Welcome to The Team! Practices that supercharge teams

Presented by Adam Zolyak Project Manager at POSSIBLE Mobile

August 18, 2015 at 2015 360iDev Conference

Building Apps Is A Team Sport

Teams are complex adaptive systems

The systems around us are the largest predictor of behavior and outcomes

= ?

“Don’t look for bad people, look for bad systems.”

-Jeff Sutherland

I am passionate about helping individuals and teams to work in better

systems

All The ThingsFor Awesome Teams

Before We Dive In

You may already know about these practices.

But do you do them?

But do you teach them to others?

Many of these practices are common sense.

But they require discipline, courage, and commitment to

do them well.

Purpose

Purpose

A Single Product Owner+ Helps teams to understand business

goals and users

+ Makes quick decisions and provides quick feedback

N

S

EW

Purpose

A Ready Backlog+ Empowers team to work on

the next most valuable thing

+ Ready means prioritized, estimated, and has #AllTheThings

Ready

#1

#2

#3

#4

#5

#6

#7

Stac

k R

anke

d Pr

iorit

y

Focus

Focus

Iterations+ It’s tangible to plan and focus on 1-2 weeks

+ Provides a rhythm for work and recurring inspection and adaptation

Focus

Stop Starting, Start FinishingReady Doing (Max 2) Done+ Limiting work in progress

encourages team members to swarm and help each other

+ Multitasking…

Focus

Work on Related Things+ Working on related things

together

+ Reduces context switching

+ Helps create a cohesive user experience

Ready

Theme A

Theme B

Synchronize and Collaborate

Synchronization

Diverge and Converge+ Diverge to generate ideas,

leveraging the team’s diversity and wisdom

+ Converge to make a plan / find a solution

Synchronization

Visualize Work / Process+ Easier to see bottlenecks, stagnation,

and status Ready Doing (Max 2) Done

Synchronization

Be Together+ CoLocation

+ Osmotic Communication

+ Pairing

Inspect / Adapt

Inspect / Adapt

Quick Feedback Cycles+ Standups

+ Chat

+ Builds / Demos

+ Retrospectives

Inspect / Adapt

Seeing Is Understanding+ Seeing provides richer

communication vs. words alone

+ Use comps on walls, builds and demos, and pairing to understand each other and build empathy

+ “Don’t Tell Me, Show Me”

Demo Time!

Inspect / Adapt

Play Pingpong, Eat Lunch+ Take time to have fun and enjoy each

other’s company

+ Hanging out help to build understanding, empathy, and camaraderie

Questions?