Conversations with The Write Ting

Our focus on agile is to help others understand the importance of encouraging the right culture and behaviors.  We’re constantly trying to find ways of getting the point across and that’s where this series came from. It’s our way of bringing light to some of the misconceptions we’ve observed over the past few years.  🎯 The aim: to bring awareness to some of the barriers that may exist and foster understanding on possible approaches, when faced with these the barriers.  We hope you enjoy this conversation. If there’s anything else you’d like us to explore as part of this series or if we’ve said anything you don’t quite agree with, go ahead and drop a comment or a line via email. We love these interactions… they help us to expand our way of thinking.

We're excited to share the 2nd video in our series, where we candidly discuss common misconceptions about Agile.     In this episode, we touch on:   Testing and learning    Team empowerment   Managing documentation and    Justifying pivots    Take a listen and drop your feedback in the comments.  We'd love to hear about your experiences! Be sure to follow us on LinkedIn as well as to check out the blog for more Agile-related and inspired content!

We want to kick start the New Year by sharing a new series called "You're not really Agile if..." We will voice our candid perspective describing what Agile is not... We hope you like it! What's your take? What else would you add to the list? Share your perspective and opinion with us! We'd love to hear from you?

In this episode, we speak with ADAPTOVATE’s D. Ray Freeman, who is an Agile Executive and Transformational Leader. He shares some valuable perspectives on two important topics: Applying Agile outside of business and Scaling Agile from top down in an organisation For more information on Transformation and Agile adoption services, contact ADAPTOVATE at: - #AdaptovateGlobal - Instagram Page - www.ADAPTOVATE.com website - LinkedIn.com/ADAPTOVATE Contact D. Ray Freeman at: - [email protected] - #ThrivingCultureShow - LinkedIn.com/DRayFreeman All music copyright by D. Ray Freeman (c) 2001-2004

Everybody has mental health. For some of us, going through this pandemic has highlighted the need to be more mindful and aware of not only our own mental wellbeing, but also those around us.    We’re particularly excited to share our recent talk with Kim Rose, Founder - Think Mental Health JA on this topic. She touches on what mental health means, the stigmas associated with mental illnesses and how to take care of your mental wellbeing.    #mentalhealthmatters #agilecaribbean

We often hear the term 'servant leader' thrown around when talking about the role of the Scrum Master, but what does that really mean? In this episode, Sheyinka Harry, Scrum Master with over 3 years' experience working in an Agile space, talks with us about what it really means to be a Scrum Master - the relationships that you'll need to develop; empowering and setting up the team for success and even how to interact with those who are still on the fence about Agile. 

In our latest episode, we talk with Belinda Williams about how to use communication to actively engage with our stakeholders to get the results we want from them. We talk about how to communicate upwards, what you can do if you can't get a seat at the table to sell your ideas and how to communicate upwards within a company.

How can you ensure you're actually providing solutions/products/services that your customers want? There's really only one sure way and that's talking to your customers.    Using the tools and the information that you already have, we'll talk you through how you can start getting more feedback from your customers, to inform your decisions.

Agile highlights the importance of having cross-functional teams. For us, this means 2 things: 1. Having all the team members needed to get the work to done and 2. Individual team members being T-shaped, that is a depth of knowledge in at least one area (his/her expertise) and a broad appreciation and understanding of other areas But how do you foster this? In this conversation, Chantal and Nicola share some ideas.

Chantal and Nicola talk about the ‘why’ behind Agile Caribbean Link, a blog focused on helping to bring the Caribbean community together around Agile.   If you’re an Agile practitioner or simply interested in learning more about Agile, come join the link!   Be a part of our community, and find additional tips, ideas, learnings via:  *Blog: agilecaribbeanlink.blogspot.com  *Podcast: https://anchor.fm/conversations-with-TWT  *LinkedIn, Facebook - Agile Caribbean Link  *Twitter, Instagram - @agilecaribbean  *Email - [email protected]

Nicola and Chantal have been Scrum Masters for 2 and 3 years, respectively. In this episode, we discuss what we have learnt about the journey of being a Scrum Master. Please feel free to share; and of course, subscribe to our channel. Be a part of our community, and find additional tips, ideas, learnings via: *Blog: agilecaribbeanlink.blogspot.com *Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_OGVjD8lGDRsZtlyS00_7A *LinkedIn, Facebook - Agile Caribbean Link *Twitter, Instagram - @agilecaribbean *Email - [email protected]

How do you help your team to transition from being colocated to remote work and not lose that synergy that you shared in office? Scrum Masters, Chantal Jenoure and Nicola Brown, talk about some of the activities that they’ve been trying so far. Key tip, it’s necessary to be deliberate in your actions, in order to continue driving that collaboration, communication and overall team synergy.

Agile is an umbrella school of thought that was created by software developers for software development, but it is essentially a mindset, coupled with principles and values that can be applied to various aspects of our general lives. No matter which field, the values remain the same and the aim is to be more efficient in how value is delivered to the end-user. Even as an entrepreneur, your business can benefit from Agile even if you’ve never been formally trained in Agile. Here are a few adjustments you can start making to work smarter and deliver value to you customer consistently. For more tips, check out: https://agilecaribbeanlink.blogspot.com/2019/11/design-thinking-5-stage-process.html | https://agilecaribbeanlink.blogspot.com/2020/05/4-agile-tips-for-non-agile-businesses.html | https://agilecaribbeanlink.blogspot.com/2020/05/ideas-for-customer-collaboration.html

Coming together as a new team can be an intimidating process. To help ease the anxiety, we’ve found 3 engaging and powerful activities that can help to create the right atmosphere for a new team. For us, the secret is in i. Finding the common factor among team members from day 1 ii. Encouraging discussions, even debates, also from day 1 and iii. Identifying the strengths and weaknesses of each team member & then using this to build out the capabilities of your super team. What are your go-to activities when bringing together a new team?

With many teams recently thrown into the world of remote work, knowing where to start, can be tricky. Here are 3 simple hacks, found on LinkedIn, that helped our teams to make the transition.