Some months ago I read a fascinating article from the British newspaper, The Guardian, forwarded to me by a colleague who knows my interest in the area of what is commonly called “gender intelligence”, or the relationship between brain chemistry and structure and male/female behaviors. Written by Madeleine Bunting, the article claims that virtually all of the scientific studies purporting to show that there are indeed, biological differences between men and women, are either misleading or so badly bungled that their results have no merit. She claims that the so-called breakthroughs in neuroscience, genetics, and evolutionary psychology suggesting the feminist consensus of the last 30 or so years that gender is entirely a social construct may be inaccurate, simply wrong or bad science.
Our experience thus far has been that while self-organizing teams may enable the organization to operate from day to day without active management, a more integrated organization and more productive teams make the value-add of managers highly transparent and place a premium on specific leadership skills.
From Adam Light, Chris Vike and Diana Larsen. "Teamwork Required: Managing Agile Application Delivery in a Matrix Organization", Cutter Agile Product & Project Management Executive Update, Vol. 12, No. 19. October 2011.
For a free download of the article pdf, register at the Cutter site. You can also order reprints from Cutter to use...
December 12 & 13
8:30 am – 5:30 pm
Hotel Vintage Plaza
422 SW Broadway, Portland, OR 97205
Price: $1750 per participant*
Group Rate: Register 3 or more participants at $1550 per person
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Course Overview
Managers have a unique role to fulfill in an Agile world. Whether leading a shift to Agile methods or guiding a newly Agile organization, effective managers join their current skills with strategic tools learned in this course to keep people and teams on track.
This course gives you the hands-on experience and builds the...
Over at her “Insights You Can Use” blog Esther Derby has posted two pieces on how teams can benefit from the lens of Double Loop Learning in their retrospectives.
Team member: How will we know when we've found an impediment? What do they look like?
Sponsor: How can I know what impediments block our teams' productivity?
Scrum Master: How can I get the team to mention impediments in our daily meeting and retrospectives?
Product Owner: Why is everyone whining about impediments? Why don't we just get the work done?
It's all fine and well to say identify and remove impediments but often we bump up against a stumbling block, find a way around, and make things work anyway without further thought. It's second nature. Moving forward is what's important. And,...