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August 21, 2017 by Chris Daily Leave a Comment

Get Certified! Here’s your Scrum Certification Study Guide

In almost every training course, I get asked how do I become a certified Scrum Master.  In response, we put together a study guide to help you prepare for the inevitable test.  enable your journey.  We created a Trello board, and add links to free videos, articles, and practice testing tools that will provide the foundational information covering the fundamentals of Scrum.  Click here to sign up and get access to the beLithe Scrum Certification Study Guide.

Be sure to let us know how you are progressing.

Thanks for coming in today.

Chris

Filed Under: agile, scrum Tagged With: certification., certified scrum master, professional scrum master, scrum, scrum.org

May 9, 2017 by Chris Daily Leave a Comment

5 Qualities Leaders Need to Create an Agile Environment

You want your business to always be one step ahead of your competitors, adapting to changes in the market quickly and easily. You need to be flexible to take advantage of whatever comes your way, and the best way to do that is to build an agile environment for your business.

It is your responsibility to act as a leader, creating the agile environment your business needs to thrive. So how can you do this?

This article will tell you the five most important qualities a leader needs to create an agile, adaptable business.

1. Strong Communication Skills

Communication skills are absolutely essential to be an agile leader. You need to be able to get your ideas across clearly the first time.

Any miscommunications can lead to mistakes that will slow your business down.

With good communication skills, you will be able to make sure everyone in your organization knows the company’s current goals and strategies. You will be able to persuade team members to work together and inspire them to give it their all.

From being able to understand body language, careful listening skills, strong written communication and more, strong communication skills are essential to be a good leader. You are taking the first steps to building a company culture that inspires your employees.

Just make sure that you are being genuine, not cheesy!

2. A Talent for Innovation

Strong innovation skills allow you to create unique solutions to challenges. With innovation skills, you can turn a potential problem into a new opportunity.

This can mean listening to customer concerns and finding a way to solve their complaints that improves your business overall. Or, using new technologies in useful ways.

It means that you are not afraid to take calculated risks. You are always working to improve your business, evaluating what works and finding ways to make it better.

3. Enthusiasm

If you aren’t enthusiastic about your company mission, why would your team be?

You need to bring the energy to every meeting, and every day in the office.

When you’re enthusiastic, your employees will be more motivated to perform and motivated employees have higher productivity.

4. Delegate, and Trust Your Team

Have you ever heard the saying, “If you want something done right, do it yourself?”

This is the worst motto you could have when you’re trying to build an agile environment.

To be an effective agile leader, you need to know how to delegate tasks to your team.

It is important to know your team and everyone’s skills. This will let you know when you can hand over a task, and when someone might need a bit of extra guidance and training.

But you need to trust that your team has the talent and skill to get the job done without your constant supervision.

This will make them feel valued, and free up your time to focus on your own work.

5. A Cool Head

Even with the best team and a great strategy, things will not always go as planned.

The way you respond to problems will define you as a leader.

A true agile leader doesn’t panic when things aren’t going as planned. The worst things you can do are to lash out at your team or make reactive business decisions.

Instead, you need to be able to stay calm under pressure, thinking through how you will solve it.

Start Building Your Agile Environment

With these tips, you can make sure you are acting like an agile leader. This is the first step towards creating an agile environment for your business.

Do you want more help making your business agile and adaptable?

Contact us today to set your business on the right path.

Filed Under: Agile, agile, Leadership, Scrum Tagged With: agile, agile environment, Leadership

May 1, 2016 by Chris Daily Leave a Comment

Culture Work: The Fine Line Between Cheese and Charm

mmag

Last week I got the opportunity to talk culture at the Mid-Michigan Agile Group’s monthly meeting organized by Joe Hershey.  I always look forward to talking about culture in agile environments and getting to watch all the light bulbs light up one by one in the audience as folks relate to the experiences I share during my presentation.  The best part of the presentation is always the very end when I open up the floor for comments and Q&A.  I love hearing about other’s experiences and thoughts on culture and engagement.

One of the questions I received really stuck with me.

Professional Tester Jeff MacBane (@JMacBane) asked…. “How do you prevent the work the team is doing on culture from being cheesy?”

I’d like to think that the work I do around culture is never perceived as cheesy because it is always genuine and coming from the heart – I’m passionate about building happy places to work.  But the fact is some of the practices used to cultivate certain behaviors in a culture are downright cheesy and can be over the top. Think about the old “trust fall” team building activities… yuck!  Even some of the more low-key activities like bringing in a cake and balloons to celebrate a team milestone can be perceived as cheesy.

So what’s my advice?

