Agile Leadership and Management Presentations

From my two Code Camp presentations on agile, leadership, management and strengths, I've linked the handouts and made a list of the books referenced. Great conversation and shared learning with everyone. Several additional resources that I mentioned are Pragmatic Learning and Thinking, Mavericks at Work and What Got You Here Won't Get You There. I added those books to a list of leadership and management books on Amazon to make it easier to track.

Here are the links to my presentations on Leading a Team and Developing Team Members - management and leadership and Scrum and Agile - People and Problems: Teambuilding with Agile and Strengths.

Technorati Tags: agile, scrum, management, teams, projects

Agile Project Management Tools - Mingle, Rally, or...?

I previously posted on comparing different agile project management tools: Mingle, ScrumWorks and an Excel file with dates, hours and a burn down chart. After hearing several agile consultants at Code Camp, I thought I should pass on their (better?) response. 

The question on a tool recommendation came from an audience member who said they had been using Rally, and end the end required one person full time just to manage the tool and data. KenKolcheir, who works for ThoughtWorks, obviously recommended Mingle, with a laugh, but I heartily agree it is a great, easy to use tool. Denise Phillips recommended VersionOne.

But the consensus from all the panelists was to keep it as simple as you can. If you can get by with cards on Post-Its stuck to a wall, do it. Also, this method provides a ready "information radiator" that helps visibility, communication and focus for those nearby or come and go interacting with the team. If you choose to use a the tools from ThoughtWorks, Rally, VersionOne, or Microsoft's Team System 2008, it would be very helpful to have a large monitor or fatscreen on the wall with your cards or a dashboard (with burndown, etc) as the information radiator.

I tried Post-Its, but switched to Mingle so our CEO could access the product and sprint backlogs from his computer and be more directly involved. This is what we needed and has been a key to the success of the organization really getting behind scrum.

USC SoCal Code Camp Presentation Docs

Below are the handouts used for the presentations at the SoCal Code Camp at USC. 

Session 1 - Leading a Team and Developing Team Members - Currently or hopefully leading a small team, managing a project, or over a department? We reviewed the research from several top management experts including Jim Collin's Good to Great, Marcus Buckingham's First Break All the Rules, and Ken Blanchard's One Minute Manager. Using agile as our team context, we reviewed leadership, management, the difference, and what is the role of management today when agile teams are self-managing - the Agile Manager and organizational change. The handout is here. 

Session 2 - Agile Scrum Method with Strength-Based Teams - This session was an overview of the Scrum agile process, tools I've used such as cards and Mingle, and highlights a strengths-based approach which takes advantage of using team members for tasks and roles where they are more likely to excel. Scrum is simple (but not easy) and a tremendous help to achieving success in projects. Agile environments are designed to capitalize on each individual's unique strengths, but there's not much guidance out there on how to do this. This workshop reviewed the different approaches and levels I've used with a strengths-based approach on my Scrum teams. The handout is here.

Session 3 - Discovering Your Strengths - What are you naturally best at? How can you leverage that to become world class? It might be innovation, bringing out the best in others, or knocking out task after task. Many of us don't know our strengths, much less how to build our work day and careers around these natural talents. Instead, guided by our managers and others, we become experts in our weaknesses and spend our lives trying to address these "areas for improvement", while our strengths lie dormant. We review some of the book StrengthsFinder 2.0 and watched the first of six videos from Marcus Buckingham's strengths video series. We covered how to leverage your strengths and how to continue to develop them. The handout is coming...

Session 4 - Agile Panel Discussion with Phil Scott - Neudesic, Denise Phillips, Paul Hodgetts - AgileLogic  and Ken Kolchier - ThoughtWorks. No notes yet but I will try to collect the questions and answers. 

Resources from Code Camp Presentations

Below are links from my presentations this winter at Code Camp.

The outline for the presentation Improve Your Management and Leadership is located here.

The books referenced in the presentation are:

• Marcus Buckingham's First, Break All the Rules,
• Now, Discover Your Strengths, and
• The One Thing You Need to Know.
• Jim Collin's Good to Great,
• Ken Blanchard's One Minute Manager and
• Andy Standley's Making Vision Stick.

I also referenced Patrick Lencioni's Five Dysfunctions of a Team.

All of these authors have spoken at The Leadership Summit and their presentations may be available through that store.

I also briefly mentioned a book on metrics. My blog post on that is here, and the book is Five Core Metrics: The Intelligence Behind Successful Software Management.

The outline for Sunday's presentation Combine Agile with Your Strengths is located here and the slideshow is shared over the web on SlideShare here. The books mentioned include First Break All the Rules and Now Discover Your Strengths, linked above, as well as StrengthsFinder 2.0 and Go, Put Your Strengths To Work (on Google Books, so you can read parts of it).

I previously wrote a fairly thorough summary (certainly not an elevator speech) of the business value of using a strengths-based approach here.

Resources from Code Camp Presentation

Below are the resources related to accelerating your career by focusing on strengths.

Both Gallup's work and the MBS strengths are mentioned elsewhere in this blog.

Sweet Spots
If you don't find meaning in your work--or you're one of the 80 percent who don't believe their talents are used, what can you do? Finding your "sweet spot" is part of the Cure for the Common Life.

MBS Strengths (colors):
www.Strengths.com
My MBS profile
How to Work with Scott
MBS Profile Comparison

Gallup's Strengths:
www.strengthsfinder.com
http://www.marcusbuckingham.com
http://technorati.com/tag/strengthsfinder
My Signature Themes
My Strengths Guide

Private Victory:
Be Proactive, Begin with the End in Mind, and Firt Things First are the first three of the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.
FranklinCovey's training and resources website