Creating a High-Performance Agile Team
Many teams have a relatively easy time adopting the tactical aspects of agile methodologies. Usually a few classes, some tools’ introduction, and a bit of practice lead teams toward fairly efficient execution. However, these teams are quite often simply going through the motions—neither maximizing their agile performance nor delivering as much value as they could. Borrowing from their experience and lean software development methods, Bob Galen and Mary Thorn explore high-performance team patterns, which are the thinking models of mature agile teams, including large-scale emergent architecture, relentless refactoring, quality on all fronts, pervasive product owners, lean work queues, stretching above and beyond, providing total transparency, saying no, and many more. Beyond the practices, Bob and Mary want you to reflect inward on your own personal growth with an emphasis on journaling, retrospectives, and a continuous improvement mindset that all good agile team members need. But beyond just talking about it, Bob and Mary show you how to pull together a personal agile growth strategy to get you there.
Chief storyteller of the book The Three Pillars of Agile Testing and Quality, Mary Thorn is owner of Mary Thorn Consulting in Raleigh, NC. During her more than twenty years of experience with healthcare, financial, and HR SaaS-based products, Mary has held director, manager- and contributor-level positions in software development organizations. A seasoned leader and coach in agile and testing methodologies, Mary has direct experience building and leading teams through large scale agile transformations. Mary’s special expertise is a combination of testing, DevOps, and agile scaling skills that her clients find incredibly valuable. She is also a frequent speaker, teacher and author. You can connect with Mary via LinkedIn.
An agile methodologist, practitioner, and coach, Bob Galen helps guide leaders and teams in their pragmatic adoption and organizational shift toward Scrum and other agile methods. Bob is often called “a Coach of Coaches” because of his deep and broad experience in the agile arena. He is director, agile practices at Zenergy Technologies; president of RGCG, LLC; and a frequent speaker at international conferences and professional groups on topics of agile software development. Bob authored Three Pillars of Agile Quality and Testing, Scrum Product Ownership, and Agile Reflections. A prolific writer, blogger, and podcaster, Bob can be reached at [email protected] or at LinkedIn.