Apply Phil Jackson’s Coaching Principles to Build Better Agile Teams
Often referred to as the “Zen Master” for his unorthodox coaching style, professional basketball coach Phil Jackson won more professional sports championships than any other coach in history. Jackson led the Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers to a total of eleven NBA championships, but rather than studying and following the strategies of other coaches, Jackson developed a set of coaching principles aligned with his personal beliefs. Dion Stewart believes that agile coaches can learn a lot from Jackson’s focus on selfless teamwork, mindfulness, compassion, and ritual rather than simply coaching by ensuring teams are adhering to an agile process. Dion explores how coaches can help software teams build trust, create team unity, find freedom by minimizing process, and enhance performance by creating the best possible conditions for success and then letting go. Learn how Dion coaches teams and individuals to improved levels of performance, and discover how you, as a coach, and your software teams can improve by applying Phil Jackson’s coaching principles.
With more than twenty-five years of experience, Dion Stewart coaches, teaches, writes, and develops software at DevJam. He works with individual teams adopting agile practices as well as large organizations doing multi-team product discovery and delivery for complex products and platforms. At times, Dion works with leadership groups helping them with strategy, planning, and delivery of product portfolios. At other times, he is pairing with developers on test-driven development and continuous delivery. Prior to becoming a full-time coach, Dion worked as an application architect and Smalltalk developer, practicing test-driven development, pair programming, and other agile practices before the term Agile was coined. For more information, visit DevJam.