  1. All culture work (and leadership behavior in general) must be authentic and come from genuine place.  Lead from the heart and the rest will follow.
  2. Remember that culture is NOT the fun “social committee” activities – culture is much bigger than that.  Culture is the “social glue” that holds an organization together and guides decision making and behaviors of the parts of the system.  Be careful not to associate the social committee-like activities with the word culture – you don’t want folks thinking about these words synonymously.
  3. Accept that some cheese is a good thing.  What would a pizza be without some mozzarella? It’s good to have a little cheese sprinkled in your culture activities.  What matters is that the behaviors of our leaders and culture cheerleaders are genuine and consistent with the values we say we are working toward.

As Jeff said, he’s seen too much “cheese” in culture efforts in the past but he also thinks that a little bit of cheese is a good thing and not having that is a missed opportunity.  Good luck finding your balance between the two!

Tana

Filed Under: agile, culture Tagged With: Agile Culture, culture, Culture Roadshow

April 28, 2016 by Chris Daily Leave a Comment

Scrum Assessment: Find out where you are.

Check out our beLithe Scrum Assessment.

Whether you are just starting out, or are trying to figure where you can help your Scrum team, The beLithe Scrum Assessment is a great tool for a coach to establish a baseline of how a team is using Scrum, and then track the progress of a team as it matures.  I built this using my own experiences of working with Scrum teams over the last 6 years.  Our assessment is built on a couple of key points:

  • The Scrum Assessment is used to evaluate the maturity level of a Scrum team.
  • Assessment points are categorized into one of four groups:  Artifacts, Ceremonies, Roles, and Rules.
  • For each Assessment Point, five levels are available to be selected to describe the frequency of that the assessment point is achieved.
  • One hundred point system is used to assign the Scrum maturity level.
  • The Scrum Maturity Level is unique for each team.

When I start with a team, I have the team take the assessment to  establish a baseline.   By addressing each area of the survey, each teammate considers the actions and interactions of the team as they relate to Scrum.  Considering the response to each question positively reinforces the basics of Scrum with each teammate.

I follow that up with every three to four months to see what progress has been made.  While the results of the beLithe Scrum Assessment are important, the best part can be what you do with the results.  I like to use the summary results of  Assessment to have a teaching moments with teams.  I like to buy a few pizzas and have a lunch time conversation.  What can make the conversation interesting is the team discussing how it feels it is doing compared to the assessment.  While some teams will not fully implement Scrum, having the conversation will facilitate the team making conscious decisions on what it is doing and why it is doing it.  Sometimes, the conversation centers on why a team is not using one aspect.  That part of the conversation can indicate influences internal to the team, internal to the individuals, and external culture that negatively impact the team.  These conversation provide an opportunity for the team to constantly improve.

After establishing your baseline, reassess your team using the beLithe Scrum Assessment every three or four months to gauge your team’s progress.  Start helping your team today.

[ninja_forms_modal_form id=64 text_link=”Click here to take the beLithe Scrum Assessment.”]

What’s your score?

Thanks for coming in today.

Chris

Filed Under: Agile, agile, Scrum, Software Development

April 27, 2016 by Chris Daily 1 Comment

AgileIndy 2016: Self-Organization in a Command and Control World

conf-header-2016On Tuesday, Tana and I were honored to spend time with a packed house at AgileIndy 2016. We presented a topic that is near and dear to my heart: self-organization. Here’s the slide deck if you couldn’t make it to the presentation.

[slideshare id=60869845&doc=selforganizingpresfinal-160413144739]

Self-organization is a controversial topic in the agile and business communities right now. How do you allow individual contributors to figure out how the work is accomplished, and yet have some idea of what the outcome will be and when it will be complete? When challenges arise, many react as though being self-organized is the problem.  It’s unnerving to many managers who have been brought up in a traditional command and control world where you power and authority is defined by where you are in the org chart.  During the presentation, Tana and I introduced the concept of Delegation Poker from Management 3.0.  You can check out Delegation Poker  here and our Delegation Poker Board here. Delegation Poker, much like Planning Poker, is a technique which facilitates conversations within an organization with the intent of arriving at an outcome of a common understanding between interested parties.

I have been using self-organization techniques for years.  Some of them, such as using the Rule of Two Feet, have been thrust on me by my interactions with great teammates while other techniques just came naturally.  As part of our continuing journey, Tana and I have invested in learning more about not just the Agile processes, but the boundaries and impediments created by managers and organizations and how to start addressing them.  So far, the journey has been challenging, yet fascinating.

Look for more to come soon.

Thanks for coming in today.

Chris

Filed Under: Agile, agile, IMO, Scrum, Software Development

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