A year ago, our software development team ended up in a funk. Simply put, we had some bugs in our processes, relationships and environment that were preventing us from being the best team we could be. So we did what any good dev team does when it encounters bugs: we deconstructed the problems, determined the root causes and implemented some fixes. I’ll share our story and discuss the lessons we learned along the way. You’ll take away ideas and tools that can help you explore these critical, but often tricky, topics in order to prepare your team to really scale.
This document provides guidance on effective delegation. It discusses selecting the right person for tasks and fully empowering them. Key tips include focusing on results not process, establishing accountability through deadlines and check-ins, providing feedback and resources, and giving full credit to the delegatee. Overall, the document emphasizes selecting the proper tasks and people to delegate to in order to multiply your own achievements through others.
Five people at one computer? How can that possibly be productive?
While this seems like a reasonable question, it's not easily answered - until we begin to understand the power of flow.
Mob Programming grew from the quest of one team to learn how to work well together. Once we started We almost immediately noticed that working this way provided better results in a variety of ways:
We were getting more done, and they were the more important thing
The quality of our work was increasing dramatically
Our Knowledge, skills, and capabilities were improving rapidly
And all while we were having a lot of fun as well!
While we noticed these benefits and more, and it was clear this was in a large part due to working well together throughout the day - we didn't have an understanding of why this was working so wonderfully for us.
A hint came early on when we recognized we were achieving a one-piece flow - but we didn't realize the importance of this until we started exploring the meaning and power of "flow".
In this presentation, we'll share the results of that exploration, and see if we can get a better understanding of Mob Programming and the power of flow.
More details:
https://confengine.com/agile-india-2019/proposal/8275/mob-programming-and-the-power-of-flow
Conference link: https://2019.agileindia.org
Sage Summit 2012: Nerd, Geek and Gear HerdingGrant M Howe
This document provides an overview of a presentation on best practices for technical managers. It includes tips for managing technology selection such as preparing for meetings with solutions specialists, discussing requirements and desired outcomes, and comparing options. It also offers advice for handling emergencies like assembling the right response team and focusing on resolution over blame. Additionally, it suggests ways to motivate and reward technical staff like using public scoreboards and celebrating wins. The presentation concludes with a crowd-sourced Q&A where attendees can discuss real issues.
The document provides guidance on facilitating online agile retrospectives. It discusses the roles of the facilitator as architect, pilot and guide. It emphasizes that online facilitation is not the same as in-person and suggests considering digital constraints and interactive approaches. The document then outlines the typical stages of a retrospective - set the stage, gather data, generate insights, decide what to do, and close out - and provides tips for each stage. It aims to help facilitators effectively lead remote retrospectives.
The Productivity Cure: How To Diagnose And Treat Your Team’s Key Productivity...MetaCommunications
In this brief, practical deck, you’ll learn about the three most common ailments sapping your creative or marketing team’s productivity and the managerial medicine you need to treat them. Peak team health is just around the corner with The Productivity Cure!
Getting Things Done (GTD) is a geek-friendly task (and life) management methodology by David Allen. This slide was used in my presentation at Barcamp Bangkok 4 (2010)
This document outlines the key principles of Getting Things Done (GTD), a productivity method. It discusses that GTD is not about managing time, but rather being appropriately engaged. The 5 keys to GTD are to capture, clarify, organize, reflect, and engage. It also discusses the importance of maintaining perspective across different horizons of focus, from life principles to specific next actions. The goal of GTD is to gain control over commitments and maintain perspective in order to be optimally engaged and productive.
This document provides guidance on effective delegation. It discusses selecting the right person for tasks and fully empowering them. Key tips include focusing on results not process, establishing accountability through deadlines and check-ins, providing feedback and resources, and giving full credit to the delegatee. Overall, the document emphasizes selecting the proper tasks and people to delegate to in order to multiply your own achievements through others.
Five people at one computer? How can that possibly be productive?
While this seems like a reasonable question, it's not easily answered - until we begin to understand the power of flow.
Mob Programming grew from the quest of one team to learn how to work well together. Once we started We almost immediately noticed that working this way provided better results in a variety of ways:
We were getting more done, and they were the more important thing
The quality of our work was increasing dramatically
Our Knowledge, skills, and capabilities were improving rapidly
And all while we were having a lot of fun as well!
While we noticed these benefits and more, and it was clear this was in a large part due to working well together throughout the day - we didn't have an understanding of why this was working so wonderfully for us.
A hint came early on when we recognized we were achieving a one-piece flow - but we didn't realize the importance of this until we started exploring the meaning and power of "flow".
In this presentation, we'll share the results of that exploration, and see if we can get a better understanding of Mob Programming and the power of flow.
More details:
https://confengine.com/agile-india-2019/proposal/8275/mob-programming-and-the-power-of-flow
Conference link: https://2019.agileindia.org
Sage Summit 2012: Nerd, Geek and Gear HerdingGrant M Howe
This document provides an overview of a presentation on best practices for technical managers. It includes tips for managing technology selection such as preparing for meetings with solutions specialists, discussing requirements and desired outcomes, and comparing options. It also offers advice for handling emergencies like assembling the right response team and focusing on resolution over blame. Additionally, it suggests ways to motivate and reward technical staff like using public scoreboards and celebrating wins. The presentation concludes with a crowd-sourced Q&A where attendees can discuss real issues.
The document provides guidance on facilitating online agile retrospectives. It discusses the roles of the facilitator as architect, pilot and guide. It emphasizes that online facilitation is not the same as in-person and suggests considering digital constraints and interactive approaches. The document then outlines the typical stages of a retrospective - set the stage, gather data, generate insights, decide what to do, and close out - and provides tips for each stage. It aims to help facilitators effectively lead remote retrospectives.
The Productivity Cure: How To Diagnose And Treat Your Team’s Key Productivity...MetaCommunications
In this brief, practical deck, you’ll learn about the three most common ailments sapping your creative or marketing team’s productivity and the managerial medicine you need to treat them. Peak team health is just around the corner with The Productivity Cure!
