What does a successful agile team look like?

Organization often apply "agile" processes without having a clear idea of what they're striving for.This presentation asks the audience four questions in an effort to help people imagine what they would like to achieve.

Transcript

1. What does a successful agile team look like? Kurt Christensen Computer Programmer, Agile Coach, Corporate Oncologist
2. Who is this guy? What is he babbling about? Why on earth am I listening?
3. Who is this guy? Kurt Christensen • Programming computers since 1990 • Coaching "agile" teams since 2003 • Has had some bright successes and some big fat failures
4. What are we going to talk about? I want us to think about agile values and practices in the context of our own hopes and dreams for an ideal working environment
5. Why do I care? Do you have more energy at 5 pm than you had at 9 am? Can you get there? Where is "there"?
6. Going Back to the Well "Every great man that I have known has had a certain time and place in their life that they use as a reference point; a time when things worked as they were supposed to and great things were accomplished. For [Richard Feynman], that time was at Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project. Whenever things got 'cockeyed', Richard would look back and try to understand how now was different than then." - Danny Hillis, founder of Thinking Machines Corporation http://www.longnow.org/views/essays/articles/ArtFeynman.php
7. Human beings need role models ▪ Real (parents, teachers) ▪ Imagined (literature, movies)
8. Exercise: Describe a time (or times) in your life when you were a part of a great team. 2 minutes - Reflect and write 3 minutes - Share
9. Group Discussion My own stories: • Development greatness ◦ Extreme XP at Siemens • Testing greatness ◦ Rajiv at MoneyGram • Business greatness ◦ John at Wells Fargo
10. Exercise: What are some of the specific things that made your team great? (Alternately, describe what made the experience great for you personally.) 2 minutes - Reflect and write 3 minutes - Share
11. Group Discussion My own stories: • Development greatness ◦ Constant (forced!) collaboration ◦ Technical excellence • Testing greatness ◦ Daily collaboration ◦ Testing as a proactive way of building great product • Business greatness ◦ Regular collaboration ◦ Healthy rhythms
12. Exercise: How do your experiences of greatness map to agile values and practices? 2 minutes - Reflect and write 3 minutes - Share
13. Group Discussion My own stories: • Mediocrity and non-agility • When greatness looked agile • When agility didn't look great • When greatness did not look agile
14. Exercise: Given the constraints of your current environment, what are three concrete things you could do to evolve your current team towards greatness? 2 minutes - Reflect and write 3 minutes - Share
15. Group Discussion What can we do today? Tomorrow? • Development practices? • Testing practices? • Business practices? • Cultural change?