SPaMCAST 505 – Coaching, Tameflow and A Servant Management, Essays and Discussions

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SPaMCAST 505 features our recent essay titled, Coaching: Six Modes of Operation. On the surface, coaching is a fairly simple role. A coach has six basic modes of operation.  But…if you peel back the layers just a little bit you will find that coaching is part art and part science.

In the second spot of this week’s magazine have the penultimate session of our read of Steve Tendon and Wolfram Müller’s Hyper-Productive Knowledge Work Performance, The TameFlow Approach.  

I have moved things around a bit and complete this edition of the SPaMCAST with an essay on servant leadership from the Software Sensei, Kim Pries.  Regardless of how you define servant leadership, I think we would all agree that good leadership is critical.

Re-Read Saturday News

This week we begin the read of The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande (use the link and buy a copy so you can read along). The version of the book we are reading is published by Metropolitan Books, 2009 and is the 22nd printing. The book has nine chapters and with acknowledgments has 209 pages. My reading plan is one chapter per week, therefore, the re-read will span 11 weeks.  

 

Current Installment:

Week 1 – Approach and Introduction – https://bit.ly/2LYi9Lv

 

Next SPaMCAST

SPaMCAST 506 will feature our interview with Mark Kilby.  Mark and I discussed agile in distributed environments. Agile in distributed environments is doable but it isn’t easy, Mark provides guidance and advice.

 

SPaMCAST 446 – Questions, Go-To People, Servant Leadership

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SPaMCAST 446 will feature our essay on questions.  Questions are a coach and facilitator’s secret power! But, with great power comes great responsibility.  

Our second column is from Gene Hughson.  Gene and I discussed his essay Go-to People Considered Harmful originally published on his blog Form Follows Function (www.genehughson.wordpress.com).  The concept may sound counterintuitive, but it is not.

The third column is from Kim Pries, the Software Sensei.  In this installment, Kim dives into the topic of servant leadership.

Re-Read Saturday News

 

Impact of Six Additional Leadership Styles on Adopting and Sustaining Agile

Leadership Styles

Leadership style has a direct impact on an organization’s ability to adopt and sustain Agile.  Some leadership styles are more supportive and others evoke more of response that is epitomized by locking feral cats and dogs in a room (nobody wins). In a previous entry we reviewed four common leadership styles; six additional styles include:

 

Post-Agile Age: A Lack of Systems Thinking/Management

 

The Agile movement was built on a premise that skilled, motivated individuals working on teams could self-organize and self-manage in order to deliver value and make their customers happy. Acceptance of this premise means that leaders, who are generally already successful, need to change how they make decisions on a day-to-day basis. Changing how successful leaders and managers work is hard.  Some organizations and leaders have been able to change how they worked and embraced a systems-thinking view of their organization. This change has shifted significant levels of decision making from middle management into the team. The change in the approach to thinking and decision-making Agile is based on several criteria:

 

SPaMCAST 411 – Servant Leadership, Systems Thinking, Craftsmanship, Requirements

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The Software Process and Measurement Cast 411 includes four columns!  The first is our thoughts on servant leadership. A servant leader facilitates collaboration not only by creating a learning environment but also by helping the team to establish a vision and goals.  Servant leadership is a powerful tool to unlock the ability of teams or groups to deliver value. Many of the links between servant leadership and Agile are because servant leadership enables several of the principles in the Agile Manifesto, but servant leadership doesn’t work in every scenario. This essay will explore the origins of servant leadership, its ties with Agile and when to apply a servant leadership approach.

Jon Quigley anchors the cast with the second installment in a three-part arc on requirements in his  “The Alpha-Omega of Product Development” column. This week Jon discusses managing requirements.

Gene Hughson brings his Form Follows Function blog to the Software Process and Measurement Cast.  In this visit, Gene discusses his recent blog entry titled, “Organizations as Systems – “Uneasy Lies the Head that Wears the Crown”.  Gene points out that software development organizations live in a complex world where single factor explanations are dangerous.

Kim Pries, the Software Sensi, brings a great discussion of the concept of craftsmanship in software development to the Cast.  Craftsmanship and quality are related, but craftsmanship is a more intimate and personal attribute.