Esther Derby

What Does Self-Organizing Team Really Mean?

3:15 PM MDT

“Self-organizing team” may be the most over-used, mis-understood, vague, and mis-leading term of the decade. So what is a self-organizing team? How are self-organizing teams different from other teams? How can managers and team members get the self-organizing mojo going? What are the challenges that self-organizing teams face?

In this workshop, we'll explore all these questions and get beyond the buzzword.

Scaling Agile Teams

5:00 PM MDT

Agile methods depend on effective cross-functional teams. We’ve heard many Agile success stories…at the team level. But what happens when a product can’t be delivered by one team? What do you do when the “team” that’s needed to work on a particular product is 20 people? Or 20 teams? One response is to create a coordinating role, decompose work, or add layers of hierarchy. Those solutions introduce overhead and often slow down decision making. There are other options to link teams, and ensure communication and integration across many teams. There are no simple answers. But there are design principles for defining workable arrangements when the product is bigger than a handful of agile teams.

In this talk, I'll cover principles and practices and explain how they work together to address coordination, integration, and technical integrity.

The Language of Change

9:00 AM MDT

Language shapes thought, and thought shapes action. People talk about installing change, driving change, making change happen. When change doesn't happen as fast as they'd like, the people who want change talk about resistance, and try to kindle a sense of urgency.

What if the language we use makes it harder to bring about the differences we want to see?

I was educated to be logical, objective, “stick to the facts” and rely on reason. But that’s not the only way our brains work. Metaphors pervade our lives and thinking–so much so that we often don’t notice them. Metaphors “shape what we think,” what we see, and therefore affect our choices and options.

Consider the title “Agile Evangelist.” Evangelists are people who are imbued with The Truth–and want to convince everyone else of it. Sometimes evangelists succeed–through persuasion or harsher means. Would you welcome an evangel, come to tell you how wrong you’ve been?

In this talk I'll explore the words we use when we talk about change–and how they may get in our way. I'll look at the nature of change in a complex environment. And we'll try on some different words that might open different possibilities.

Power and Empowerment

10:45 AM MDT

Managers want teams to be empowered….but don’t want to give up decision making authority. Teams want empowerment, but may not know how to act on the power they already have. Executives want to drive engagement and action, but see only half-hearted compliance.

In all of these examples, power dynamics are at play. Words won’t matter until people acknowledge power. Once people acknowledge the fact of power, it’s possible to look at how it is affecting people and actions. When we see power, we can see how power can make it harder–not easier–to achieve desired results.

In this session, we’ll explore different definitions of power, where power comes from, and how people respond to power.

You will learn:

Two definitions of power, and how each affects leadership
Seven sources of power
How the use of power impacts peoples core concerns
How to boost creativity and productivity by addressing sources of power and core concerns