Team leadership lessons from football coaching

Some of my colleagues and I were lucky enough to spend some time with Ian Bateman, one of the Football Association’s youth coach educators and Head Coach of England’s partially-sighted Futsal squad. as an opportunity for us to learn about coaching and leadership from outside of the software development “bubble”.

Agile Manchester 2018 and “The Why”

I attended the Agile Manchester 2018 conference to share Redgate’s journey with team autonomy and learn from other agile practitioners. Here are my highlights from the conference and my biggest takeaway – it’s all about The Why.

What did Redgaters think of our first internal conference?

On 6th March 2018 Redgate’s Product Division and Foundry ran their first internal conference. On the day after the event we, the conference organizers, asked everyone who attended to give us some feedback. Here’s what they told us.

Level Up 2018: The Redgate Product Development Conference

This week something pretty awesome happened at Redgate. we ran an internal learning and development conference for 80 Redgaters at IWM Duxford near Cambridge. Software Engineers, UX Designers, Product Managers, Development Leads and assorted leadership types came together to learn about, share and collaborate on a vast range of subjects.

Try Walking 1 to 1s

Ever been sat in a 1 to 1 meeting with one of your team and felt like you were struggling to concentrate on them – unable to really listen to what they had to say or explore their problem with them? Well, I have. So, I’ve experimented with going for a walk during these “catch-up” sessions. It’s been great.

Inspect and adapt how you build as well as what you build

The need to inspect and adapt is the fundamental concept at the centre of the agile software development movement. However, it often seems that the drive to inspect and adapt is only deliberately applied to what we build and not how we build. This means how a team works together, how they use the technologies at their disposal and how they apply processes can go unimproved.

How to coach a colleague in three steps

Everyone in the workplace would benefit from having coaching techniques in their toolbox. Coaching is a great practice to apply when a colleague is stuck or struggling with a task, problem or new challenge. Here’s how to coach a colleague in three simple steps.

How LeanKit helps it’s teams make effective decisions

I attended an excellent talk by Jon Terry, the CEO of LeanKit, who talked about the approach LeanKit took to help their teams stay lean and make good decisions as they grew from a small start-up to a medium-sized enterprise.

Goldilocks Goals: How to keep Retrospectives fresh and engaging

One way to keep Retrospectives fresh is to set explicit goals for each session. However, just choosing a goal isn’t quite enough. You want to choose a Goldilocks Goal that opens up the discussion ‘just right’.

Making time for Personal Development: Gold Cards

At the beginning of 2015 I got the development teams in my corner of Redgate together to explore the results of an annual company health survey. Amongst the feedback we’d received in the survey was a clear consensus that team members found it difficult to make time for person development activities.