Getting Things Done (GTD) is a geek-friendly task (and life) management methodology by David Allen. This slide was used in my presentation at Barcamp Bangkok 4 (2010)
This document outlines the key principles of Getting Things Done (GTD), a productivity method. It discusses that GTD is not about managing time, but rather being appropriately engaged. The 5 keys to GTD are to capture, clarify, organize, reflect, and engage. It also discusses the importance of maintaining perspective across different horizons of focus, from life principles to specific next actions. The goal of GTD is to gain control over commitments and maintain perspective in order to be optimally engaged and productive.
Introduction to Getting Things Done (GTD) & Personal Productivity Ninja - The...Hrishikesh Jobanputra
We are living in an age of distraction. While we are allowing huge amounts of information and communication from the outer world, we are generating equally large volume of ideas and agreements from our inner world.
Amidst hundreds of things to do, we tend to loose perspective and often feel lack of control in our lives. Result, we constantly remain in the state of anxiety and stress.
Neither our standard education, nor traditional time-management models, nor the plethora of organizing tools has given us a viable means of meeting new demands placed on us.
The Personal Productivity Ninja is a course to develop remarkable level of clarity, focus and purpose to achieve Goals. It is possible for you to have an overwhelmingly number of things to do and still function productively with a clear head and a positive sense of relaxed control.
A mix of personal observations and documented approaches for managing multiple priorities and distractions. Includes references to Zenger-Miller, Pareto, Lean, and Agile, as well as a summary of Pomodoro and GTD, in addition to the author's experience.
Group 10 getting things done by david allen summarySameer Mathur
1. The document summarizes seven practical lessons for managers from David Allen's book "Getting Things Done". It outlines Allen's methodology for personal productivity which involves writing down all tasks, determining the next action for each, and regularly reviewing tasks.
2. It describes setting up systems for time, space, and tools to manage work including a filing system, and categories to track projects, actions, and information. The methodology involves collecting all work items, clarifying each item, and deciding what to do with them.
3. The summary highlights three tiers of mastery in applying the GTD methodology including employing fundamentals, implementing an integrated life management system, and leveraging skills to create clear space and get things
Pre Mortem Retrospectives are a powerful way to prevent project failures before they occur.
Resting on the standard Agile Retrospective format you flash-forward to a date after the scheduled release date and assume that the project has failed miserably
Setting up a PMO can feel like a nightmare, but there is a solution. Learn what it takes to wake up from that nightmare and start seeing greater results.
The document discusses the principles of "quantum team management" as described by James Everingham, former Head of Engineering at Instagram. It explains that as a manager, inserting yourself into projects can affect their outcomes, similar to how observing Schrodinger's cat determines if it is alive or dead. It advocates giving teams autonomy by outlining goals but not solutions, asking thoughtful questions instead of giving opinions, and defining multiple "states of success" to allow various outcomes. The five principles of this approach are to manage for multiple outcomes, be aware of the observer effect, know when to intervene, create strategic entanglements among the team, and seek self-observation feedback.
Nerd, Geek, and Gear Herding: Technical Management Techniques for Managers v 2.0NTEN
This document provides an overview of a presentation on technical management techniques for managers. The presentation discusses managing technology selection, leadership during emergencies, and motivating and rewarding technologists. The presenters are Grant Howe and Stacy Dyer from Sage, who have extensive experience in software development and nonprofits. The document outlines the agenda and encourages participants to provide questions and examples from their own experiences to crowd-source solutions.
Introducing GTD®
* “If my mind had a mind, I wouldn’t need
a system.” – David Allen
* GTD® is the popular shorthand for
Getting Things Done®
* “…a powerful method to manage
commitments, information, and
communication.”
The document provides an overview of the productivity methodology known as Getting Things Done (GTD). It discusses key aspects of GTD including the five stages of mastering workflow, collection methods, clarification techniques, and maintaining organization through lists and regular reviews. Cognitive science research is also summarized that supports how GTD can help reduce mental clutter, facilitate flow states, and support goal achievement through an externalized system for tasks and projects.
Getting Things Done outlines a productivity system to help people manage their commitments and stay stress-free. It recommends capturing all tasks and projects using collection tools outside the mind, then processing them to clarify outcomes and next actions. This allows commitments to be organized and reviewed regularly so the mind remains clear and focused on forward progress.
Getting Things Done - internal implementation planHerbJones
David Allen's "Getting Things Done" system was exactly what my small business needed to get lean, efficient and most importantly reduce stress.
We hope that this presentation empowers you to employ this system for your own team. You won't regret it.
The document provides guidance and exercises for conducting retrospectives. It discusses the importance of establishing safety and trust within the team. Various data gathering techniques are presented, such as using a timeline, mood graph, or satisfaction histogram to understand what happened. Methods for analysis include five whys, patterns/shifts, and brainstorming solutions. The overall goal is to generate insights, decide on actions, and close by establishing follow up.
How to Perfect Your Time-Based Productivity - HRMATT Conference 2015Francis Wade
Audio available at http://goo.gl/CSRB9E
Time management is a misnomer as time cannot actually be managed. What are managed every day are "time demands" and in this presentation I show the 5 ways in which project team members manage the demands on their time. Human Resource professionals are uniquely situated to help employees improve their productivity by focusing on the handful of behaviors that make the biggest difference in an employee's productivity.
Lean is a set of concepts and tools used to maximize value and minimize waste from the customer's perspective. It involves engaging employees in continuous improvement. Examples show how lean helped improve processes in healthcare, manufacturing, and government. Key lean principles include specifying value, mapping the value stream, creating flow, establishing pull, and seeking perfection. Continuous improvement involves small, incremental tests of changes through the Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle.
