuous improvement.

1. Ben Linders Consulting
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2. Ben Linders Consulting
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Professional profile:
 Trainer / Coach / Adviser / Author / Speaker
 Agile, Lean, Quality & Continuous improvement
 Freelance Editor for InfoQ.com

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Management
1. The process of dealing with or controlling things or people.
1.1 treated as singular or plural The people managing a company or
organization, regarded collectively.
1.2 The responsibility for and control of a company or organization.
1.3 Medicine Psychiatry The treatment or control of diseases or
disorders, or the care of patients who suffer them.
‘2. archaic Trickery; deceit.
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/management

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People working together to deliver value
to the users of products or services and stakeholders
Agile team
 Self-organized
 Deliver value
 Collaborative
 Learn and adjust

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Team working
Purpose
Safety Autonomy

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 unfair workload
 find it hard to work together
 depend too much on colleagues
 too much unclearness
 not getting credits you deserve
 work with people you dislike
 unclear roles or expectations
 unsure how what you contributes
 slowed down by colleagues
Why people hate working in teams

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Why people hate working together
 unfair workload
 find it hard to work together
 depend too much on colleagues
 too much unclearness
 not getting credits you deserve
 work with people you dislike
 unclear roles or expectations
 unsure how what you contributes
 slowed down by colleagues

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Collaboration

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Removing impediments to collaboration
What can managers do
 Attend to folk’s needs (Bob Marshall)
 Listen & provide support!
 Break down barriers
 Trust your teams
Teams can remove most impediments themselves!

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Why work in a team? – WIFM?
 Get more done together
 Getting credit
 Give and get help
 Learn from each other
 Camaraderie, belonging
 Increased work satisfaction
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

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Leadership Approaches and Styles
 Intent-based leadership
 Holacracy
 Sociocracy & Sociocracy 3.0
 Host leadership
 Servant leadership
 Management 3.0
 Invitation Leadership
 Elastic Leadership
 And many more… Agile leadership

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Agile leadership
Safe-to-fail
Reflect
Feedback
Coach people
Be Coached
Give trust

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Creating a teamwork culture
 Guide Self-organization
 Foster Modern Leadership
 Be an Example
Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash

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Organizing for teamwork
 Establish Stable Teams
 Embrace Diversity
 Short-cycled Improvement

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Benefits of Agile Teams
 No micromanagement
 Sustainable pace
 Better overview
 Improved communication
 Better results
Making Agile Work for You

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What if it doesn’t work?
• Take time to reflect
• Encourge people to speak up
• Develop team working skills
• Get team coaching
Agile Retrospectives

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Advice to managers
Dont call people resources!

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How to NOT manage agile teams
 Don't call people resources
 Don’t micromanage
 Don’t put pressure on teams
 Don’t be a jerk
When in doubt: don’t do it and see what happens

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Advice to managers
 Listen
 Value collaboration
 Trust people
 Give them what they need
 Reward team results
 Drive out fear

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One last thing
Managers are people too!
 Stop using the term “management”, “business”, “boss”, or “them”.
 Call them by their name, respect them as you want to be respected.
 Managers come to work to do their job the best they can, just like you.

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Thank you!Thank you!
Ben Linders
Trainer / Coach / Adviser / Author / Speaker
Agile, Lean, Quality & Continuous Improvement
info@BenLinders.cominfo@BenLinders.com
@BenLinders
www.linkedin.com/in/benlinderswww.linkedin.com/in/benlinders
www.facebook.com/BenLindersAdvieswww.facebook.com/BenLindersAdvies
www.benlinders.comwww.benlinders.com

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Background Information

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Assessing your Agility
Over 70 tools:
• Self-Assessment checklists
• Readyness checks
• Maturity assessments
• Agile health checks
• Measurements
• And much more!
Agile Self-Assessments

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Services for Agile Self-assessments
Services for assessing your agility and increase delivered value:
• In-house workshop for playing the Agile Self-assessment Game
• Public workshops to experience the Agile Self-assessment Game
• Agile assessment for your team, department, or organization
• Facilitation for playing the game at your event (conference, meetup,
hackathon, game lab, etc)
• Tailoring the Agile Self-assessment Game to your specific needs
• Licenses for playing the game
• …
Contact: benlinders@gmail.com +31 6 2901 3863

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Continuous Improvement
 Become aware of importance of continuous
improvement,
 Explore how it’s engrained in agile software
development
 Suggestions that you can use in your daily
work to improve continuously
Increase your organization's agility!
Leanpub.com/continuousimprovement
“Continuous Improvement is the act of continuously doing
whatever helps to become better and thus more valuable”