CHOW #234 – Psycho safety: in two minds?
Phiroze Batliwala is the leader of a team enhancing a software product with advanced features for forecasting consumer behaviour. His team consisted of three senior members and six relatively fresh people. The three seniors generally led discussions on technical directions and the rest were focused on implementation aspects. In a recent meeting, the team was […]
Psycho safety – 4 key questions
In the context of software development teams, psychological safety is a frequent topic of discussion among leaders and coaches – for good reason. Without that safety, people do not open up with new and out-of-the-box thoughts; collective team thinking follows previous beaten tracks; innovative but “risky” options are avoided. As a result, the team does […]
CHOW# 225 – Leave your baggage behind
Samson worked for five years and proved to be a good developer and a tech lead before being chosen to lead a project, with a lot of technical unknowns and challenges. Samson was very excited to lead the project and rolled his sleeves up and executed the specification sign off with the client very well. […]
One (Team) size and structure does not fit all
How does leadership determine how big a team they need (may be organized in multiple scrum / kanban teams) to support a given demand in a portfolio or a program? This is a very involved answer, and, like most answers related to adopting Agile practices, it depends. If someone is asking for a simple formula, […]
Enabling self-organization of Agile teams
As an agile coach, I knew how self-organization manifests itself in various ceremonies. There is a brilliant blog by JV – one of my colleagues at PM Power – that elucidates the behavior of self-organizing teams in various ceremonies. I would observe the behavior of the team in many of these ceremonies and guide the […]
Risk Management: Good to Great – Part II Enablers
Sometime in March 2016, we started with the series Risk Management: Good to Great. In Part I of the series on Practices. we covered what we believe are “great” risk management practices based on our consulting practice at PM Power Consulting. As a recap, here is the diagram from Part below: The centre piece in […]
The 2% Masala: What I learnt shutting down a start-up
When a newly commissioned ship sails from a port, laden with valuable goods, every captain hopes the ship will navigate the tumble of the seas well and be the ship of choice, in the years to come. No one expects the Titanic journey. Every sailor that you get on board, signs up after confirming at […]
Motivating teams
A frequent question or topic of discussion with Scrum Masters, in course of coaching, is on motivation. How does one motivate the team members? A difficult question, which does not have “a” right answer/ approach. As a leader, one needs to deliver what is expected of him or her, this delivery is done by the […]
Seven pillars of Servant Leadership
Often I get asked by Scrum Masters, who are in the process of adopting Agile Scrum, on references to servant leadership. How should one go about changing from “command and control style” to “servant leadership”. I used to share relevant examples from my experiences that has helped teams self-organize. Highlight instances, based on my observations […]
A study in contrast – Parenting and Managing a team
I began life as a child, and still continue to behave like one. I started my working years as an individual contributor, and still continue to be one. In addition to this in my wonderful journey of life and work I have also become a parent and a team manager. What’s more interesting as I […]
