I Don't Like Mondays--Improving Agile Process Team Events

Jean Tabaka (Rally Software)

Talking Heads · Customer

Monday, 14:00, 1 hour 30 minutes | Grand Ballroom North

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Abstract: Back in the 70's, a loud rock group called the Boomtown Rats had a big hit song called "I Don't Like Mondays". The song was based on the true story of a young girl gone crazy at school because she hated Mondays. Teams moving to an Agile software development process may end up feeling equally annoyed. As they move from a command-and-control culture to a collaborative culture, they are also encouraged to rely less on comprehensive documents and more on interactions. That means participatory decision-making and that means bringing people together to brainstorm, prioritize, and create consensus-driven plans. Such a process can start to look like non-stop meetings, starting first thing every Monday morning. In this presentation, I bring my experience in working with teams that are feeling a burden of meetings due to their move to Agile. I bring my guidance around how to alleviate meeting burnout. How can teams hold effective, decisive meetings? How can agile coaches ensure useful, goal-focused meetings? And what flows and patterns of meetings can help teams, product owners, and stakeholders derive greater and greater benefits from adopting an Agile process? With the right culture and good meeting management, teams won't dread Mondays anymore. Benefits: This presentation is intended to help attendees evaluate their own meeting messes and take away specific information about how to clean them up. I have written a book “Collaboration Explained” that provides detailed background to what I am presenting. This talk is intended to deliver some of that very specific guidance through anecdotes of actual experiences from my work as an Agile coach. My goal is that, walking out of this presentation, each attendee will have a list of at least 5 practices they are willing to change about how they currently run their Agile meetings. Additionally, my presentation style is to have minimal bullets and lots of pictures that are backed up by personal anecdotes and straightforward recommendations. Finally, this talk is not geared to one Agile methodology over another. It is truly intended for process improvement regardless of your preferred set of Agile practices. Content Outline(very very high level!): I. Why “I Don’t Like Mondays”—how meetings kill our Mondays II. 10 common agile meeting dysfunctions and the impacts on agile teams III. Collaboration salves and bromos that perk up meetings, create smooth team flow around meetings, and increase productivity and morale IV. Don’t forget the guerillas—helping to improve meetings even when it’s not “your” meeting V. Your “To Do” list for the very next meeting you run/attend—what are the 5 things you are willing to try (aka “The Art of the Possible”)

I am an agile coach with Rally Software Development in Boulder CO with almost 30 years of experience in the Software Industry ranging from programmer to project manager to methodologist. I am a Certified ScrumMaster, Certified Scrum Trainer, and Certified Scrum Practitioner as well as a Certified Professional Facilitator. I have spoken at numerous conferences about Agile practices, coaching, Lean organizations, collaboration, and Agile quality. As author of the book "Collaboration Explained" I have a passion around how teams work in an Agile self-organizing environment. This has also led to my interest in promoting lean, knowledge-creating software organizations that truly rely on the wisdom of teams, seek to increase resource effectiveness, and work aggressively to minimize all forms of waste in the software process. I hold a master of Arts from Michigan State University and a Masters in Computer Science from Johns Hopkins University.