Talk: Danger! Collaboration Thieves!
Speakers directory
Speaker:
Sophie Hayden
Talk description
Title:
Danger! Collaboration Thieves!
Short synopsis:
When it comes to agile software development, you can have the best team, the best people, the best set up, the best stakeholders...but things ARE going to go wrong. In this talk, with some social science as our guide, we'll accept that we are always going to face those hard times...when progress seems slow, when communication is hard and when collaboration feels like the last thing we want to do: sound familiar? This talk identifies where and why the "collaboration thieves" strike in a project, and how teams can combat them, adapt to them and keep communicating and collaborating even when its really hard to do so...and ultimately come out performing better than ever! Beat the collaboration thieves and watch your teams thrive.
Max size: 500 chars
Long synopsis (optional):
Hi there! I'm going to assume that this is for the internal review process only and speak quite informally so I can be as transparent as possible about what is in my talk. As a bit of background, I submitted this talk last year to Agile on the Beach but it was rejected based on my synopsis for not being agile enough. I then went and did the talk at SwanseaCon in September and I had really positive feedback. One attendee put on twitter that it was "the most in-touch-with-the-real-world agile talk I've seen to date, from @myname. Sharing the realities of failure, growing / changing teams, and communication - and bringing muchneeded flexibility to processes". I'm not giving you this feedback to toot my own horn, but to demonstrate that this talk has been positively received but more importantly is definitely to do with agile!!! So to get to the point, my talk is focussed around how, when teams form, they grow and develop as a working unit through distinct phases, and how collaboration is going to be hindered at each stage based on the particular nature and charachteristics of each one. I'm basing this from Tuckman's 1965 Team & Development Group Model, where teams go through the following stages: forming, storming, norming and performing. I talk about the characteristics of each stage, and underline how this is inevitable when new teams come together. I talk about past experiences to relate this to, but most importantly I talk about what to do to help team members cope with these stages so they can get to performing together to the best of their ability. I then talk about how this isn't just for new teams, because the "change curve" means that even one new team member can cause the same disruptions to team cohesion. Further to this, we look at the Shannon-Weaver mathematical communication model (1949) to further hit home why team members have so many problems communicating and collaborating effectively in the difficult periods. We then talk about various methods to improve this - distinct visualisation methods that have helped me and my teams specifically - but the real crux of it is that you just have to accept that these challenging times are going to happen, and ultimately by embracing this we learn and grow from the challenges and come out better performing than ever. I have my slides for the talk ready if you would like to see a copy of them. Thank you!!
Max size: 5000 chars
Tags:
Speaker directory:
Listed in directory
Not listed
Speakers directory