Introduction
Greetings fellow Agile/Scrum enthusiasts. My name is Henry Fiallo, and although I am a relatively new Scrum Master (about 8 months), I do have a moderate amount of experience in putting together teams, crafting and improving processes, motivating, getting stuff done, managing projects, and developing and working with people. I don't profess to know it all, but I am relatively good at learning and synthesizing new and good concepts and ideas. I think that together, we can do a lot to grow and evolve this whole area of Team Dynamics within the Agile and Scrum spheres, and can help to promote more effective and productive teams that are making a difference in the world (Whew! Quite an undertaking!).
Therefore, this Blog will focus on creating, promoting and growing healthy and effective Team Dynamics within an Agile Software Development and Deployment framework, more specifically with Scrum as a "methodology". If you know the value of what it is to put together a highly effective Team, then this Blog is for you (for us!). If not, then no offense taken!
So let's begin, kind of at the beginning, if you will. Although we won't be going all the way back to when the earth cooled and the dinosaurs first roamed the earth.
In the beginning, there you are, in your safe (albeit boring and arguably less than effective) little waterfall world, and management schedules some in-house training, passes out a few books, and declares, "OK, we are now AGILE". That is a start, but, it certainly is not all there is! Let me share some first steps you should take after the declaration, to ensure that at least you have a fighting chance of succeeding.
We don't often get to pick the mission, our roles, or our team members. So what do you do after the Ready, Set, Go? First, look around you and see who else remains in the room after the dust has cleared. This is probably the team. The first order of business is to make sure the team understands the end game. So we will continue next time, by spending some cycles understanding, crafting, defining, and refining the end goal, and then in future sessions, we will move on to other critical elements that an Agile/Scrum needs to ensure success.
So, until next time, look around, take names, and get ready to move ahead in an Agile and Scrum-like way. As Ken Schwaber says, "Scrum on!"
-henry
