This month’s meeting will follow our annual pattern of having a joint meeting with the Kansas City IIBA chapter.    Because of this, we’ll be meeting at 6:30 PM Tuesday July 21, 2012

To register for this meeting please visit www.agilekc.org.

Meeting Topic:  Team Toxins – How to grow better teams

Meeting Description: 

If you work with one or more people in some way, shape or form, you are on a team.  Team health and ability are crucial to the degree of success in any endeavor.  This is even more critical for teams following the Scrum and Lean frameworks. The founders of Scrum knew this when they developed the practices. In fact, Jeff Sutherland recently wrote about studies that looked at the performance data of 3,800 different teams. Results reflected that it took the worst team two thousand weeks to do what the best team could do in one week!  When we say teams are core to success, we aren’t joking!

At this month’s joint IIBA and Agile KC meeting, Martin Olson and Kay Harper will we will address four “Team Toxins,” behaviors that undermine the formation of “good teams.” We will do so through an interactive exercise that will help you identify Team Toxins, understand their impact to your team and demonstrate an approach for addressing toxins. 

This session will provide learnings for everyone, regardless of whether your teams is following an Agile or Lean process.   The session will draw from the Organizational Relationship Systems Coaching (ORSC) body of knowledge.  You can learn more about ORSC at: http://www.centerforrightrelationship.com/organization-relationship-systems-coaching.html

Speaker Bios:

Martin Olson

Martin Olson is a Principal with Silicon Prairie Solutions.  Silicon Prairie Solutions helps organizations and their associates grow and adapt more Lean|Agile abilities through training, coaching and mentoring.  Drawing on over twenty years of IT experience, Martin helps individuals and organizations define and execute a roadmap to improve their process.  Focusing on continual improvement and metric based decision making, the resulting roadmaps are sustained by the teams that are implementing them, leading to true lean leadership. 

Martin founded the Agile KC (www.agilekc.org) group and continues to lead it after twelve years.  In addition he has been a founding member of the Agilehood KC (http://kc.agilehood.org/) who’s mission is to ‘Connect groups and communities to foster collaboration’ in the Kansas City Metropolitan area.  He holds an MBA from the University of Kansas and the following certifications: PMI-ACP, CSM, SPC, SPCT.   Martin is also a member of the International Coaching Federation and graduate of Organizational Relationship and Systems Coaching (ORSC). You can reach Martin at molson@siliconprairiesolutions.com. 

Kay Harper

Kay Harper is a coach, trainer and consultant committed to developing excellence in leadership, teams and partnerships. Her current area of focus is assisting organizations with positive change through various methods including Lean and Agile frameworks and Systems Coaching. Kay also works with the Johnson County Community College Continuing Education branch to develop and deliver Agile course offerings.

Prior to launching Kay Harper Consulting LLC, Kay worked for 20 years performing coaching, mentoring, training, project and product management in a variety of industries. Kay started utilizing Agile principles and practices in 2008. She quickly determined that Agile and Lean principles, when wholly implemented, give organizations a competitive advantage in the new, Information Age. She also recognized the importance of organizational systems and their impact on success. She values opportunities to teach and coach others to see similar outcomes.

A member of the International Coaching Federation and graduate of Organizational Relationship and Systems Coaching (ORSC). Kay is also a founding member of Agilehood KC and a long-standing member of Agile KC and the KC Project Management Institute chapter. She holds a Project Management Institute certification as an Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP) and ICAgile certification as a Certified Agile Team Coach (ICP-TC). She is also a Scaled Agile Framework Certified Consultant (SAFe CSP) and a Scrum Alliance Certified Scrummaster (CSM).