Have you ever been part of a great team? A team where you loved to come to work every day, a team that encouraged to accomplish goals that you felt were nearly impossible?

Have you ever been on a team from hell? A team with constant conflict, disagreements and fear of speaking the truth?

In his book, “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team”, Peter Lencioni refers to trust as a foundational and key ingredient to high performing teams. Exercises in this workshop will allow individuals to become more self aware and increase their vulnerability to build a stronger bond of trust.

Many principles that actors live by are the same principles that a high performing agile team should live by as well. The session is all about focusing and strengthening those key skills needed by agile teams.

Many of us think we can’t do improv. We get stuck in our head and panic, afraid we might not know what to do or say. This workshop involves highly interactive group activities that are fun and fast paced designed to help communicate effectively and think on your feet. Games are intentionally ordered to focus first on creating safety for the groups before advancing to more complex topics as collaboration and risk taking.

Improv will make you think about your team, your organisation and yourself differently, in the context of your agile environment.

Let’s face it, Metrics are a staple of virtually every IT organization.

Unfortunately, they are often poorly understood and horribly misused.

But what are Metrics anyway? It’s just Data, right? Specifically, it’s empirical data. Learning from, and basing our decision-making on, empirical data is a good thing.

The intent behind Metrics is to improve. A very Agile idea indeed. Ironically, rampant misuse tends to create more waste than value. Teams often don't understand or believe in them. Managers often misinterpret them or never really use them. NOT a very Agile idea.

We can change this. It's not just a Fairy Tale.

We can empower teams to take ownership of their data, including defining what data really helps them improve. We can educate management to better understand what to ask for and how to properly interpret the data. Thus, turning Vanity metrics into Valuable metrics, that can be used for good, not for evil.

It starts by having an open conversation with genuine curiosity about what really matters and asking, "Is the data a real reflection of the truth?", "Can you consistently reproduce the same results (good or bad)?" and "What decisions can we make, or actions we can take, based on these metrics?" This workshop will explore these and other questions as well as provide a way to apply a well-known model to test for 'vanity'.

Starting out as a new agile coach is difficult. Where do you go? How do you start? Learn to leverage a coaching approach that focuses on observations and to form insights and goals.

You will uncover a structured approach to coaching which aims at improving team performance by providing clear guidance and structure to the coaches and scrum masters. Through a structured approach, coaches and scrum masters will be able to better target their efforts and create demonstrable improvement in teams.

A structured coaching approach can be applied to, but is not limited to:

• Agile, Lean, Scrum project practices: planning, tracking, improving.
• Agile technical practices testing
• Product management, business analysis, and Product Owner role
• Scrum Master role (team leadership and project management)
• Management and Leadership principles, skills, and practices
• Effective agile process mechanics: iteration planning, reviews, retrospectives, daily stand-up
• Building effective self-organized and empowered product teams
• Evaluation of tools to assist in Agile Lean practices

After an introduction to effective observation techniques, groups will be asked to collect observations from various scenarios drawn from real-life experience with teams and organizations.. Groups will then collaborate with others and draw insights from common behaviors and trends. From this, we will leverage the Coaching Card technique to plan possible coaching paths forward and identify ways that progress could be validated and demonstrated in practice.

Attendees will leave this session with a structured approach to guide their ongoing coaching efforts and share those experiences with others in the organization.