Webinar - How to Create a Stellar Survey Through BrainstormingQuestionPro
This document provides guidance on using brainstorming to develop effective survey questions. It discusses learning objectives for a webinar on the topic and defines brainstorming. The document then outlines steps to plan and facilitate a successful brainstorming session, including choosing a topic, planning attendees and venue, selecting an exercise, establishing the right environment, facilitating the session, and assessing the results. Two specific brainstorming exercises are described - Chartstorming and Opposites Rule - along with tips for confident facilitation and adding fun elements to engage participants. The overall message is that brainstorming is a useful technique for generating questionnaire content if properly planned and led.
This document discusses time management and provides tips for managing time more effectively. It begins by emphasizing the importance of time management and outlines some common time-wasting behaviors. It then discusses setting goals and priorities, creating to-do lists, identifying obstacles to effective time management like lack of planning and inability to say no. Specific tips provided include scheduling time effectively, learning to delegate tasks, reducing interruptions, avoiding procrastination, and leveraging technology like laptops and email to work more efficiently. The overall message is that managing your time well is key to being successful.
Getting things done - A narrative summarySameer Mathur
A narrative chapter-by-chapter summary of David Allens Best selling book "Getting Things Done". Highlights the different models and workflows presented by Allen to generate stress free productivity
The document provides an overview of David Allen's productivity method called "Getting Things Done". It discusses how the method helps people stay focused, productive, and in control despite an ever-increasing number of commitments. The key aspects of the method include capturing all commitments, clarifying each item, organizing items into projects and actions, regularly reflecting on work, and engaging in work at the right time. The document outlines the five steps of the method - capture, clarify, organize, reflect, and engage. It also provides guidance on setting up the necessary space, tools, and systems to effectively implement the productivity method.
As individual contributors and non-senior management, we're always trying to figure out how to get leaders to see and implement DevOps. But what if I told you, you didn't need management to implement DevOps? This talk will give several practical tips that anyone in the technical organization can do to help implement a DevOps type culture.
Technology Wellness in the Nonprofit WorkplaceBeth Kanter
The document summarizes Beth Kanter's presentation on technology wellness in the nonprofit workplace. Some key points:
- Constant technology use is changing brain function and reducing attention spans. Nonprofits need strategies to encourage downtime.
- Kanter presented assessments to measure individual technology wellness and suggested tips like standing desks, walking meetings, and meditation.
- For organizations, she recommended addressing "collaborative overload" through planning rituals, clear communication standards, and defining focus time versus meeting time.
- Peer coaching sessions helped attendees discuss challenges and get advice from others.
Introduction to Getting Things Done (GTD) & Personal Productivity Ninja - The...Hrishikesh Jobanputra
We are living in an age of distraction. While we are allowing huge amounts of information and communication from the outer world, we are generating equally large volume of ideas and agreements from our inner world.
Amidst hundreds of things to do, we tend to loose perspective and often feel lack of control in our lives. Result, we constantly remain in the state of anxiety and stress.
Neither our standard education, nor traditional time-management models, nor the plethora of organizing tools has given us a viable means of meeting new demands placed on us.
The Personal Productivity Ninja is a course to develop remarkable level of clarity, focus and purpose to achieve Goals. It is possible for you to have an overwhelmingly number of things to do and still function productively with a clear head and a positive sense of relaxed control.
A mix of personal observations and documented approaches for managing multiple priorities and distractions. Includes references to Zenger-Miller, Pareto, Lean, and Agile, as well as a summary of Pomodoro and GTD, in addition to the author's experience.
Group 10 getting things done by david allen summarySameer Mathur
1. The document summarizes seven practical lessons for managers from David Allen's book "Getting Things Done". It outlines Allen's methodology for personal productivity which involves writing down all tasks, determining the next action for each, and regularly reviewing tasks.
2. It describes setting up systems for time, space, and tools to manage work including a filing system, and categories to track projects, actions, and information. The methodology involves collecting all work items, clarifying each item, and deciding what to do with them.
3. The summary highlights three tiers of mastery in applying the GTD methodology including employing fundamentals, implementing an integrated life management system, and leveraging skills to create clear space and get things
Pre Mortem Retrospectives are a powerful way to prevent project failures before they occur.
Resting on the standard Agile Retrospective format you flash-forward to a date after the scheduled release date and assume that the project has failed miserably
Setting up a PMO can feel like a nightmare, but there is a solution. Learn what it takes to wake up from that nightmare and start seeing greater results.
The document discusses the principles of "quantum team management" as described by James Everingham, former Head of Engineering at Instagram. It explains that as a manager, inserting yourself into projects can affect their outcomes, similar to how observing Schrodinger's cat determines if it is alive or dead. It advocates giving teams autonomy by outlining goals but not solutions, asking thoughtful questions instead of giving opinions, and defining multiple "states of success" to allow various outcomes. The five principles of this approach are to manage for multiple outcomes, be aware of the observer effect, know when to intervene, create strategic entanglements among the team, and seek self-observation feedback.
Nerd, Geek, and Gear Herding: Technical Management Techniques for Managers v 2.0NTEN
This document provides an overview of a presentation on technical management techniques for managers. The presentation discusses managing technology selection, leadership during emergencies, and motivating and rewarding technologists. The presenters are Grant Howe and Stacy Dyer from Sage, who have extensive experience in software development and nonprofits. The document outlines the agenda and encourages participants to provide questions and examples from their own experiences to crowd-source solutions.
Introducing GTD®
* “If my mind had a mind, I wouldn’t need
a system.” – David Allen
* GTD® is the popular shorthand for
Getting Things Done®
* “…a powerful method to manage
commitments, information, and
communication.”
The document provides an overview of the productivity methodology known as Getting Things Done (GTD). It discusses key aspects of GTD including the five stages of mastering workflow, collection methods, clarification techniques, and maintaining organization through lists and regular reviews. Cognitive science research is also summarized that supports how GTD can help reduce mental clutter, facilitate flow states, and support goal achievement through an externalized system for tasks and projects.
