The Agile Daily Standup - AgileDad

Team Disagree? Try a Lunch and Learn - Mike Cohn

Apr 4, 2024

Experienced Scrum trainer and consultant Mike Cohn discusses how to address team disagreements in Agile practices by hosting lunch and learn sessions. He emphasizes the importance of diverse perspectives and the use of free resources such as videos for ongoing learning. Cohn encourages open dialogue and teamwork to improve agile implementation.

06:21

Creator website

Episode guests

Mike Cohn

AI Summary

AI Chapters

Episode notes

Podcast summary created with Snipd AI

Quick takeaways

Encourage team alignment through lunch and learn sessions for diverse agile perspectives.

Utilize podcasts and videos to deepen understanding of agile practices and foster informed discussions within teams.

Deep dives

Promoting Team Alignment Through Lunch and Learn Sessions

Encouraging team alignment was highlighted as crucial in the podcast episode. The speaker suggested hosting lunch and learn sessions where team members can watch short educational videos and engage in open discussions. Examples given included videos on topics like story points and sprint goals. Large companies such as Amazon and eBay were mentioned as leveraging similar strategies by using podcasts to prompt weekly team discussions on agile topics. The purpose of these sessions was emphasized to be about learning together and fostering open discussions, rather than enforcing uniform thinking.

Aligning Team Perspectives through Lunch and Learn Sessions

4min

Utilizing Free Resources for Team Improvement Discussions

2min

Team Disagree? Try a Lunch and Learn - Mike Cohn

If you’re like many of the Scrum teams I work with, your team members might have learned about Scrum in very different ways and at very different times. Some people might be self taught, others might have taken a CSM course 15 years ago, still others might have taken their first Scrum class last week.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Diversity of thought is an excellent quality for teams to have.
But it can become problematic when everyone believes their approach to some agile principle or Scrum practice is the “one true way”. Meanwhile agile leaders, HR, and others outside the team are still trying to figure out what Scrum even is.
Sound familiar? I’m betting it does.
Here’s something you can do right away to help. Host a lunch and learn on whatever topic has your team at odds.

Maybe it’s “What are story points?”
Maybe it’s “How many items do we bring into a sprint?”
Maybe it’s “Do we have to have a sprint goal?”

Need to add a little authority to your discussion? Share the linked videos above as part of the lunch and learn. I regularly cover those topics (and more) out on my YouTube channel in short videos (typically 3-8 minutes).
My next few email tips are going to cover a few of the common ways teams get twisted when they can’t agree on what “being agile” or “doing scrum” means. If you’ve got a specific issue, reply to this email and let me know. I’ll do my best to cover it. Getting your teams on the same page is a fundamental way to succeed with agile.

How to connect with AgileDad:

- [website] https://www.agiledad.com/

- [instagram] https://www.instagram.com/agile_coach/

- [facebook] https://www.facebook.com/RealAgileDad/

- [Linkedin] https://www.linkedin.com/in/leehenson/