Distributed Scrum Teams Whack-a-Mole: Creative Solutions to Common Obstacles
Taking a newly formed distributed Scrum team from mediocre to high-performing has its share of challenges, including differences in language, culture, and time zones; a misunderstanding of Scrum; and the "us versus them" mentality. Join Kimberly Andrikaitis as she walks through her journey of challenges she's experienced in building team relationships, shifting the agile mindset, a lack of focus, and sad ceremonies. She has created an extensive toolbox to share with attendees, containing various ideas to bridge these gaps. You will leave with real-world strategies for how to cultivate team identity, educate on agile practices, gamify team resistance, leverage global partners, encourage communication, demonstrate active listening, increase team morale, and re-energize retrospectives.
Kimberly Andrikaitis is a ScrumMaster, Agile Coach and self proclaimed "Agile Dork". She's bounced around IT for over 20+ years, starting off as a graphic designer which propelled her into testing, business analysis and product ownership, with a stint in podcasting. She's worked for large corporations (IBM, Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse) and smaller "family run businesses" as well. The one thing in common is her passion towards injecting creativity, dissecting agile principles and promoting the Scrum values within her teams. Especially when it comes to distributed teams, which is now more common than ever before. Kimberly is obsessed with collaboration, continuous improvement, and experimentation; always contemplating creative and lively techniques for improving dialogue, strengthening team dynamics and making meetings more effective and energizing. She's an energetic optimist, the undercover investigator, the one who wants to discover what's under the hood. Kimberly is also CSM, ICP-ACC, SAFe® 4.0 RTE and SA certified.