People are Weak, Teams are Strong!

If you are familiar with Scrum, you have probably read that Scrum is different. It's different from the management point of view, but also from the developer perspective. In an expert organization where everyone has been a sort of a super hero, it feels weird to suddenly be part of a team. No-one is telling you what you should do next. And you have to be in close collaboration with your team members; possibly for the first time during your career.

Although in literature I often see that the lack of management support is a big impediment for Scrum adoption, I'd say that the employees themselves can also create interesting challenges.

It takes time before people accept the fact that they can get more done when they work as a team. If you have five tasks and five people it is not the most efficient way to start working on all of those at the same time. If you are familiar with Lean this is probably crystal clear to you. But in real life, it's not so easy to let go of the old habits.

Alone you can do small things, but if you are aiming to go higher, I advice you to take a team with you!

On a Ride with Heroes (or Bad Apples)

I went back to work today and read two interesting articles. First one was about "bad apples" in teams. Probably quite many are familiar with these people. At least I can admit that I have seen these.

It is very odd that when the company is going through a challenging period of moving from old way of working into a more Agile way, some of the most senior people see as their divine right to protest. In the past these people have been the heroes of the company: solving the impossible problems at the last minute, making that needed fix in no time and knowing almost everything about their domain.

Somehow these company's finest become anti-heroes. They start to undermine the Agile adoption process by not sharing information with their team members. We often call these people "cowboys". And because of their superior knowledge (especially when dealing with complex legacy software), just showing door to these people is not the option that management is eager to take.

In my opinion, the option the company is left with is to motivate these individuals. Try to see what makes them tick and show them how Agile can work for them. And maybe pipe down about the process talk and concentrate on how they can maintain their status as experts also when working together with a team. But it is not easy for the team. That I can assure you.

The second article was about Ericsson adopting agile. It is always soothing to see others have some similar challenges and we are not alone with our problems.

Creating value through Agile Coaching

I just spent one week at the summer cottage relaxing and going through my thoughts. One thing that I pondered was that do I practice what I preach? I do agile coaching and I'm interested in lean startups. Am I really adding value to my readers with this blog or am I just making waste?

I truly hope that the unique combination of different disciplines that I bring to the table offer some value for the readers. I have been recently interested in Scrum, agile frameworks in general, lean startups and lean thinking, testing, Deep Leadership, software craftsmanship and from my previous career working with legacy software. I'm pretty sure there are many others that have similar backgrounds, but hopefully no-one else with exactly the same. But if you do, please tell me how I should continue. ;)

My tips for today are simple:

• Empower the team
• Try to make them realize limiting work in progress brings results
• Trust and collaboration is the key
• If possible, test your ideas with real customers
• Don't be afraid to pivot if you need to
• Seize the day and enjoy what you do (each day)