Getting Things Done outlines a productivity system to help people manage their commitments and stay stress-free. It recommends capturing all tasks and projects using collection tools outside the mind, then processing them to clarify outcomes and next actions. This allows commitments to be organized and reviewed regularly so the mind remains clear and focused on forward progress.
Getting Things Done - internal implementation planHerbJones
David Allen's "Getting Things Done" system was exactly what my small business needed to get lean, efficient and most importantly reduce stress.
We hope that this presentation empowers you to employ this system for your own team. You won't regret it.
The document provides guidance and exercises for conducting retrospectives. It discusses the importance of establishing safety and trust within the team. Various data gathering techniques are presented, such as using a timeline, mood graph, or satisfaction histogram to understand what happened. Methods for analysis include five whys, patterns/shifts, and brainstorming solutions. The overall goal is to generate insights, decide on actions, and close by establishing follow up.
How to Perfect Your Time-Based Productivity - HRMATT Conference 2015Francis Wade
Audio available at http://goo.gl/CSRB9E
Time management is a misnomer as time cannot actually be managed. What are managed every day are "time demands" and in this presentation I show the 5 ways in which project team members manage the demands on their time. Human Resource professionals are uniquely situated to help employees improve their productivity by focusing on the handful of behaviors that make the biggest difference in an employee's productivity.
Lean is a set of concepts and tools used to maximize value and minimize waste from the customer's perspective. It involves engaging employees in continuous improvement. Examples show how lean helped improve processes in healthcare, manufacturing, and government. Key lean principles include specifying value, mapping the value stream, creating flow, establishing pull, and seeking perfection. Continuous improvement involves small, incremental tests of changes through the Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle.
Webinar - How to Create a Stellar Survey Through BrainstormingQuestionPro
This document provides guidance on using brainstorming to develop effective survey questions. It discusses learning objectives for a webinar on the topic and defines brainstorming. The document then outlines steps to plan and facilitate a successful brainstorming session, including choosing a topic, planning attendees and venue, selecting an exercise, establishing the right environment, facilitating the session, and assessing the results. Two specific brainstorming exercises are described - Chartstorming and Opposites Rule - along with tips for confident facilitation and adding fun elements to engage participants. The overall message is that brainstorming is a useful technique for generating questionnaire content if properly planned and led.
This document discusses time management and provides tips for managing time more effectively. It begins by emphasizing the importance of time management and outlines some common time-wasting behaviors. It then discusses setting goals and priorities, creating to-do lists, identifying obstacles to effective time management like lack of planning and inability to say no. Specific tips provided include scheduling time effectively, learning to delegate tasks, reducing interruptions, avoiding procrastination, and leveraging technology like laptops and email to work more efficiently. The overall message is that managing your time well is key to being successful.
Getting things done - A narrative summarySameer Mathur
A narrative chapter-by-chapter summary of David Allens Best selling book "Getting Things Done". Highlights the different models and workflows presented by Allen to generate stress free productivity
The document provides an overview of David Allen's productivity method called "Getting Things Done". It discusses how the method helps people stay focused, productive, and in control despite an ever-increasing number of commitments. The key aspects of the method include capturing all commitments, clarifying each item, organizing items into projects and actions, regularly reflecting on work, and engaging in work at the right time. The document outlines the five steps of the method - capture, clarify, organize, reflect, and engage. It also provides guidance on setting up the necessary space, tools, and systems to effectively implement the productivity method.
As individual contributors and non-senior management, we're always trying to figure out how to get leaders to see and implement DevOps. But what if I told you, you didn't need management to implement DevOps? This talk will give several practical tips that anyone in the technical organization can do to help implement a DevOps type culture.
Technology Wellness in the Nonprofit WorkplaceBeth Kanter
The document summarizes Beth Kanter's presentation on technology wellness in the nonprofit workplace. Some key points:
- Constant technology use is changing brain function and reducing attention spans. Nonprofits need strategies to encourage downtime.
- Kanter presented assessments to measure individual technology wellness and suggested tips like standing desks, walking meetings, and meditation.
- For organizations, she recommended addressing "collaborative overload" through planning rituals, clear communication standards, and defining focus time versus meeting time.
- Peer coaching sessions helped attendees discuss challenges and get advice from others.
This presentation goes into details about impediments, how to identify them, how to create a strategy for, escalate, and ultimately - if not removing them entirely - moving the needle to improve the situation. Apologies for the outdated styling - it's on my backlog to improve it!
Keeping people practically safe is vital but it is people’s wellbeing
and attitude to risk that poses a threat to the organisation’s
performance as you return to the workplace. This simple guide is to help managers promote a confident return to the workplace. And, if you have already started that transition, then these ideas will help you generate greater commitment for individual
performance and contribution.
Collaborative Research The Conference by Media Evolution MalmöErika Hall
The document discusses collaborative research and user research methods. It provides an overview of stakeholder interviews, competitive analysis, usability testing, analyzing research findings, and creating models and reports. The key goals are to form good research questions, gather and analyze qualitative data, and create a shared understanding to inform decisions.
No matter if you just have colleagues or organize people as a team lead or senior developer: There are some mechanics that apply to any mentally healthy human being and that have to be taken into consideration when you want to achieve good results as a team. This talk tries to give you a easy but valid introduction to some scientific findings about the nuts and bolts of brains and souls of the biggest investment your company probably has made: your teams.
Confronting the Ugly Truth of Poor Employee Engagement - How to Modernize You...GetSpeakUp
Why your employees don't care and what you can do about it.
Companion audio: https://soundcloud.com/worksmart/33-why-employees-dont-care-what-you-can-do-about-it
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This document summarizes a presentation on collaborative research and user research. The presentation covers topics like understanding organizational stakeholders, conducting interviews and focus groups, analyzing user data, creating models and insights, and reporting research findings. It emphasizes that research should create a shared understanding, that asking questions is important but uncomfortable, and that clear goals and a collaborative approach are necessary for effective research. The presentation provides tips for different research activities and stresses selecting methods that answer key questions.
