Introduction

This week, Dan Neumann is joined by a repeated guest, Quincy Jordan. Today they are talking about the vital importance of getting Agile Teams and initiatives off to a good start.

In this episode, they discuss the things that need to happen outside the Teams and that also need to involve them, what elements are required to support the Team and what to expect from them. Listen to this episode to learn more about how to support a Scrum Team to have the best start possible.

Key Takeaways

• Management should support the Team in its efforts to deliver something of value to the organization.
• • Sometimes a Team needs mentoring that comes from outside the team.
• Establishing Team working agreements.
• • Teams need to have working agreements to help establish guidelines about how to do the work and communicate as a Team.
  • Conflict will happen; that is why rules of engagement are necessary to anticipate the way in which a team will address those potential conflicts.
  • Leveraging emotions in conflict resolutions is needed; emotions cannot be removed from a human experience.
• Why do we care for getting off to a good start in the first place?
• • Awareness: A team needs to know why they are endeavoring in a particular project as well as they need to know what is the benefit and who is benefiting from the work.
  • It is important for those on the front line to really know how their work ties to the topline business objective; this is the way for them to see the value of the work that they are doing there.
  • Quincy and Dan talk about the critical aspects in launching a Team, which are covered by the methodology for change managing called ADKAR: Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, and Reinforcement.
• The facets of getting off to a good start.
• • After working on the Awareness it is necessary to make it clear how the Team is going to communicate.
  • There is a benefit to anticipating how we are going to reward behaviors that we want to perpetuate.

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Mentioned in this Episode:

Coaching Agile Teams: A Companion for ScrumMasters, Agile Coaches, and Project Managers in Transition, Lyssa Adkins

Blog post by Esther Derby: “Building Effective Teams: Miss the Start, Miss the End”

Liftoff: Launching Agile Teams & Projects, Diana Larsen and Ainsley Niles

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