Episode 47 – Badass Leadership – Owning The Team Room

If you are starting with an in-flight team, and trying to get them more agile, the easiest place to start is the stand up.   It’s the smallest, the most frequent, AND the most important ceremony for moving work forward.  Start there, and then build the other practices by gradually introducing backlogs, sprints, planning, and maintenance.   You can fold in retrospectives and sprint reviews,  Start by aggressively cutting waste - getting an hour down to 15 minutes or less by the end of the week -   To do that, you need to know how to own the room. Get in to the meeting room and go first - lead - when running your next meeting, suggest that you set deliverable objectives for the hour Use Working Sessions to set objectives for the sprint, or month, and the week Let teams set objectives democratically; realize you may not get past the first one. Work can be done independently or in the team room at first; but each 'standup' must show delivery progress against the week objective At the end of each week, check your progress against the sprint/period goal and then plan for the following week Teach teams to stay focused in the session Use stand ups to keep them focused between sessions Encourage people to find a way, or make a way Don't wait for permission, and encourage your teams to do the same