Objective(s) of the session:

Session participants will receive an understanding of the dynamics involved in social self-organization, and will be taught a number of leading-edge tools and techniques for optimizing team performance and reaching cohesion without influencing the self- organizing process.

Intended audience and prerequisites:

Agile coaches, or anyone experienced in agile processes who is interested in finding out why they work and how to make them work better

Contents:

Self-organization of human beings is a tricky thing. Agile coaches, especially ScrumMasters, are constantly challenged with how to motivate/persuade/trick their teams into self-organizing and doing things, without telling them what to do, but there is very little information or training on this topic. Allowing a team to self- organize along the lines of “oh well, they’re all adults, they’ll figure it out” is just as irresponsible as reverting to the command-and control school of management. So, how should one go about it? This tutorial presents an approach utilizing leading- edge research and techniques from social complexity science and team dynamics to change the dynamics of a team with the aim of optimizing their work together.

Topics:

An introduction to socially complex systems and self-organization

• Social complexity and team dynamics
• Rank and Power issues
• Influence and Persuasion

Understanding cognitive bias

Intervention models and techniques

• The Heat model
• The Flow model

Social network analysis and stimulation

Case studies and real-world applications

Format and length:

This tutorial will be held as a talk interspersed with exercises and discussion, allowing us to address real needs of attendees.

Speaker: Joseph Pelrine