SPA Conference session: Turning Up The Heat on Agile Projects

One-line description:Techniques for productively managing conflict in Agile teams
 
Session format: Tutorial (150 mins) [read about the different session types]
 
Abstract:Agile teams are self-organizing groups of highly intelligent individuals. They work together to access this collective intelligence and to create teams that are greater than the sum of their parts. In practice, however, teams often struggle to meet this ideal. Working in these groups can be both rewarding and challenging. Groups often develop a life of their own, complete with roles, behaviors and motivations that can help or hinder the group's purpose.

Objectives

“Fred always breaks the build”. “Jim never comes to meetings”. “Jane won’t pair program with anyone”. – “Do something about it!” Anyone faced with the challenge of dealing with these and similar situations will be aware of the difficulty of creating a lasting change in behaviour.

We will present a framework for understanding issues and techniques for solving problems at the level of the team rather than of the individual.

Abstract
Agile development practices add to the tension by putting developers into the pressure cooker of iterative timeboxes, increasing friction until small problems potentially become explosive, team-crippling events. When individual behavior becomes disruptive, one tends to deal with the individual. The behavior, however, is only disruptive in the context of a particular team’s self-organized behavior. The alternative, therefore, is to deal with the team, and not the individual.

This workshop will look at team dynamics as complex adaptive systems. It will provide tools for team leaders and members to make effective interventions using an iterative process similar to the iterative incremental process of many Agile development methods.

Some topics we will explore will be:

* The dynamics and consequences of pressure
* Dealing with cynicism, defensiveness and criticism
* Rank and Power Struggles
* Field Dynamics
* Addressing individuals’ problems by dealing with the team and its context

The theoretical explanations will be accompanied by short practical exercises illustrating alternative behavior patterns and techniques for dealing with these issues. To a certain extent, the workshop will itself be an emergent adaptive process, in order to best address the needs of the participants at the time.
 
Audience background:Anyone who works in a team. No previous experience required.
 
Benefits of participating:* Understand hidden team dynamics
* Change conflicts from a destructive force to a creative opportunity
* Leverage ‘small interventions’ to get big shifts
 
Materials provided:Copies of presentation materials
 
Process:The workshop will include a presentation of the model, practice in applying it to specific real life situations and question on its application
 
Detailed timetable:
 
Outputs:Follow-up mail to participants, to build a Community of Practice
 
History:This session is based on Joseph and Ben's course "The Deep Dynamics of Agile Teams", and the session itself has been presented at XPDays Benelux and London, where it has received excellent reviews
 
Presenters
1. Joseph Pelrine
MetaProg
2. Ben Fuchs
CATeams
3.