The document provides advice and best practices for managing development teams. It discusses holistic management, focusing on the entire team rather than individual tasks. Technical management responsibilities include design, quality, and implementation. Effective recruiting involves building a great team and keeping the right people. Execution emphasizes continuous integration, reflection, and improvement. Providing frequent feedback in a positive 10:1 ratio is important. Finally, managers are responsible for employees' careers by understanding their goals, providing challenges, and ensuring ongoing development.
The document provides guidance on using clean language interviewing techniques to have more constructive conversations. It introduces key clean language concepts like evidence, inference and impact that can help interviews stay solution-focused rather than problem-focused. Participants are given prompts and questions to practice applying these concepts when discussing a challenge or problem. The goal is to help the client move from identifying problems to envisioning desired outcomes and determining useful actions.
Shaping the dynamics of a new virtual team - Tony Llewellyn and Paolo FidelboPMIUKChapter
PMI UK and PMI Souther Italy Chapters Webinar - 23 June 2020
This webinar considers some of the aspects of team behaviours and how they are likely to be impacted when connection and communication are restricted to electronic media. We will consider some of the science behind team formation, and how behaviours are shaped in the early stages of a new team’s existence. We will then work through some practical steps that a project manager might take to shape the dynamics of the new team so they become a cohesive and collaborative unit.
Project management topics covered:
Some practical steps a PM should take when developing a team in an on-line environment
• Team development
• Challenges of forming a new team in a virtual environment
• Behavioural dynamics of project teams
About the Presenters:
Tony Llewellyn
Tony is a director at Resolex, a firm specializing in team development. Much of his earlier career was spent working in the Construction and Real Estate sectors, but since 2011 he has been pursuing a long-term interest in interpersonal dynamics and the effectiveness of people working in groups
He is a visiting lecturer at the University of Westminster, as well as a guest lecture at a number of other UK universities. Tony has written three books around the theme of building effective teams. His third book entitled ‘Big teams’ was published on 24 March 2020.
Paolo Fidelbo
Paolo is a Construction Manager and Safety Manager with ten years of experience gained working in the transport infrastructure sector for public agencies.
In 1999, as a volunteer at an educational agency, he began to study behavioural models, emotional intelligence and cognitive biases.
He is a lecturer in project management for the professional chamber at Fondazione Ordine degli Ingegneri di Catania since 2018. He has also founded the professionals network reSTART that aims to provide companies with services to foster change management by creating a people-oriented culture.
Paolo is the Chair of Sicily Branch of the PMI Southern Italy Chapter.
Transforming the quality of development conversations at scaleHuman Capital Media
Companies everywhere are searching for ways to improve employee performance. Many look towards employee ratings and bonuses for the solution, but find this simply isn’t moving the needle as desired. Perhaps the problem is we’ve been tinkering around the edges rather than tackling the issue where it’s hardest: improving the quality of managerial conversations.
Sparktivity Digital Transformation JumpstartKate Thompson
From the making of things to the making of ideas, all industries and all sectors are now being swept by the rising tide of digital disruption. It's changing the game for everyone, and it's creating a new landscape where only those agile companies will survive. If you’re not embracing these changes and using technology to your best advantage, someone else will.
In this webinar, you'll learn how to jumpstart organizational change. We'll share our proven blueprint for Discovery, and some techniques to activate your team and win back the time you need to get started.
16 from 16: THE BEST BOOKS OF 2016 SUMMARISEDKevin Duncan
The document discusses several books related to leadership, productivity, negotiation, culture and ideas. It provides short summaries of key points from books such as "The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team" by Patrick Lencioni, "Scrum" by Jeff Sutherland, and "Superforecasting" by Tetlock and Gardner. The summaries highlight effective team dynamics, agile project management techniques, and strategies for improving forecasting accuracy through an analytical approach.
The document discusses some of the challenges of designing complex systems and provides advice on how to build understanding. It recommends focusing on user goals rather than specific features, conducting research to understand user needs and experiences, asking questions, testing concepts early, and continuing to build understanding through an iterative design process that involves experts and users. The process of understanding is described as ongoing rather than having a clear end.
Now you're asking for it! A Culture of Continuous FeedbackJason Schreuder
Agile has feedback loops on the products we build, and on the process we use to do it, but people feedback is really hard! Studies have shown that people have a negative physiological reaction to just the thought of having to give or receive feedback. But are we conditioned to be terrible at feedback from our experiences in traditional work environments, with all of their power dynamics and political undercurrents? In this talk, we will explore the science behind giving and receiving feedback, and how you can create a culture where everyone actually asks for feedback, continually, and celebrates it as a cultural norm. Even the best agilists struggle working with teams on safety, trust, and feedback. This is a crucial leadership skill, and leaders at all levels should be well versed in this topic.
Learning Outcomes:
Interpret the science behind giving and receiving feedback
Compare various elements of effective feedback
Discuss models of kind, human-centered feedback that you can use in your teams
This document summarizes key information about Etsy's marketplace, infrastructure, company values, and approach to learning from failure. Etsy generates $1.93B in annual sales through its marketplace that connects 1.4M sellers with 20M buyers internationally. Infrastructure includes over 5500 databases and high volumes of log and job processing. The company values building a learning organization through systems thinking, personal mastery, shared vision, and team learning. Etsy facilitates learning from failures through architecture reviews, operability reviews, and blameless post-mortems to study systems and identify inflection points for improvement.
This talk will briefly review LDAP concepts, cover common uses of LDAP, and present examples of advanced LDAP usage to inspire using LDAP. It will not provide installation or configuration details for specific operating systems. The speaker will link to online slides and get information about the audience's LDAP knowledge and usage.
