When things are going well, it is difficult to find motivation to go from good to great. As an Agile leader, it’s important to be able to identify the symptoms your team or team-of-teams start to exhibit when they get stuck – when their momentum for positive growth and change stalls or plateaus – and what to do about it. Presented at Global Scrum Gathering Minneapolis, this session was a highly interactive workshop with group discussions, table talks and concept centers that provided you with a toolbox to identify symptoms of a stuck team, determine why they are stuck, activities to get them unstuck and highlight potential dysfunctions and over-correction patterns.

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While you are wandering in find a partner and
discuss this question:
What does it mean
to be “Stuck”?

3. Sub-Heading
Other Information
Why Are We Stuck?
Getting Back to
Continuous Improvement

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Reese Schmit
Agile Coach/Trainer
@reesendesist
reese.schmit@agilevelocity.com
www.agilevelocity.com

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Are you stuck?
Stuck Not Stuck

6. How do you know?

7. Let’s dig a bit deeper

8. Time to get you unstuck!

9. Let’s go on a field trip!

10. Team trust forces out of balance?

11. Fear of failure holding you back?

12. If only they got it together…

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Activities here:
12 min per station

14. How else could you use them?

15. Let’s talk Leadership…

16. Find a Card Exchange Partner
Thank you! @reesendesist reese.schmit@agilevelocity.com

17. AGILE VELOCITY
David Hawks
Mike Hall
Reese Schmit
Don’t Miss Other Agile Velocity Speakers
512.298.2835info@agilevelocity.com
Building the Right Product Using Experiment-Driven Development
Mike Hall | Monday 2:30 PM | Room 200 E
Experiment-Driven Development (EDD) is an emerging Agile approach designed to ensure that we always build the right
product. Join us to explore how to create a culture of experimentation within your team
10 Steps to a Successful Enterprise Agile Transformation: The Precipitous Path to Predictability!
Mike Hall | Wednesday 11:00 AM | Room 200 E
Navigate the precipitous path to predictability through 10 tangible steps to a successful enterprise Agile Transformation.
Why Are We Stuck? Getting back To Continuous Improvement
Reese Schmit | Monday 1:00 PM | Room 200 GH
When things are going well, its hard to find motivation to improve. In this session, you will learn the symptoms of a stuck team
and discover tools to get them back on the path of relentless improvement.
The Post Project Era: The Future of Agile
David Hawks | Monday 11:00 AM | Room 200 E
It’s time to shift from a project-driven mindset to a value-driven mindset. David explores how traditional practices slow product
development and what needs to change to support this shift.
Move Beyond User Stories… What’s Next?
David Hawks | Wednesday 9:15 AM | 101 E
The current epic and user story process is stale and needs to go. In this hands-on workshop, you’ll learn a new discovery-
centered model driven by objectives, hypotheses, and experiments.

18. AGILE VELOCITY
We’ll send you…
1. The complete “Why Are We Stuck? Getting Back to Continuous
Improvement” Slide Deck
2. “Retrospective Cheat Sheet” Article PDF
3. “Webinar Recap: Sprint Retros Q&A” Video & Article
4. “How to Deal with Agile Haters on the Team” Article PDF
5. “How to Improve Cross-Functional Collaboration” Article PDF
Write your NAME and EMAIL on an index card,
and hand it to me on your way out of the room.
Agile Training
with more engagement
Agile Teams
with faster value
Agile Transformations
with less risk
Want these slides?
Info@AgileVelocity.com | 512.298.2835

19. Cause: Ineffective Retrospectives
Activity: Anti-Pattern Field Trip
1. Split into two teams.
2. Each team pick a scribe.
3. Stand in a circle and get ready to answer the question “If we wanted to
get absolutely nothing out of Retro, what would we do?”. We aren’t
going around in order and not everyone needs to come up with one or
only one. When you have an answer, call it out. This will likely get fast
paced, so the scribe needs to be fast!
4. Leave a few minutes at the end to discuss:
•Which of these items have you seen in real life?
•Which didn’t you know were an anti-pattern?
•What are things you can do to improve?
You can use this “anti-pattern field trip” activity to dig into various different types of issues the team is having.

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21. Cause: Lack of Trust
Activity: Force Field Activity
1. One thought per sticky, as a team brainstorm forces that create and
destroy trust. On the left are “Forces that help us to create trust”. On the
right are “Forces that destroy our Trust”.
2. There are different sized arrows on either side. They are weighted from1
being the weakest forces, 5 being the strongest. Place your post-its on the
arrows that line up with the level of force they fall into.
3. Add up each side.
4. Discuss:
•Which supportive forces you can strengthen and which opposing forces
you can weaken to drive more trust?
•If the forces are outside of the team, how can you work to influence
those?
You can use this exercise to weigh many different types of activities to visualize and balance the opposing forces.
This activity was inspired by this post: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/building-team-trust-using-alexey-pikulev/

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23. How to create a template

24. Cause: Fear or Failure/Lack of Learning
Activity: Celebration Grid
1. Write down 1 success and 1 failure that your team had in the past
few weeks. (One per sticky.)
2. Place those on the section they fit best on the grid.
3. Discuss:
•Where does more learning come from: Running experiments or
following good practices?
•What experiments can you run to shift a failure to a success?
•What can you do to turn one of your successful experiments into a
solid practice?
You can find more on this activity from Jurgen Appelo here: https://management30.com/practice/celebration-grids/

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26. How to create a template
Make the columns 2 stickies wide and the shortest portion of the top right and bottom left section a sticky tall.

27. Cause: Blame outside the team
Activity: Team Health Check
1. Choose a facilitator.
2. The facilitator will start with the top card and read it to the team. Each one is a health indicator with
an “example of awesome”, and an “example of crappy”. Where does your team fall?
3. The team will briefly discuss then Roman vote on each item.
4. The facilitator will then tally the number of votes of each (positive, neutral, negative) and circle the
one with the most to highlight the health in that area.
5. Roman vote on trends (are things improving, stable, or getting worse?) and draw an arrow in the
general direction based on the vote.
6. Continue and repeat through the rest of the cards.
7. Discussion:
•How can using a health check like this help teams own their improvement?
•What are ways this could be used for evil rather than good?
Additional info and downloadable card templates here: https://labs.spotify.com/2014/09/16/squad-health-check-model/
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