Looking ahead to 2019!

Welcome 2019!

CoLeadTeam remains thankful for 2018 and the clients and students who trust us as guides in business agility. But it’s time to ring in the new year and bring to fruition the new things our team has been working on!

Announcing West End Conference Center:

West End Conference Center will not only be home to CoLeadTeam classes, but will also host a wide variety of workshops and programs from successful authors such as Dr. Harvey Robbins and Michael Nir.

In addition to having training rooms available for rent, West End Conference Center features individual Agile and Scrum coaching, “drop in” work space for individuals and small groups to rent. We’re up and running temporarily at 1550 Utica Ave South, Suite 120 in St. Louis Park. Our new home will be in the same set of towers at 1600 Utica Ave South, Suite 100 in St. Louis Park.

Stay tuned to the West End Conference Center site for grand opening details: https://www.westendconferencecenter.com/

Ignite Agility™ Meetup:

CoLeadTeam’s Ignite Agility™ program provides clients a way to hit the ground running with their Agile and Scrum adoptions. We observe lots of inspired students and graduates become igniters of agility so why limit Ignite Agility™ to adoption kick starts?

In Q1 2019, the West End Conference Center will be home to the Ignite Agility™ Meetup. The meetup will provide individuals a way to network and support others in the community.

To join the conversation and get information about events as they unfold, stay tuned to: https://www.meetup.com/Ignite-Agility/

Scrum Day MN 2019:

Scrum Day MN continues to provide our community an opportunity to learn, network and support one another in the Agile and Scrum communities with proceeds benefiting a local charity. It has outgrown its home! It will still be right here in Minnesota but will relocate in 2019 to the Earle Brown Heritage Center.

Save the date – October 2, 2019.

Stay tuned to the Scrum Day site for details as they unfold: https://www.scrumdaymn.com/

Continued Advanced Agile and Scrum Training:

CoLeadTeam continues to bring advanced Agile and Scrum training to the MN Agile community. Stay tuned to our LinkedIn, Facebook page or website for information on new advanced offerings. In the meantime, check out these opportunities.

We're so excited for everything 2019 has in store- hope to have you tag along with us!

What is a ScrumMaster?

In a recent Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) course, a student new to Scrum was a bit confused by the repeated reference to the ScrumMaster as a “coach”.  “What do you mean coaching or when does this coaching happen?” was the question raised. Caught a bit off guard, or more importantly caught up in my own internal dialog of, “Well, doesn’t everyone who comes to a CSM already know this?” For a moment I was a bit dumbfounded. Then I realized that this is the very question that we need to spend more time answering.

Let’s just start with coaching. What do you think of when you think of coaching? Do you think of a sports team that has a coach? Do you think of losing weight and maybe hiring a personal trainer as a fitness coach? Do you think of accomplishing personal goals through engaging a life coach to help you stay focused? In any of these instances, the person that is in the coaching position does not do the work for the person being coached. The coach’s role is to:

·       Ask all kinds of questions – the obvious question, the dumb question, the hard question, etc

·       Make observations and play back what they are seeing, what they are hearing, what they are observing

·       Make recommendations, suggestions, provide alternative view points

·       Listen

·       Remind the coachee of the very goals that were set out to be accomplished and take stock of reality – is the goal being met or not with the actions the coachee is taking

Scrum is a different way to do work. It may sound simple to change to a new way of doing work, but many find the practice of Scrum difficult to accomplish. The official Scrum Guide is free to all and is available here.

The Scrum Guide is clear that a ScrumMaster does not only coach the team of people doing work or developing the product that will be used by customers, but they also have the responsibility of coaching the Product Owner and the Organization. The Product Owner gives direction about the product, and the greater Organization is comprised of other experts, users, customers and stakeholders about interacting with the Scrum Team.

That may sound like a big job, and it is!  This is why a ScrumMaster is a full-time job and not one that can be done effectively as part time. It’s not administrative at all. It’s about people. It’s about individuals and interactions. It’s about setting goals, accomplishing goals and more importantly, what needs to change if goals are not accomplished.

