Leading Answers

Leadership and agility insights
Mike@LeadingAnswers.com

The Evolution of Teams

The Evolution of TeamsMy other workshop submission for the Agile 2015 Conference is titled “The Evolution of Teams” and examines one team that stopped doing the traditional agile practices is more agile than ever.

Agile practices such as daily stand up meetings, sprint planning and retrospectives are great tools for encouraging team members to share information, collectively make decisions and improve. However, how do you maintain active participation for long periods without burn-out or boredom?

As companies recognize the productivity of high performing teams and bring new projects to established teams rather than disband and reform teams, how do we keep things fresh? My session is a case study of an award winning agile team that has been delivering projects for over 7 years. It examines how the original core practices that are familiar to any team starting agile have evolved into new practices while honouring the original values and goals.

A casual observer may be concerned: “What, no stand-up meetings, sprint planning meetings or retrospectives? You guys are not agile at all!” However teams can be agile without doing the traditional agile practices. Agility, after all, is a mindset not a To-Do list, and this session introduces the practices of “Show-and-tell”, “Tech-talk” and “Sense-Pull” amongst others.  They may not work for your team, but show the journey of one team’s progression through adaptation and refinement of process. (Along with all the bumps, set back and mistakes made along the way too.)

If the presentation gets accepted I will share the main topics of the session here for feedback before delivery.

Books

PM Illustrated 2026

Beyond Agile

PMI-ACP Exam Prep

Agile Illustrated

Agile Fundamentals

PMI-ACP Workbook

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