program selection system

Many companies are now adopting Agile methods to hopefully fix problems with delivering software in a timely, sustainable manner. However, most people seem to think that the transformation will be quick, and that once implemented, people can proceed along, with little or no change throughout.

Self-organization of human beings is a tricky thing. Agile coaches, especially ScrumMasters, are constantly challenged with how to motivate/persuade/trick their teams into self-organizing and doing things, without telling them what to do, but there is very little information or training on this topic. Allowing a team to self-organize along the lines of “oh well, they’re all adults, they’ll figure it out” is just as irresponsible as reverting to the command-and control school of management. So, how should one go about it? This tutorial presents an approach utilizing leading-edge research and techniques from social complexity science and team dynamics to change the dynamics of a team with the aim of optimizing their work together.

Underestimating the impacts of cultural diversity on your team can be disastrous, creating barriers and even team breakdown. Most leaders aren’t even aware of the influences that different cultures can have on team dynamics. These impacts can be even more pronounced on agile self organizing teams.

Great software comes from getting the best ideas into the product. Jim McCarthy, who led the legendary turnaround of the Visual C++ group at Microsoft, left Microsoft in 1996 to create a team dynamics laboratory to figure out how to always create a create a high performace team. His lab has focused on this challenge, and has produced 11 protocols for making unanimous decisions, supporting quality thinking, strengthening design iterations, and incorporating feedback, emotions, nobility, and passion into products. Learn about an entirely new class of tools.