Bob Allen on "Coaching Teams to Do the Impossible..."

Welcome back to JC-JUG! Our December presenter is Bob Allen.

>>> About the speaker

Bob Allen, when not being mistaken for Santa at this time of year, coaches as part of a special unit that was once DevJam. This means that he both teaches, and learns, every day, from and with an amazing cast of characters, both clients and fellow coaches. His long and varied past in manufacturing, banking, dot-com era startup, his own software as a service company, and even public education have afforded him the privilege of working with some that are very likely to be active in this and other similar meetups, and/or running them. For extra grins, he has run a twice-monthly code retreat you may have heard of: Code Craft Saturdays and Sundays (https://www.eventbrite.com/o/code-craft-saturdays-and-sundays-15457506392), since 2013.

>>> About the presentation

Full title: "Coaching Teams to Do the Impossible …as they see it, and, without straining their backs"

As some of you likely have some appreciation for, what I and my fellow technical and product coaches do, when we are lucky, is a hard sell from the get-go. Here are just a few of the reasons:

• We ask a whole team to do things they have never even contemplated doing,
• for an extended period of time (4 to 6 weeks),
• and to do it repeatedly,
• all together,
• with a WIP limit of ONE.

Keep in mind, the clients are typically very large companies, whose employees often experience 'transformation fatigue' (been there, done that, didn’t even get the dang t-shirt).
Let me tell you some stories about how it is done, why and how it works, and why you might even want to do it yourself.