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Culture & Methods

Dealing with Psychopaths and Narcissists during Agile Change

Psychopathic or narcissistic toxic employees can slow down the adoption of change in a company. Many of the techniques or practices you use with healthy people do not work well with psychopaths or narcissists. This article explores four key areas that can help a change consultant succeed when dealing with toxic people.

Erich Bühler
on Nov 03, 2020
Culture & Methods

Overcoming Software Impediments Using Obstacle Boards

Life is full of obstacles; there’s bound to be a few blockers along the way. In this article, Carly Richmond ponders the successes and challenges of adopting their first Obstacle Board. She will discuss how they integrated the board into their practice, and provide some useful tips on how you can apply the lessons they learned to your own implementation.

Carly Richmond
on Oct 29, 2020
Culture & Methods

Q&A on the Book Good Guys

In the book Good Guys, David Smith and Brad Johnson describe how men can support women in the workplace by becoming their allies. It explains why men are the missing ingredient for creating gender equity in the workplace and provides solutions to increase inclusion and diversity.

Ben Linders David Smith Brad Johnson
on Oct 22, 2020
Culture & Methods

Q&A on the Book Untapped Agility

The book Untapped Agility by Jesse Fewell explains what holds organizations back in increasing their agility. It describes barriers that may appear during an agile transformation and provides “rebound” moves for unblocking the transformation and moving forward. This recurring pattern of Boost, then Barrier, then Rebound both encourages and enables frustrated agile champions.

Ben Linders Jesse Fewell
on Sep 10, 2020
Culture & Methods

Q&A on the Book Becoming an Effective Software Engineering Manager

The book Becoming an Effective Software Engineering Manager by James Stanier explores how to manage engineers and what managers can do to build and run effective teams. It helps people decide if they want to go from an engineering to a manager role and organize and improve their management activities.

Ben Linders James Stanier
on Jun 30, 2020
Culture & Methods

The Value and Purpose of a Test Coach

Introducing business-oriented automated testing can involve a huge cultural change. For this we really need a Test Coach role, just like we have agile coaches and scrum masters. In this article we hear from someone living this new role, using Domain Oriented Testing on a daily basis to ensure acceptance tests have full story coverage, and unit tests verify business behavior, not implementation.

Matt Stephens
on Apr 29, 2020
Culture & Methods

Engaging and Being Engaged as a Professional Coach – Candid Advice for Coaches & Clients

As a coach, what do you need to know to have more success, getting your foot in the door of a client company? What obstacles will you have to overcome? As a company, what do you need to know about a coaching profession, not to brush off an experienced and qualified coach, while opening flood gates for charlatans, cheer-leaders, and 'best-practices" experts - and by doing so, hurting yourself

Gene Gendel
on Apr 15, 2020
Culture & Methods

Leading through Experimentation in a Distributed Agile Organization

Change is our work as agile coaches and leaders. When your teams and organizations are distributed, experimentation becomes the primary tool to aid our change navigation. As online collaboration technologies improve and we begin to understand how flexibility and choice become critical in distributed work, modeling and teaching experimentation are important for agile coaches and all leaders.

Mark Kilby
on Apr 10, 2020
Culture & Methods

Q&A on the Book Agile Leadership Toolkit

Agile leadership is the art and craft of creating the right environment for self-managing teams. The book Agile Leadership Toolkit by Peter Koning is a practical book that supports existing agile managers and leaders in growing their agile teams and creating the right environment for them.

Ben Linders Peter Koning
on Nov 05, 2019
Culture & Methods

Liberating Structures - an Antidote to Zombie Scrum

Although many organizations use Scrum, the majority struggle to grasp both the purpose of Scrum as well as its benefits. They do Zombie Scrum; it looks like Scrum from a distance, but you see that things are amiss when moving closer. This article describes what Zombie Scrum is about and gives you tangible examples of how to recognize, treat and prevent Zombie Scrum by using Liberating Structures.

Barry Overeem Johannes Schartau Christiaan Verwijs
on Oct 07, 2019
Culture & Methods

Agile Coaching Around Conflict Management

Conflicts are not bad, it is the way we handle them that makes a difference. In a healthy team environment conflict can be a catalyst for creativity and innovation . A coach is not responsible for resolving conflict, the help the team keep conflict healthy and provide guidance and tools which enable positive outcomes

Deepti Sinha
on Oct 04, 2019
Culture & Methods

Q&A on the Book Level up Agile with Toyota Kata

In the book Level Up Agile With Toyota Kata, Jesper Boeg explores how to apply Toyota Kata to drive improvement in organizations that are using or striving to use agile ways of working. He shares his experience from combining agile with Toyota Kata to enable organizations to keep improving towards their goals.

Ben Linders Jesper Boeg
on Sep 23, 2019