Being a scrum master, I often worry if velocity looms too large for me. From project forecasting to sprint planning to team retrospectives, velocity metrics are up in my grill more than bratwurst at a Green Bay Packers tailgate. Even from a “book learnin’” standpoint, velocity is front and center: “The Scrum Master is accountable for the Velocity … of the Team.” That big V Velocity is really intimidating! But does velocity warrant such verbal (and mental) emphasis?
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The latest from Alley’s team of experts. Filter By Topic: Alley Insight
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John Ragozzine, Director of Agile Process, and Agile Process Leader Ken Medley launched a new podcast Two Scrums Up this month, available for download and subscribing in all the places you’d expect, such as Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and Spotify!
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In this piece you’ll read research on the specific ways in which institutional barriers to psychological safety manifest for minorities in the workplace. And, as promised in part one, you’ll learn 10 practical, research-based strategies we’re using at Alley for creating inclusive, psychologically safe workplaces while honoring the intersection of overlapping identities that each team member holds.
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Earlier this year, Alley teammates attended SRCCON:PRODUCT in Philadelphia along with 150 product thinkers from publishing organizations—including reporters, strategists, editors, entrepreneurs, and others—at Temple University’s campus for the first conference by, for, and about product and news. SRCCON is an events series produced by OpenNews that “connects a network of developers, designers, journalists, and editors…
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Check out how Alley partnered with the Kauffman Foundation to help redesign kauffman.org
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Back in January, Alley gathered for our 10th Anniversary retreat. Here’s a quick recap of what we did.
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If you’re “unexpectedly locked out of the office,” as we’re calling it, now is the time to adapt practices to manage stakeholders and customers effectively. No matter whether you’re remote or in the conference room, the goals remain the same: Keep everyone focused on what matters, keep moving on projects, and keep to financial and organizational milestones effectively (with only a few more gray hairs by the time the crisis is over).
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Whether your workplace is remote permanently or temporarily, psychological safety is elementary in the experience of high-performing teams. Without psychological safety, the consequences would be far-reaching and destructive to the individual and the organization. But cultivating psychological safety is hard work, especially on remote teams.
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If your team has found themselves locked out of the scrum room and working in a new or unfamiliar way, resolving the urgent and important impediments facing your team needs to be their primary focus.
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Because of concern over a widespread outbreak of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), many companies, including Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Google, have asked their team members to work from home. We at Alley don’t want to grow our business on fear, uncertainty, or doubt, but we do want to help other Scrum practitioners through a temporary transition to working from home.
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Team MAGIC, or “The Magicians” (as they are known within Alley) found themselves with a rare opportunity to link their in-person retreat with the American Alliance of Museums yearly conference in New Orleans. Team Magic has worked on many museum projects and a few members of the team were speaking at the conference last year. So, instead of choosing a random city somewhere in the continental United States of America, the Magicians set their sites on the birthplace of jazz.
