Group Relations, BART, Boundary, Authority, Role, Task, self-organizing teams, Agile, Scrum

Dan Mezick is the President of New Technology Solutions, a consulting firm providing agile and Scrum coaching to development teams, line managers and CxO level executives in the NorthEast. He organizes and runs Agile Boston and Agile CT user groups and is the Stage Producer for Agile2009's [Manifesting Agility] track. This track is focused on teams, teams cohesion and group-level cognition and learning.

Dan is a invited speaker to the Agile2007, Agile2008 and Agile2009 conferences. His articles on individual and group-level cognition have appeared in Agile Journal and InfoQ. Dan is a member of PMI Southern Connecticut's programs committee where he is authorized to identify and engage speakers for SNEC-PMI's monthly meetings. View his full bio here.

Presentation: DAN MEZICK on GROUP RELATIONS AND SOCIAL SYSTEMS

These sessions provide tools for understanding and analysis of group-level learning and group-level cognition. The tools apply to groups and your participation in groups and group-level processes. Attend these talks if you have high interest in groups, group dynamics, and the actual mechanics behind self-organizing agile teams.

Part 1: Boundary, Authority, Role and Task: BART Analysis Applied

When groups of people have trouble executing on work, the root cause is often related to definitions of Role, Task, Authority, and associated Boundaries.

When definitions are clear, there is little ambiguity. When definitions are clear, there is potentially no waste generated from the need to discover these definitions and related Boundaries. Well defined BART is required to reach the hyper-productive state at the group (“system”) level.

BART analysis is a tool for discovering solvable problems related to Role, Authority, Task and Boundary. Note that Role, Authority, and Task each have, as an attribute, one or more Boundary objects. Much more of this kind of detail, on BART, is the focus of this talk.

The first part of this presentation focuses on the fundamentals of BART analysis. In the second segment, we deconstruct Scrum using BART analysis to discover strengths (and weaknesses!) in Scrum's boundary, authority, role and task definitions. You exit this session with a new tool for discovering the hidden structure that drives group-level behavior within families, teams, divisions and entire organizations.

This talk was presented at Agile2009. See the BART session abstract and listing here.

To be well prepared to get the most from this talk, strongly consider examing this paper:

The BART System of Group and Organizational Analysis

Part 2: Group Relations and Social Systems

The study of Group Relations is important to the development of Agile practice. Software development is performed by groups of individuals. When individuals become a members of a group, behavior changes. The group becomes focal & the individuals become background. The group behaves as a system and exhibits system-level behavior. Groups as a system often exhibit very primitive emotional behaviors that can derail the group from its stated task.

BART analysis techniques come to us directly from the Group Relations (GR) community. The GR community runs conferences where the subject of the conference is the emerging group-level behavior of all participants. These conferences are based on 100% experiential, "here and now" learning. Students are placed in small and large groups. The conference staff, authorized as management, create a "temporary institution" where each participant is a member. The learning from a group relations conference is 100% empirical, 100% experiential, 100% pronounced, 100% immediate and 100% unusual. You exit the conference with a new understanding of the group-level forces that act on you whenever and wherever you have membership in a group.

This GR conference work and the underlying theories supporting it have important implications for agile teams. GR knowledge immediately helps you to be more effectively execute on work in a group setting. During this session the key GR concepts are introduced and the structure of a GR conference is described and explained.

if you have high interest in teams, leadership and group dynamics, you do not want to miss this session.

This talk was presented at Agile2009. See the Group Relations session abstract and listing here.

To be well prepared to get the most from this talk, strongly consider examing this web site:

Group Relations FAQ

Topics include:

o How you find yourself in the same typical roles over & over, regardless of your current job

o Authority: Formal vs personal Authority explained. Formal and informal Roles explained

o Boundary: The structure that forms the "container for work". How this relates to Scrum

o How each individual in a group participates in unstated group level processes, without consent

o How ground rules like Scrum drive culture, behavior, values and beliefs

o How to take GR knowledge and skills to your job to be immediately more effective

MEETING AGENDA:

6:30 PM: PART1: BART Concepts and Facilities as described by Dan Mezick of New Technology Solutions

7:10 PM: BREAK: Food and networking time.

7:25 PM: PART 2: GROUP RELATIONS AND SOCIAL SYSTEMS

8:25 PM: SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION OF MEETING

MEETING VENUE: MICROSOFT offices in FARMINGTON CT. REGISTER NOW for this meeting

NOTE: Please do not register casually. If you register, make a commitment to attend.

DO NOT register casually for this meeting, as you do us a big disservice to us by distorting the actual count for the seating and food. Registration is an explicit commitment to attend.

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DIRECTIONS TO MICROSOFT FARMINGTON.