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Culture & Methods

Agile Coaching as a Path toward a Deeper Meaning of Work and Life

In this article, we take a deeper look at the practice and purpose of agile coaching. We find out why interactions are the most essential focus in agile coaching - and also the basis of learning and professional development for the agile coaches themselves. We also learn how focusing on our existing strengths and situations can help us discover our authentic purpose in work and life.

Ari-Pekka Skarp
on Nov 16, 2023
Culture & Methods

How Emotional Connections Can Drive Change: Applying Fearless Change Patterns

When trying to bring innovation into an organization, communication is important. It is vital to share information in a clear and logical way, but it is just as important to understand and accept how people are feeling about the innovation. To do this, leaders can make use of strategies that help them create an emotional connection.

Mary Lynn Manns
on Aug 09, 2023
Culture & Methods

Autism at the Workplace: Autism Coaching as a Methodology

As a person with autism or other neurodiversity, it’s important to get to know yourself really well. It’s even better if another person can get to know you from the inside-out. Dennie Declercq and his mom Ivette Marchand found a way to allow for open and vulnerable communication between them. They made Declercq’s life-manual, which enables him to be happy and productive as a software developer.

Ben Linders Dennie Declercq Ivette Marchand
on Jul 05, 2023
Culture & Methods

Embracing ADHD and Other Neurodivergencies in Software Development Teams

In recent years, there has been increased attention to neurodivergencies such as ADHD, hyper-sensitivity, autism, dyslexia, etc. In this article, Dietrich Moerman tells his own story about ADHD while working as a software developer and becoming a team lead, what he learned, and what he found to be working well to help people with ADHD and more to thrive in their teams and companies.

Dietrich Moerman
on Jun 28, 2023
Culture & Methods

Using Trauma-Informed Approaches in Agile Environments

Scientific and clinical understanding of how the human nervous system develops and works has increased tremendously. Its implications are so profound they radiate far beyond the field of psychology. Topics such as trauma-informed law, volleyball coaching, legal counseling, education, and social activism have arisen. It is time to consider how it affects working in an agile tech environment.

Anton Skornyakov
on Jun 15, 2023
Culture & Methods

Increasing Team and Individual Motivation with the Motivational Diagnostic

Being motivated can make a positive difference to both our engagement and our success in the workplace. The same is true of teams - a motivated team is much more likely to be engaged at work and achieve results. The motivation diagnostic tool helps people understand more about how motivated they feel, and the factors that are contributing towards that motivation or demotivation.

Suzanne Morrison
on Jan 09, 2023
Culture & Methods

Group Coaching - Extending Growth Opportunity beyond Individual Coaching

This article provides an introduction to group coaching and explains how it is different from individual coaching. It sheds light on the benefits of using group coaching, skills that coaches would need and the challenges they would face, with an example scenario using one of the group coaching techniques, and describes the context in which such a technique can be used.

Nafees Butt
on Dec 26, 2022
Architecture & Design

Going from Architect to Architecting: the Evolution of a Key Role

This article explores the cultural change of moving towards shared architecture, and the role that the architect has evolved into; from one with an air of authority and singular vision, to one in which system design issues are surfaced, which require team-wide input to resolve. Teams being coached and guided towards shared ownership might be struggling with the paradigm shift of ownership.

Leigh Griffin Chris Foley
on Dec 09, 2022
Culture & Methods

Employing Team-Based Agile Coaching to Establish SRE in an Organization

Establishing SRE in a software delivery organization typically requires a socio-technical transformation. Operations teams need to learn how to provide a scalable SRE infrastructure to enable development teams to run their services efficiently. This paper presents how agile coaching has been employed to run an SRE transformation in a 25-teams strong product delivery organization.

Philipp Gündisch Vladyslav Ukis
on Aug 23, 2022
Culture & Methods

Transitioning into the Staff+ Engineer Role - from Player to Coach

This article describes how staff+ engineers transition to supporters, enablers and force multipliers of others and what technical leadership looks like away from the management track. It explains the benefits organisations get by having leadership roles that are focused on technical enablement and support.

Nicky Wrightson
on Jul 12, 2022
Culture & Methods

What Kind of Coach Does Your Team Need?

Coaching is primarily client-driven; the client chooses the right coach for a particular need at a particular time. However, the team may first need to understand what coaching is before deciding what kind of coach they need, and why they need it. This article examines the role that a coach can play in establishing, maintaining and nurturing a safe space for teams to grow and achieve their goals.

Leigh Griffin Arjay Hinek
on Jun 24, 2022
Culture & Methods

How to Optimize for Fast Flow Using Alignment and Autonomy: the Journey of a Large Bureaucracy

This article describes how NAV (Norwegian Labor and Welfare Administration), Norway's largest bureaucracy, has achieved alignment in over 100 autonomous teams. It shows the techniques it uses to align teams with respect to technology: two descriptive techniques - the technology radar and the weekly deep dive, and two normative techniques - the technical direction and internal platforms.

Truls Jørgensen Audun Fauchald Strand
on Jun 17, 2022