Maturity is a leading indicator for Performance which leads to Outcome delivery. We crunched the numbers and analyzed the data across 46,000 team members in our enterprise customers (4,616 Agile teams) and found some fascinating insights on what specific competencies drive high performance. Our team has always believed there’s a correlation between qualitative metrics (defined by maturity) and quantitative metrics (defined by performance or flow). A few years ago, we moved to gather both qualitative and quantitative data. Once we felt we had a sufficient amount to explore, we partnered with the University of Nebraska’s Center for Applied Psychological Services to review the data through our AgilityHealth platform. The main question we wanted to answer was: What are the top competencies driving teams to higher performance?

We analyzed both quantitative and qualitative data from teams surveyed between November 2018 and April 2021. There were 146 companies representing a total of 4,616 teams (some who took the assessment more than once) which equates to more than 46,000 individual survey responses.

The results of our analysis identified the top five input drivers for each of the performance metrics in the TeamHealth assessment, along with the corresponding “weight” of each driver. These drivers are the best predictors for the corresponding metrics. 

By focusing on increasing these top five predictors, teams should see the highest gain on their performance metrics. 

Is your team losing its way during backlog refinement? Does refinement contain “hidden” work difficult to account for? Is a Definition of Ready weakly applied? Do you even have one?

Borrowing lessons from the Kanban method, we look at how to visualize a team’s backlog refinement process using a backlog refinement board – ultimately allowing a team to make work more visible to better meet its Definition of Ready. Benefits include improved understanding of work items, an “unhiding” of work, an appreciation for “where” refinement work resides – leading to greater confidence the work item has truly met the DoR prior to sprint planning.

We’ll examine how to identify the team’s refinement steps, how to turn those steps into a visual board, discuss whether a refinement board should follow the same cadence as the sprint board, and team interaction with the board. We’ll conclude with some real-world examples.

In 2014, Ron Quartel had a vision of teams using processes based on Open Space Technology to self-organize around work.  Starting in 2016, I was part of an amazing experiment of 40+ people who self-organized and dynamically reteamed around our work, using two-day iterations to produce amazing high-quality applications for a large healthcare insurance company.  Our process became what is now called Fluid Scaling Agile (FAST).

In his book, The Art of Agile Development, James Shore called it: "One of the most promising approaches to scaling I've seen".

Let me share why it was the most amazing, highly productive, cohesive team that I've ever been on, and the lessons that I carry to every team since.

“We don’t have time for learning but we want to deliver value fast. And by the way, we need to develop new skills and attract talent but we have limited to no budget!” Huh!

The Manifesto for Scaling Agility has one its values Organic Growth over pre-defined structure. What does this mean in terms of scaling? How do development efforts scale organically?

This talk will begin by examining the Scaling Manifesto's values and principles and how they fit within the context of the . Using this lens, we'll look at how organizations can entrust their teams to scale appropriately and confidently to meet the needs of the business. We'll look at prerequisites for making this growth successful, various starting points, and organizational prerequisites.

Think of a time when you experienced a conversation that left you with a new perspective or perhaps an inquiry or you might have felt that something has shifted in you after that conversation. Maybe it helped you gain a new level of clarity or moved you to take action. That was a coaching conversation.

That’s how I define a coaching conversation. When I think of it, it seems like it covers most conversations especially if you listen, you’re curious and you acknowledge what’s happening to you and to the other person or team. To the outside observer, this might seem like a regular Tuesday however for the trained coach, there is a set of coaching skills at play! 

There are many coaching skills to explore however in this session, we will focus on 3 essential coaching skills for better coaching conversations.

Most teams hate the idea of tracking or sharing metrics with managers or leaders. When the teams are asked to share metrics like velocity, burn down and other output driven metrics, teams hear what are you "busy" doing? So, the team starts to focus on showing how busy they are which drives the wrong behavior and stifles their opportunity for learning and growing and using metrics for good.