Think back to sports teams you may be a part of that had a coach. Or any sports teams that you watch. How many are successful without an effective coach? How many Olympic athletes achieve a medal without a coach? This idea is critical to a successful Scrum adoption. The ScrumMaster is the coach to the Development Team, the Product Owner and the Organization regarding making this change and when things get tough, not back-sliding into old habits or unsuccessful approaches that detract from the goal.

If you would like to learn more about Scrum or the ScrumMaster, refer to the free Scrum Guide. You can also join me for a Certified ScrumMaster course hosted by Hollstadt Consulting on Oct 2.

Author: Christian Antonie

Collaborative Leadership Team Members Earn Prestigious Path to CSP Educator℠ Credentials

Johnson and Antoine part of first group certified in the United States

MINNEAPOLIS (September 10, 2018) – Collaborative Leadership Team (CoLead Team), an industry leader in providing Scrum and Agile coaching and training, is proud to announce that two of its team members have earned the rigorous Path to CSP Educator℠ credentials enabling them to deliver the Advanced Certified Scrum Master (A-CSM℠) certification. CoLead Team Founder and CEO, Angela Johnson and Certified Scrum Trainer, Christian Antoine are two of the first group of ten individuals to achieve this certification in the United States.

“For Christian and I to be among the first group that achieved the Path to CSP Educator is profoundly important to us,” said Johnson. “It demonstrates how committed we are to our own continuous improvement and continual advancement of Scrum. We are passionate about providing a path forward for solving problems and accomplishing business objectives!”

To achieve the Path to CSP Educator certification, Johnson and Antoine had to demonstrate advanced learning techniques that will be used in the program to the Scrum Alliance and undergo Scrum Alliance® approval of their materials and approach.

As a Path to CSP Educator, Johnson and Antoine will serve as mentors to individuals pursuing their A-CSM certification and validate all of the A-CSM learning objectives Those who pursue A-CSM certification must demonstrate their experience working as a Scrum Master and work with a CSP Educator prove their ability to facilitate dialogue and work with teams as an effective Scrum Master.

In addition to being among the first to achieve the CSP Educator status, Johnson is a Certified Scrum Trainer and Certified Less Practitioner and Scrum@Scale Trainer. In 2010, she founded CoLead Teem to provide education and coaching to clients adopting Scrum and Agile. Prior to founding the company, Johnson was an independent Scrum Master consultant to a variety of companies including Jostens, Wells Fargo, Thomson Reuters and Best Buy. A graduate of Hamline University (B.A.) and the University of St. Thomas (M.B.C.), Johnson resides in Wayzata, Minn.

Working with Agile since 2008, Antoine’s diversified experience includes its application within the medical device, finance, healthcare, securities, international law and agricultural industries. He’s a Certified Scrum Trainer and Agile Transformation Coach and consults, trains and coaches teams and companies on Agile at all levels of the organization. He enjoys helping others see there is a different way to approach work, at a sustainable pace, and achieve outcomes that delight customers. Prior to CoLead Team, Antoine worked for Medtronic, Hollstadt & Associates and Computer Science Corporation. He is a graduate of St. John’s University and resides in Golden Valley, Minn.

About Collaborative Leadership Team

Founded in 2010, Collaborative Leadership Team is an industry leader in providing Scrum and Agile coaching and training to companies in a variety of industries including: software, hardware, services, marketing and more. Practicing what they teach, the employees of the Twin Cities-based company use Scrum to manage their services organization. The breadth and depth of Collaborative Leadership Team's experience extends beyond Scrum and includes Kanban, eXtreme Programming, Facilitation and Organizational Change for business agility.

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The Secret to Being a Great ScrumMaster or Agile Coach: The People Chip

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We are seeing a trend in our classes and coaching engagements.  We walk in “off the street” and immediately pinpoint the people problems.  Clients repeatedly ask “How do you know that?”  “Who is giving you this information?”   They are dumbfounded when we say “Nobody did.  We picked up on it right away.” “What is the secret to being a great ScrumMaster?”

How has Collaborative Leadership Team cultivated this “people chip”?  Is it because of Certification as Scrum Professionals or Trainers?  Are we psychics?  Hardly!

We simply pay attention. We aren’t “tuned out” looking at a device or taking notes.  We are actively employing the Scrum values of Focus and Respect – giving full attention to the conversation and interactions at hand.

