The Human Side of Agile - How to Help Your Team Deliver

Does your Agile team experience the following common problems?

• Members use established Agile practices and tools, but with little motivation or buy-in.
• Even though the team is cross-functional, members don’t collaborate effectively or leverage everyone’s abilities.
• Rather than act empowered, they wait for permission and approval.
• Improvement has stalled — the team performs okay, but it can do so much better.

You can’t solve these problems with more practices, rules, and tools. These are people problems.

If you’re a manager, Scrum Master, project manager, or delivery lead — or you aspire to be — you can make all the difference to your Agile team. Not by being a taskmaster, administrator, or process enforcer, but by leading your team to greatness. Take this book on your Agile leadership journey, and it will help you to:

• Build and cultivate an engaged team that can handle almost any challenge
• Catalyze team communication, collaboration, and continuous improvement
• Establish yourself as a confident and capable leader who adds value
• Reap the full benefits of Agile in the real world with real people

“I’ve rarely seen so much useful, concrete advice packaged in such a simple and accessible way.’ —Henrik Kniberg, Agile coach and author, Lean from the Trenches

“I just found the next must-read book for our entire leadership team.’ —Tricia Broderick, Director of Development, TechSmith

“Agile teams need effective leaders who ‘get’ the people stuff. Without that you’re merely going through the Agile motions.’ —Scott Ambler, co-creator of Disciplined Agile Delivery

While readable from cover to cover, the book is written as practical answers to the 80+ most relevant and pressing questions that team leaders ask, such as:

“How Can I Help the Team Buy In?”
“What If I Can't Work Full-Time as the Team’s Leader?”
“What Actions Will Build the Team's Trust in Me?”
“How Can I Mitigate the Damage of Performance Reviews?”
“What If a Member Doesn't Fit With the Team?”
“How Can We Focus on Our Work With So Many Meetings?”
“How Do I Get Stakeholders and Managers on My Side?”
“How Do I Defuse Resistance?”
“How Can I Make Changes Stick?”
“How Do We Avoid Reverting to Old Behaviors?”

With forewords by Agile pioneer Jim Highsmith and responsibility guru Christopher Avery.

Gil Broza specializes in helping tech leaders deliver far better results by upgrading their organizations' Agile ways of working. He also supports their non-software colleagues in creating real business agility in their teams. Gil has helped over 100 organizations achieve real, sustainable improvements by working with their unique value delivery contexts and focusing on mindset, culture, and leadership. Companies also invite Gil for leadership advisory, strategic mapping of their improvement journey, facilitation of organizational mindset workshops, and keynotes for internal conferences.

Gil has published four practical books:

• Deliver Better Results provides 10 systemic strategies for sustainably improving value delivery
• The Agile Mind-Set helps practitioners and leaders alike master Agile thinking and go beyond particular frameworks and practices
• The Human Side of Agile guides Agile team leaders in facilitating team excellence in the real, messy world
• Agile for Non-Software Teams helps managers outside of software/IT consider, design, start, and grow effective custom implementations