Improve together

Key idea

Two key ideas I want to champion in this talk are;

1. We are in this together in everything. We need to improve as a team, as well as deliver work products together.

2. Furthermore, best practices lead to dead ends and bad practices. Don’t seek a standard pattern that will drag your team and work towards mediocre. Seek to do better than what you do today. Never stop seeking. Think mindfully about your situation and work to improve from there.

Format

Introduction

I’ll kick off with a ten-minute talk on this topic providing evidence that this is the right approach and some ideas or patterns for seeking “better” rather than “best.” I’ll use examples and a case study to elaborate the key ideas of this talk.

Activity

• Ask people to break into pairs or small groups
• Ask people to describe 2-3 indicators of great performance from an agile team
• Ask people to then level that indicator up. What does “better” look like?
• Call out examples from the activity that push boundaries. See if there are people living these more idealized performance levels
• Repeat the activity to level up again

Debrief

Discussion with room on the difference between best practices and better. Follow up with more examples of high performance teams and how they frame improvement conversations.

Session should be full of energy and have people talking with each other. Great opener for a day or for post lunch session.

Duration

Ideally about an hour. Can be made to fit different lengths.