AJAX the Great: The Origin and Development of the Dynamic Web (2007)Fran Fabrizio
This is my all-time favorite presentation that I've delivered. I was invited to address the ACM Student Chapter at UAB, and I thought this topic would appeal to them. Having watched the Web grow up (I got on the Web in 1992 when there was still an index page that listed every new page that had appeared on the web that day!), I thought it would be neat to trace the path from completely static, totally text pages to completely dynamic, asynchronous data delivery that was state of the art in 2007.
Scaffolding for a Growing Team - Surge 2014Fran Fabrizio
When your team scales beyond the point where information flow happens organically (~8 members), you’ll be confronted with some seriously uncool topics, like time tracking, work estimation, meetings with actual agendas, long-range planning and formalizing your HR processes. In this talk I discuss how our team is tackling these challenges in an engineer-friendly way and get the input we need for data-driven decision making while keeping the dev team happy.
In the rapidly evolving landscape of technologies, XML continues to play a vital role in structuring, storing, and transporting data across diverse systems. The recent advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) present new methodologies for enhancing XML development workflows, introducing efficiency, automation, and intelligent capabilities. This presentation will outline the scope and perspective of utilizing AI in XML development. The potential benefits and the possible pitfalls will be highlighted, providing a balanced view of the subject.
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1. Lessons Learned in an Introspective Year
Rebooting the Team
Fran Fabrizio
IT Director, Minnesota Population Center
Twitter: @franfabrizio Email: fran@umn.edu
2. Motivation for Rebooting the Team
DISCLAIMER
This is not a talk specific to scalability.
So, why am I here?
It goes like this...
2
12. Motivation for Rebooting the Team
SCALABILITY EDITION!
The Surge organizers contacted me and
said “We came across your talk about
rebooting your team. We’re filling out our
organizational scalability track - would
your talk work well there?”
This was an interesting question. I
embarked upon a “pondering walk”...
12
17. In the next 50 minutes we’ll review our
case study, including:
• Why we need reboots
• Gut feelings --> specific symptoms
• The collaborative process used to get to
the root causes
• Leveraging the insight to build consensus
for change and action
• Where we are and what we learned
• Q&A
17
18. Audience Takeaway
Techniques, tools, activities, processes,
ideas, sparks.... stuff you can use to help
figure out what’s ailing your team, whether
your team needs a reboot, and how to
collaboratively enact lasting change.
Not going to be a silver bullet - I’m giving
you design patterns. You will have
homework!
18
20. What’s a reboot?
A conscious decision to engage in deeper,
more radical change than just incremental
improvements.
A reboot typically impacts staff structure,
work processes and communication
patterns for your team and organization.
20
21. Why Do We Need Reboots?
21
DEV TEAM POWER METER100% 0%
Team firing on all cylinders, shipping
great code, everyone contributing, team
greater than sum of its parts!
22. Why Do We Need Reboots?
22
DEV TEAM POWER METER100% 0%
Enlightened organizations keep
the needle at 100% by proactively
anticipating the changes in their
environment and responding to
them gracefully over time.
23. Why Do We Need Reboots?
23
DEV TEAM POWER METER100% 0%
Most organizations are not that enlightened.
The needle begins to slide as the org is slow
to respond to changes in their environment.
24. Why Do We Need Reboots?
24
DEV TEAM POWER METER100% 0%
By the time there is awareness and consensus
for change, the amount of change needed is often
too great to achieve incrementally.
25. Wetware Reboots are Hard!
• Wetware is wonderfully, messily analog,
nondeterministic, and mysterious - it
doesn’t respond predictably to change.
• Reboots are costly and disruptive - we
wouldn’t do them if we didn’t have to
• An engineer’s wetware skillset is typically
less developed than their software/
hardware skills
25
26. The Dev Manager’s Mission
Something feels wrong. The team’s not
working as well as it used to. You’re not
quite sure what it is yet, or more
importantly why it’s happening, or how to
fix it. But you’re the one everyone’s
looking to for a fix.
How do you get to the whats, whys, and
hows? You need...
26
27. Organizational Debugging
A framework for turning observed behaviors
and stakeholder input into a clear
understanding of where your team has
deficiencies and how to address them.
1.Observe behavior and get stakeholder views
2.Distill into themes
3.Dig until you converge on root causes
4.Execute action plans for each root cause
27
28. Do we need a reboot?
Symptoms Smells Root Causes Actions
Concrete
Abstract
Diagnosis Treatment
Decision
Point
Themes
29. How is this Different than
Normal Management?
29
It’s amplified.
30. How to Approach a Reboot
• Respect the day job
• Change is scary. Be consistent,
overcommunicate, and check in often
• You are a facilitator: listen more than talk
• HRT - Humility, Respect and Trust - is
essential. (from the book Team Geek)
30
31. Why HRT is so Important
• When organizational debugging is done
collaboratively and with HRT, it produces
momentum for change.
• When it’s not, it produces resentment and
friction, and gets in the way of the organization
executing needed change.
31
33. Observing the Symptoms
• Recall this typically starts as a gut feeling
that “something’s not right”
• Start by writing down a list of symptoms
that are giving you this gut feeling.
• Then put on your facilitator hat and start
asking others (inside and outside your
team) targeted but open-ended questions
33
34. Good Questions to Ask
• How did your week go?
• What are your biggest pain points right
now?
• What do you think are the most important
things for us to be doing / thinking about?
• Do you need anything from me?
• How are things with <insert customer>?
34
35. Listen Mindfully
As you’re having these conversations,
listen for symptoms...
“Well, I spent the first half of the week setting up
my dev environment on my new system, and then
I had to put out a lot of fires on that one project.
By the time I had any breathing room it was Friday
and I couldn’t get any time with Mark, so I didn’t
do any new feature development on my main
project. Have you heard from the product team? I
was wondering whether they want that new UI
widget now, or if they want us to work on
optimizing the query performance first?...” 35
36. Avoid
• What do you think is wrong with the team?
– Sets off alarm bells and people feel compelled
to answer even if they weren’t thinking it
• Try to avoid diving into solutions just yet
– Suggestions fine, but there’s risk of treating
symptoms and not the root cause at this stage.