This means we are present in the moment.  Our people chips have become calibrated because Scrum is the way we do work – not something we incorrectly view as a project methodology.

Whether we are teaching or coaching, we look people in the eye. We listen.  We observe body language, non-verbal cues such as reactions from people based on what is said.  And then we coach.  This includes asking questions, enabling conversation, paraphrasing, etc.

Want to begin calibrating your People Chip?  Try these two tips:

1. Stop being the Product Owner or Team’s Secretary: Do you feel like you have to be writing or typing in order to add value? Are you updating charts, tasks, typing into some sort of tool? Get your hands of the P.O. and the Team’s work! What are you missing because your Focus is elsewhere? You could have been asking a question to get things moving in the right direction, observed body language that let you know everyone was not in agreement on what Done looks like, or picking up on any number of things.

2. Stop being the Authority on the Product or Technology: As the ScrumMaster, or certainly as a Coach, you are neutral. This means that you do not assert an opinion on the Product or the Technology. If you do that you are enabling the wrong behavior. Hand someone a fish and they have food for today. Teach them to fish and they have food for a lifetime. Your job as the ScrumMaster is to cultivate and enable cooperation, collaboration and team work to lead the Product Owner and Team to consensus. You do this through planting seeds, asking questions and getting the right people together to work on the problem at hand – not by being the authority on any technology or product attribute.

Want to learn more? Click here to view our upcoming classes and register for our next CSM or CSPO course.

Author: Collaborative Leadership Team. Learn more about our coaches and offerings here. 

ScrumMaster Certification: Answering Crucial Questions – Isn't a ScrumMaster just a Project Manager by Another Name?

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In prior posts in this series, we have examined a number of crucial questions regarding the Scrum Framework and the role that a ScrumMaster plays in addressing them.  We conclude this series with an overview of how the role of ScrumMaster differs from that of a traditional Project Manager.

Before highlighting these differences and answering the question,”Isn’t a ScrumMaster just a Project Manager by Another Name?”, it is important to note that Project Managers have value.  Most are good and decent people who are trying to add value wherever they can in the pursuit of a project objective.  With that said, the goals of a project manager differ remarkably from those of a ScrumMaster.

A project manager is charged with ensuring the project goal is achieved within the scope, schedule, cost and quality parameters set by the project sponsor or project steering committee.  While they may discuss customer value or the team in pursuit of this goal, both of these topics are secondary to it.  The team is often seen as a means to end, a method of accomplishing the project.

In contrast, a ScrumMaster views the team as a source of creative, innovative energy that, when set loose in a self-organizing environment and served by an educated Product Owner and ScrumMaster, can achieve amazing results.  While this may sound a little new age, it is a crucial distinction between the two roles.  While a Project Manager is concerned with plans, controlling change and reporting the status of the effort to the various project stakeholders, the ScrumMaster trusts the Team and the Product Owner to work through the framework to address planning, changes and the reporting of status to stakeholders.  While these items look different in Scrum, they achieve the same objective: freeing the ScrumMaster to focus on things like Team dynamics, event facilitation, and impediment removal.

A ScrumMaster is also concerned with the technical practices of the Team.  While items such as the Team’s automation approach to continuous product integration are of minimal interest to most Project Managers, they fall clearly within the purview of the ScrumMaster.  A ScrumMaster is a strong advocate for the Team adopting these practices and is continually educating the Team on their benefits and pushing them to continually search for, and stretch, the technical excellence of their product.  Project managers might inquire as to whether the project team is controlling their source code or is regularly testing the application, but rarely will a traditional project manager push beyond this cursory inquiry.

In short, a Project Manager exists to serve the project stakeholders by providing them with an idea of the project’s progress through indirect means – how much money has been spent, how time has expired in a flawed plan, etc.  A ScrumMaster instead does anything that will help the Team be a better version of itself, to, in the words of Jeff McKenna, the coach of the first Scrum Team ever, “help the Team be awesome”.

Click here to view our upcoming classes and register for our next CSM or CSPO course.

Author: Collaborative Leadership Team. Learn more about our coaches and offerings here.