Onboarding and Enabling Team Success

Summer Mau, Valmont

Summer shared that onboarding and team success is based on how people hear and process information.

Agile gave us the foundation, skills, tools and confidence to invest in our teams. There was a high level of keeping people accountable. For example, if we moved one thing on a team, all of these people are going to have to change. Summer’s presentation and slides can be found here.

Splitting employees into stable/functional teams

• Stable team: stays together on new projects, scrum master, product lead, tech lead
• Functional team: comes in and out as needed to help with the stable team

Note that neither team can live or work without the other team.

Continuous support after implementation

At Valmont, leaders do a “walkaround” and go to the teams to talk at a high level of what was accomplished, what’s holding us up and what’s coming up.

• Everyone can get aligned all together
• Shows team support even if the leader didn’t have a part in this project
• Quarterly update with the leadership team
• Demos – realign the whole product, scheduled, to see it in action and helps the leader understand this product/project
• Utilizing resources and training within the company is part of onboarding for new employees

Agile in action

• Prove it’s going to work
• Do “basic” first and perfect each step

Things we learned

• Communication
• Visibility across a department
• Jobs and tasks
• Retros
• Goals
• Accountability
• Tasks and impediments are visible
• Positive pressure from teammates
• Implement processes
• Size tasks and address things in a different way

Ready to learn more?

• Get started with a Measurement & Continuous Improvement Strategy
• Explore the TeamHealth Radar assessment to measure the health of Agile teams