• Don’t go too deep
–First pass over your stakeholders, just getting
a feel for things right now. Should feel casual.
36
37. You’ve been committed to things without your knowledge
Ship dates slip
Expected to do 5 things at once
No 1:1 meetings
Small changes take longer than they should
Setting up a dev environment takes 3 days
No one person knows how to do a full deployment
Every deployment results in a big mess
People miss key pieces of info
Sick time is spiking
You get a pit in your stomach when you walk in the door
New requirements appear late in projects
Staff working on similar problems not collaborating
I can’t move code between projects easily.
Staff members reluctant to share knowledge
Documentation is out of date
Status meetings turn into bitchfests
People lament the quality of their work
People are quitting!
Can’t say no to anything
Customers don’t trust what IT says.
Estimates are unreliable
Projects getting later and later
Secondary projects fall through the cracks
Build is always broken!
You’re on a death march, and everyone knows it.
People are struggling with their tools.Every decision is made by committee
No consensus on priorities
Nobody knows what ‘done’ means
Team focusing on peripheral issues
37
Job descriptions no longer match reality
Surprises are common
Uptime is decreasing
Recruitment is getting more difficult
Long term goals aren’t getting closer
Exploratory work has stopped
I cannot determine the status of our systems.
I’m doing all the same things I was a year ago.
Vacations are disruptive
It’s too quiet!
38. Grouping Symptoms
• Go back to your symptom list and see if
they group into related themes.
• Themes are “anchors” for discussion -
rather than focusing on specific
symptoms, which can get bogged down in
the weeds
38
39. You’ve been committed to things without your knowledge
Ship dates slip
Expected to do 5 things at once
No 1:1 meetings
Small changes take longer than they should
Setting up a dev environment takes 3 days
No one person knows how to do a full deployment
Every deployment results in a big mess
People miss key pieces of info
Sick time is spiking
You get a pit in your stomach when you walk in the door
New requirements appear late in projects
Staff working on similar problems not collaborating
I can’t move code between projects easily.
Staff members reluctant to share knowledge
Documentation is out of date
Status meetings turn into bitchfests
People lament the quality of their work
People are quitting!
Can’t say no to anything
Customers don’t trust what IT says.
Estimates are unreliable
Projects getting later and later
Secondary projects fall through the cracks
Build is always broken!
You’re on a death march, and everyone knows it.
People are struggling with their tools.Every decision is made by committee
No consensus on priorities
Nobody knows what ‘done’ means
Team focusing on peripheral issues
39
Job descriptions no longer match reality
Surprises are common
Uptime is decreasing
Recruitment is getting more difficult
Long term goals aren’t getting closer
Exploratory work has stopped
I cannot determine the status of our systems.
I’m doing all the same things I was a year ago.
Vacations are disruptive
It’s too quiet!
Teams are too silo’ed
40. You’ve been committed to things without your knowledge
Ship dates slip
Expected to do 5 things at once
No 1:1 meetings
Small changes take longer than they should
Setting up a dev environment takes 3 days
No one person knows how to do a full deployment
Every deployment results in a big mess
People miss key pieces of info
Sick time is spiking
You get a pit in your stomach when you walk in the door
New requirements appear late in projects
Staff working on similar problems not collaborating
I can’t move code between projects easily.
Staff members reluctant to share knowledge
Documentation is out of date
Status meetings turn into bitchfests
People lament the quality of their work
People are quitting!
Can’t say no to anything
Customers don’t trust what IT says.
Estimates are unreliable
Projects getting later and later
Secondary projects fall through the cracks
Build is always broken!
You’re on a death march, and everyone knows it.
People are struggling with their tools.Every decision is made by committee
No consensus on priorities
Nobody knows what ‘done’ means
Team focusing on peripheral issues
40
Job descriptions no longer match reality
Surprises are common
Uptime is decreasing
Recruitment is getting more difficult
Long term goals aren’t getting closer
Exploratory work has stopped
I cannot determine the status of our systems.
I’m doing all the same things I was a year ago.
Vacations are disruptive
It’s too quiet!
Ops Tools Deficient
41. You’ve been committed to things without your knowledge
Ship dates slip
Expected to do 5 things at once
No 1:1 meetings
Small changes take longer than they should
Setting up a dev environment takes 3 days
No one person knows how to do a full deployment
Every deployment results in a big mess
People miss key pieces of info
Sick time is spiking
You get a pit in your stomach when you walk in the door
New requirements appear late in projects
Staff working on similar problems not collaborating
I can’t move code between projects easily.
Staff members reluctant to share knowledge
Documentation is out of date
Status meetings turn into bitchfests
People lament the quality of their work
People are quitting!
Can’t say no to anything
Customers don’t trust what IT says.
Estimates are unreliable
Projects getting later and later
Secondary projects fall through the cracks
Build is always broken!
You’re on a death march, and everyone knows it.
People are struggling with their tools.Every decision is made by committee
No consensus on priorities
Nobody knows what ‘done’ means
Team focusing on peripheral issues
41
Job descriptions no longer match reality
Surprises are common
Uptime is decreasing
Recruitment is getting more difficult
Long term goals aren’t getting closer
Exploratory work has stopped
I cannot determine the status of our systems.
I’m doing all the same things I was a year ago.
Vacations are disruptive
It’s too quiet!
Overpromising / Underdelivering
42. Themes that We Found
Unfulfilled team members
Bad office vibe
Routine things are complicated
Something’s always on fire
Lack of trust in the developers
Every day is a surprise party
Ops Tools Deficient
Single points of failure abound
Overpromising/Underdelivering
Leadership is distracted
The team is too silo’ed
42
46. Peeling off the Layers
• “IT isn’t good at estimates” really meant
“We need to work towards more
transparency and communication with our
customers and management.”
• Deeper problem: communication
disconnect between dev, management,
and our customers. We need to treat this
problem, not the “IT isn’t good at
estimates” symptom.
