# Jason Baden's Manager Readme **Senior Agile Team Lead at Alberta Motor Association** # About Me - Born and raised in Edmonton.  - Happily married for over 20 years to my soul-mate and have 2 teen-age children who inspire me daily! - LOVE to travel, especially to places where I can be immersed in the region's culture and history! - Favorite places I have been to: - Maui, Riviera Maya (Hotel Xcaret), Amsterdam, and Paris - Still on my bucket list:  - Europe - Italy, Croatia, Germany, Belgium, Austria, Czech Republic, France, United Kingdom - South America - Brazil, Peru (Machu Picchu) - Asia - Jordan, Egypt, Thailand, Japan - Grew up playing many sports including hockey, soccer, football, basketball, and wrestling, as well as enjoying many recreational activities such as golf, kayaking, water-skiing and downhill skiing. - Also grew up during the glory days of the Edmonton Oilers, and will always bleed copper and blue! - Love strategic games! My go to video game is Civilization. Was elementary city chess champion in grade 6. - Love all genres of music, but favorite is 80's! - Political junkie - please don't get me started! # My Role My role as Team Lead for an Agile development team is ultimately to establish an environment for the success of the team. I try to achieve this by: - **Demonstrating the** **core values** for our team. - Fostering an environment where the **social contract ** (a.k.a working agreement) is upheld. - Keeping everyone **fully engaged and interested** in their work. - **Removing obstacles** for team members. - Ensuring everyone **has all the information and tools** required to successfully complete their tasks. - **Mentoring and coaching** team members such that they realize their potential and attain the professional goals they set. - To hopefully **make AMA your home** for years to come!  # My Core Values The following are what I believe to be core values for any high performing development team: - **Teamwork** - In order for a team to achieve success, its members must work cohesively towards a common goal. Sounds cliché, but the team is only as strong as its weakest link! With an Agile team, this means lots of collaboration! - **Innovation** - I will push members of my team to always look at better ways of doing things. This can be through the use of different or new technology and/or design patterns, recommendation of alternative processes, critically analyzing requirements and tasks to determine the validity and/or accuracy, etc. This also means be open-minded to the ideas of others, and contributing to an environment where all members feel safe to contribute ideas. - **Honesty ** - My ability to improve as a Team Lead depends on honest feedback from my team members, cohorts, and leaders above me. I appreciate knowing when I make mistakes, miss something, or simply need to improve on something I have done. I also need to know when a member is struggling in any way so that I can provide any necessary s. # My Expectations ## **Work Hours** Our core hours are weekdays between 9 am and 3 pm and everyone should be available between those hours unless otherwise arranged. If you need time off, _whenever possible_, I expect that advance notice will be provided as to not affect the current 2-week sprint.  Everyone's circumstances are different, and as such I try to be as flexible and as accommodating as possible while still meeting these expectations. In the end, as long as each member of the team is consistently contributing to our team being high performing, I am a happy camper! ## **The Work** - The team has an agreed upon **working agreement** outlining our sprint processes, definition of done, and other expectations that we expect each other to follow. - I expect that each member of the team to demonstrate the **core values** of teamwork, innovation and honesty. - Any solution delivered by the team MUST have a well thought out  **user experience!**   ## **Meetings** Let's face it, no developer or designer has ever been quoted saying "I got into development so I could participate in a bunch of meetings"! I will strive to find the right balance that gives each team member the information needed to be successful, while also keeping their schedules open enough to focus on design and development. With that in mind, I have the following expectations when it comes to meetings:  - **Be prepared** - if you are expected to contribute something at a meeting, I fully expect that this will be thought out and prepared prior to the meeting, including having an agenda ready and shared with all participants if you are the organizer. - **Be attentive ** - meetings are not a time to be multi-tasking, and all participants should be fully focused. - **Actively participate** - if a meeting requires participation, the organizer believed that each invitee has something valuable to add to the discussion, so don't be shy... - **Know your role ** - any meeting organized by a member of our team should have assigned roles to ensure that the meeting runs effectively **. ** Such roles include facilitator, note-taker, time-keeper, promise-keeper... I also strongly encourage that each member enable video for any virtual meeting they are participating in. Body language is a big part of communicating, and it also allows participants to connect in a more personal manner. # Communication I strongly believe that an open culture of feedback is critical to the personal and career growth of each member of our team, as well as for the success of the team as a whole. Debate fosters creativity and innovation, especially if the group offers a diverse set of experience and ways of thinking. Whenever reaching out to anyone, I ask that the conversation is started with a quick message in Slack or Teams such to ensure that person is not being interrupted and can respond when convenient. For me, I will often take that conversation to a voice call or in-person discussion, especially when it requires a lot of back and forth. ## **One-on-Ones (1:1s)** Regular 1:1s are extremely important to me. Every team member is asked to schedule a bi-weekly recurring half hour meeting that I commit to doing my very best to not reschedule or abbreviate. Whenever possible, I would prefer these meetings to be in-person, but when not possible they can be done virtually via a video call.. 1:1s **are** : - first and foremost for you; you set the agenda - a safe place, please be as open and honest as possible - an opportunity to provide me with feedback that will help me help you - PLEASE let me know if I am doing anything (or not doing something) that is a barrier to your success - a way for us to get to know each other better 1:1s **are not** : - status updates - the only opportunity for you to communicate with me, especially if urgent. I want to ensure that each 1:1 takes advantage of the time provided, so I will provide questions for each meeting that we will discuss after the member's chosen topics of discussion have been completed, if time permits. # Personality Quirks How much time do you have? - I am often too focused and may get straight to the point instead of engaging in small talk. - When intensely focused on something, I can put on blinders at times and sometimes go down that rabbit hole! - I am a reflective person, so I often take the time to think before responding. This may also cause me to over-analyze things at times. - I can be a perfectionist at times, especially when it comes to something I am personally working on. - Can take on too much myself at times instead of delegating.