Westfall Weekly Webinars

Handling Team Problems presented by Linda Westfall

Wednesday, October 15, at 12:01 pm Central

Teams are an essential part of any quality system.  However, when you are leading or facilitating teams, you may also have to deal with team problems. This webinar will discuss some of these common problems and some ideas on how to address them, including:

• Problems Starting or Ending a Task or Activity
• Dominating Participants
• Reluctant Participants
• Participants Attempting to Use Position or Authority To Direct Team Decisions
• Digression and Tangents
• Using Opinions Rather Than Facts
• Rushing to Solutions/Completion
• Feuding Team Members
• Too Much Conformity

Team Facilitation Skills presented by Grace Duffy

Wednesday, October 22, at 12:01 pm Central

Everyone says soft skills are harder to acquire, but what are they? In a word, facilitation encompasses soft skills used to gain traction with teams. Do you want to learn about facilitation from a master?

If so, then you will want to join Grace Duffy to learn about our Facilitation Skills Webinar.

This talk will explain the core of facilitation, what it is that good facilitators do, handling issues in a team setting, and generally knowing how to modify your approach depending on the team's status.

This webinar is for you if you are:

• A team leader for challenging groups.
• A manager who wants meetings to be productive.
• A consultant who needs to work with difficult clients.

In this informative webinar, you will learn:

• Steps to gain consensus.
• Ways teams can flounder, and how to get them back on track.
• Core skills you need to deal with difficult people

Stop Chasing "Goof Culture": Align Your Work With Your Values presented by Diana Alt

Wednesday, October 29, at 12:01 pm Central

How many times have you heard a company or team brag about its “great culture,” only to realize once you’re inside that it doesn’t live up to the hype? You’re not imagining things. Culture is values in action—and if you don’t know how to match your values with the way a workplace actually behaves, you’ll keep ending up in roles that feel “off."

The truth is, most professionals fall into the same traps:

• Accepting jobs based on glossy culture statements that don’t match reality.
• Staying too long in roles where something feels wrong, but they can’t name why.
• Guessing about fit instead of having a clear framework to decide.

In this interactive session, you’ll learn how to cut through the noise and take control of your choices. We’ll cover how to spot the difference between a company’s polished culture pitch and its real culture, how to connect your core values to the behaviors you want to see in your team, and how to use values alignment as a practical tool for making career decisions.

If you’re tired of chasing “good culture,” this is your chance to define it for yourself—and recognize it in the teams you work with every day.

Open (Agile) Q&A Session presented by Scott Duncan

Wednesday, November 5, at 12:01 pm Central

• Attendees can ask whatever they like, and Scott will do his best to respond.
• To help Scott do this, you can send questions ahead of time to [email protected]
• Submitted questions will be addressed during the session in the order received, then any raised during the session.

4, 3, 2, 1: A Countdown to Agile Adoption

Presented by: Scott Duncan

I have observed over time that companies approaching an Agile adoption by “acquiring” a framework can limit their horizon for change. I have been encouraging people for many years to start their journey by seriously discussing the implications of adopting each Manifesto value and principle. However, even before that, there are some things I would urge them to consider/do to prepare for their encounter with Agile ideas. This talk presents these ideas and a kind of “prequel” to Agile adoption.

Available Free Until: 11/18/25
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Navigating the ‘New Normal’: Effectively Leading Teams in a Virtual World

Presented by: Zac Jarrard

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated hybrid and remote work. This is a trend that will continue beyond the pandemic as organizations look to fill key roles with remote workers from across the U.S. or world. Leading a virtual team can often be more complex than managing associates in a traditional office setting. There are also opportunities to build a strong culture and provide career enrichment for remote workers. This session will provide an overview of the difference between leading in a traditional office setting vs. virtual teams, reflect on best practices for developing a strong culture, and share lessons learned from my experience.  

Available Free Until: 11/11/2025
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Quality 5.0

Presented by: Tom Gilb

Quality 4.0 was published a few years ago [Watson, 2019] and Tom felt that it could be improved. First with the definition of ‘quality’, and then with regard to desirable practices. The definition of quality needs to recognize that quality can be a multiplicity, can be quantified, and can be engineered, rather than ‘crafted by traditional practices’. This is not necessary for small-scale IT, the ‘cabin’ or ‘dog-house’ level. But it is absolutely necessary for the many critical large-scale software systems we are responsible for: the skyscraper class, which as we know require lots of architecture and engineering. 

Available free until 11/04/2025
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Decision Fatigue: How to Choose Faster and Do More

Presented by: Kabrina Ashley

Every day we’re faced with hundreds of choices: emails, meetings, priorities, what to work on next... For high performers, that constant stream of decisions doesn’t just wear you out, it grinds your productivity to a halt. Decision fatigue shows up not only as making poor choices, but also as taking too long to decide, or not deciding at all.
In this engaging talk, Kabrina Ashley unpacks why decision fatigue happens, how high achievers unknowingly set themselves up for it, and most importantly, practical ways to cut through the overwhelm. Instead of more “just take a walk” band-aids, you’ll walk away with real tools to:
•    Spot when you’re hitting the wall of decision fatigue.
•   Make faster, clearer choices in the moment.
•    Build simple structures and habits that eliminate unnecessary decisions altogether.
Participants will leave with a decision-making playbook they can use immediately, practical steps to streamline options, reduce cognitive load, and confidently choose the right next step faster. The result? Less overwhelm, more momentum, and energy back for the decisions that matter most.
 

Available Free Until: 10/28/2025

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To Pursue Agility by Scott Duncan

Presented by: Scott Duncan

There are many behaviors one can adopt to “practice” or “do” Agile. This presentation will focus on the broad pursuit of “agility” and agile fundamentals. I will cover:
•    What it means to demonstrate agility
•    Adapting to and depth of change
•    Two main agile concepts and other key factors
•    The mindset and the manifesto’s values and principles

Available Free Until: 10/21/2025
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Scrum 101 – A Basic Overview of the Agile Scrum Process 

Presented by: Linda Westfall

This webinar is a basic introduction to the Agile Scrum process.  It will describe the duties of the three major Scrum roles of Product Owner, Scrum Development Team and Scrum Master.  It will also discuss the basic steps in the Scrum process including the:
 - Scrum Planning Meeting
 - Sprint (Iteration) and Scrum Meeting (Daily Stand-Up)
 - Sprint Demonstration
 - Sprint Retrospective
 - Product Backlog Refinement Meeting

Available Free Until: 10/14/2025
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Should You Move from Project to Product?  

Presented by: Robin Goldsmith

It seems all of a sudden talks and articles are everywhere about why you should move from a project focus to a product focus.  In part, it’s an attempt to counter increasing concerns about Agile’s actual effectiveness.  Some skeptics suggest it’s motivated by a marketing need to shift attention from Agile, which may be losing market presence.  

Regardless, many do not understand the differences between project and product focus.  In this interactive session, learn about the claimed differences, how real they really are, and how much difference they do make.

Available Free Until: 10/07/2025
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EVO: Sidestepping Conventional IT Testing 

Presented by: Tom Gilb

By upstream, systems-wide, preventative, and incremental methods for coping with multiple qualities. 

Available Free Until: 09/27/2025
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