46
47. The (Not So) Big Secret!
When you dig into a wetware problem,
you’re always going to find at least one of
these things:
TRUST
But “We suck at communicating”
is not actionable.
Get to more specific root causes.
COMMUNICATION PROCESS
47
48. Engaging the Stakeholders
To get the insight you need, people must be
engaged in a way that’s meaningful to them.
Tailor approach, content and detail.
Understand their motivations, what
they can uniquely contribute, and
meet them there!
48
49. Engaging the Dev Team
• Their motivations:
– Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose
– Daniel Pink’s 2009 TED talk
www.danpink.com/ac/ted-talk/
– Build awesome stuff with awesome people
• What they can contribute:
–They do root cause analysis all the time
–Evidence-based view of the world
–And of course, deep understanding of tech bits
49
50. Engaging the Dev Team
• Your Goals:
–Give the team as much ownership of the
reboot as possible
• Only fair, this is where the brunt of reboot change
will land
–Give visibility to long term strategy and
external dependencies on the team
• “State of the Outside World”
50
51. Dev Team Engagement Tactics
• Create dedicated time/space to foster group
dialogue about the themes and root causes
– Focus Friday
– Forums/chat rooms
• “Squishy” book discussion. Example:
Team Geek
• Meet privately with individuals regularly
(should be doing thisalready).
51
52. Engage Management
• Their motivations: Exploiting market
opportunities, mitigating risk, efficient use
of resources - “macro things”
• What they can contribute:
–org strategy
–deep understanding of what other areas of the
org are doing
–better awareness of external opportunities and
pressures
52
53. Engage Management
• Your goals: Provide visibility to issues,
incorporate their big picture perspectives,
obtain support for change
• Example Activities:
– Roundtables - ask the “macro” questions
– Vision & perception interview with key people
– Use concise, powerful tools, such as...
53
56. Engaging the Customer
• Their Motivations:
–Want solutions which solve their problems
–Want to have transparency into the process
• What they can contribute:
–User centric design and prioritization
–More honest feedback - they don’t have as
many relationships or as much baggage to
protect
56
57. Engaging the Customer
• Your Goals:
–Bring the customer closer into the team
–Get them to help your org prioritize
–Make them happy :-)
57
58. Customer Engagement Tactics
• Roundtables with our customer teams
• Retrospectives after each major release
• Example tool: Mapping the
communication flow
58
60. Converging on Root Causes
Dev Team Insight: “We get a lot of requests that pull
us away from our core projects.”
Management Insight: “We want to help campus folks
who are doing demographic research, but we don’t
have a process for vetting or prioritizing requests.”
Customer Insight: “The MPC agreed to do my
research web site, but when I call over there it seems
that there’s always something more pressing.”
Suggests root causes might be
Lack of Focus on Mission
60
Why do we think “Something’s Always on Fire?”
61. Some of our Root Causes
• Lack of Focus on Core Mission
• Team Poorly Aligned with Strategy
• Operational Deficits
• Lack of Customer-Developer
Transparency
61
62. Getting to Solutions
• For each root cause, collaboratively
design an action plan that mixes easy
wins with longer-term fixes
Quick sampling of our reboot action plans...
62
63. Solutions: Lack of Focus on Mission
• Early Wins:
– Defined the mission!
– Made all hidden work visible to management
– Outsourced or killed fringe projects and other
distractions and aligned effort to the core mission
• Long-term Work
–Align projects to org vision, not vice-versa
–Team structure realignment
63
64. Solutions: Poor Alignment with Strategy
• Early Wins:
– Product Vision document
– Some early hires not tied to specific projects
• Long-term Work
– Conway’s Law and its application
64
65. Conway’s Law
“Organiza)ons
which
design
systems
are
constrained
to
produce
designs
which
are
copies
of
the
communica)on
structures
of
these
organiza)ons.”
Melvin
Conway
1968
65
67. Solutions: Operational Deficits
• Early Wins:
–Evolve tools: SVN → Git, TeamCity → Jenkins,
Chef, Vagrant
–Management support for 20% tech debt time
–HipChat
• Long-term Work:
–Ongoing technical debt reduction
–System Monitoring API
67
68. Solutions: Lack of Customer-Developer
Transparency
• Early Wins:
–Formalize a quarterly planning process
–Open work tracking tool to customers
• Long-term Work:
–Refactoring the communications model
68
70. Measuring Outcomes
• Probably the most important one is
qualitative: “Hey, things feel better now!”
• Quantitative indications will eventually
come. Focus on measures that have
meaning to your org’s culture (KPIs?)
• Share metrics and results widely to keep
momentum going
70
72. Where are we now?
• We feel good about...
–Management support for the development team
–Long term vision and goals
–Awareness of the need to prioritize/focus efforts
–Communication patterns
• We are still working on...
–Acting holistically within a project-specific funding model
–Aligning the staff to best support the desired product
–More effective use of ops tools to automate routine work
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73. Lessons Learned
• Know who you are as an organization
– History, context, strengths, weaknesses, constraints, strategy
• An Org-first AND People-first approach is possible
• People are messy
– HRT underlies successful org change
– Assume that everyone has good intentions
– Don’t hide behind technology - wetware issues require face
time
• Change is scary. Expect resistance. This is a process of
influence - you can’t make others change directly.
• Don’t fear going against the grain - do what’s right for
your org, don’t be a slave to any particular process,
system, methodology
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74. Lessons Learned
Avoid reboots if at all possible!
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Incorporate your newfound tools and techniques into your
daily workflow to pay more attention to how change is
impacting your team, engage your colleagues, and
respond to it proactively before you need another reboot!
They’re expensive, disruptive and tricky to execute.
Instead...
75. Thank You!
Continue the conversation...
Twitter: @franfabrizio
Email: fran@umn.edu
Special thanks to Peter Clark (@pclark) for his
contributions to an earlier version of this presentation.
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