Monthly Archives: September 2014

Building a highly efficient team is building highly efficient individuals

26 Friday Sep 2014

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Highly efficient teams exponentially increase business value.

I am a scrum master, but my area of expertise is the subtleties of human interaction and making individuals more efficient.  The more efficient the individual, the better the team, the higher the business value. And it is not just a 1+1=2  relationship, with every individual that ‘gets it’ your business value output increases exponentially.

Business value increases exponentially as people's efficiency goes up.

Business value increases exponentially as people’s efficiency goes up.

Yesterday, something interesting happened with my scrum team. I constantly do small experiments, to analyse and increase value where I can.

This team, has impressed me in the past with how they take matters in their own hands. On the last sprints, when they needed to know something, they just went and got that information and shared it with every one that needed to know.

It wasn’t always perfect and some individuals are more advanced at doing this than others, but I found it remarkable, you don’t always see that quality. In some teams, the misconception even exists that the scrum master should be the one ‘organising’ everything and being a bridge.

As a side note: I am not saying that there are no situations where as a scrum master you can’t jump in and help, or where you consciously decide to take on a bit of this work as a transition, there can be a multitude of reasons where being a temporary bridge might be the right thing to do, but that is food for another post.

In the current sprint, the team have taking on work with a lot of unknowns, they need to communicate with a team that before they haven’t had a lot of interaction with, the technical solution is not straight forward and there have been some external emergencies which surfaced some frustrations,…

As the days in the sprint went on, I noticed that the cards linked to the interaction with the new team, were not moving. The first few days the team seemed to have good reason for that, but we are now almost in the middle of our sprint and only one card has moved over to in progress. I try to not interfere unless the situation reaches a critical moment. Especially with this team, because the focus is getting them from good to great and learning and responsibility is a big part of that. But usually, because I care a great deal about them and the project, when it reaches a certain threshold, I will start working on a backup plan, without them knowing. So yesterday morning I started that prep. I usually start about 2 hours before every one else, gives me the time to focus.

Later that morning, the lead developer came to me and voiced his concern that we hadn’t started yet on international. So to put his mind at ease, and to see his reaction, I showed him that I had already started, I also asked him what he needed and he said he needed an info session with the other team. So, I said I would organise the meeting. ( not the right thing to do by the way )

I checked with every one involved and set a time, invitations were sent and it was clearly visible on the board when that info session was starting, 3 PM.

At 3, no one was there, one person was on the phone and emailing, the other was still in another meeting and one of the other developers was still working on a different task. So, I went over and asked: ‘are you ready?’

D1: Hmm, it’s not really a good time, I am right in the middle of something.

Me: Is it urgent?

D1: Not really but I am just in a flow

Me: Ok, but this meeting is for you all, it is not for me, you told me this morning that you needed this urgently. Things change, as is often the case in reality, and that is perfectly acceptable, but why wasn’t anyone notified?

D1: You are right, we do need this, it’s ok.

Of to the next one…

Me: Hello, are you working on an emergency?

D2: Hello, ow is it that time already? no its not an emergency, it’s a very difficult problem though that i need to help X with, but we wont be able to solve it in the next 30 minutes. So I will come over.

External team member: I am just on the phone, and then I need to send a quick email, I will be there in 2 minutes.

10 minutes later, every one was finally available. But it was like herding kittens ( an expression I heard one of my colleagues use on several occasions and I must admit, it has a nice ring to it 🙂

The above scenario is not a big deal and I paraphrased it a bit, but it illustrates the subtleties of balance between self-organising and dependency. Because I took it in hand, the team lost a little bit of their maturity, of their sense of responsibility. And a sense of responsibility, is one of the most valuable talents of a highly efficient team.

So today, I am going to have a sidebar mini retro to point that subtlety out so they can reflect on it and learn and claim their independence back.

It’s fascinating being a scrum master, challenging and the longer you do it, the more you realise that your role probably has to deal with the biggest unknowns of all and you need to be strong enough to be able to handle those unknowns.

Yours truly,

Brigitte

Agile, the road to a new society where productivity and happiness soar hand in hand.

19 Friday Sep 2014

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Isn’t it clear? I don’t think it is clear for everyone how much Agile can contribute to the biggest necessity in the future of this society. Let me shed some light on that.

