How do you create excited, engaged, happy, and effective teams? Start them off right by letting your engineers choose their own teams and projects! Through a proven technique called self-selection, Opower was able to turn a tribe of 40 engineers, many of whom were unexcited about continuing to work on the same old products, into six high-performing teams with engineers who were excited to embark on a new adventure, acquire new skills, and ship awesome code.

How do you create excited, engaged, happy, and effective teams? Start them off right by letting your engineers choose their own teams and projects! Through a proven technique called self-selection, Opower was able to turn a tribe of 40 engineers, many of whom were unexcited about continuing to work on the same old products, into six high-performing teams with engineers who were excited to embark on a new adventure, acquire new skills, and ship awesome code.

In this session we will cover the self-selection process: what it is, generating buy-in & excitement, preparing your teams, running a self-selection event, dealing with concerns throughout the process, and measuring the success of your process. This talk is for anyone who wants to create better teams including Agile Coaches, Release Train Engineers, Program Managers, individual contributors, and other organizational change leaders.