I love analysing stuff, always loved it, even from when I was a little girl. My parents told me a story from when I was about 5 years old. I had gotten hold of their alarm clock and I was taking it apart. When they asked me why, I said I wanted to know how it worked. I haven’t changed much since then, but instead of taking apart alarm clocks, I take apart processes, society and people. I can’t help it… at my core, I am an analyst.

Why do I do it? Curiosity and a desire to understand so that I can help improve. And isn’t that a little bit what Agile does? You look at what is reality, you inspect, and seek how you can continuously improve.

It’s the only way, one of the many purposes of life is growth, we continuously evolve, whether we want to or not, it’s part of our nature. The way we grow, that’s up to us, we are the masters of our destiny, because even though we can’t predict what is going to happen, but we are the master of how we react to it. And our reactions might not always be the most optimal, we can only shape our lives in a more efficient way when we learn to understand and evolve our reactions ( inspect and adapt ).

As a society as a whole, you must have noticed we are facing a severe problem, depression, disease, demotivation, unhappiness. What is life when you are living it in those circumstances? And at the same time, you try to keep your family fed, your relationships alive and a roof over your head. The pressures of work seem to rise and rise. And instead of businesses taking responsibility over their most valuable resource, what often happens is that they try and put a plaster over a gushing wound and send them back into battle. It’s not the right way, this is a typical example of loose-loose.

Agile provides us with an answer to win-win. It’s based on the core principals of decent human beings. You know, you can trust them. It’s like your kids growing up, at a certain time, you need to let them be their own person, responsible for their destiny and trust that they will do the right thing. Same with the people working for you, people care. They care about their work and they want to do a good job (there are always exceptions, but that is what they are, exceptions, not the majority)

The more you give people the freedom to contribute to your product, make it part of what they are passionate about, make it theirs… the more you will see productivity, innovation and creativity soar. And at the same time, happiness will go up.

I think we have only just scratched the surface of what we can do with Agile, I think we can take it much further than just letting teams organise their work, I am a strong believer that we should experiment with having teams determine to the fullest how they work. This means work hours, rewards, holidays,… I know some companies are already experimenting with this… but the way you do it, is, like in a family, in a safe environment where you continuously look back, review, adapt, grow.

If we follow this approach, I am convinced that we will reduce costs, increase happiness for the people at work but also in their immediate family, which will again have a side effect on other companies and people.

Will this be an easy road, no, it won’t be and you need the right people to guide the way, if you want to do this experiment, you will need a brilliant scrum master, a PO and a team who are mature enough. But if you do take this journey, you will most certainly have a huge competitive advantage.

Yours truly,

Brigitte

Explosions are imminent

16 Tuesday Sep 2014

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I have seen it countless times, when faced with a challenge, people, businesses, revert to old, known behaviour. It takes courage to actually stand still, investigate what is right and be brave enough to implement it.

At my current company, we have had a huge success with Agile. When the CTO made the courageous decision to hire a completely new team and a very talented Agile Coach/scrum master, and took on a new project ( with a deadline ) he knew that he was setting himself up for success. And that is what happened. Not only did he deliver in time, the product was delivered with high-quality, by a happy, self organised team.

The last sprint goal was: keep calm. And that was it. Never before had I, or any other team member been in a live release that was so calm and effective, it was almost surreal and it showed us all what Agile can do.

That, was only scratching the surface and it wasn’t even SCRUM to the letter, as with most projects, in reality, there is a balance to be found, it’s continuous improvement, it’s transition towards Agile. But even in this setting, these were some of the side effects.

The team members were actually happy, a sight that you don’t often see in a place of work. Even though countless studies have shown the immense importance of happiness on productivity, loyalty, drive and creativity.

The team had clarity and transparency, again, not 100% but the trust is there, the basis has been set and now, when there are issues or dangers, they get raised fast and we have the ability to react quickly.

The team was a team, everyone knew what they were doing and they helped each other grow.

Now… a project got thrown in with a rush, it had to be delivered in 2 weeks. No product owner, no clarity, no reason why, no agile, it just had to be done and it had to be done quick.

So what has happened? Almost every member of that team and of the other teams working on this project has come to me with frustration, anger, dis-trust in the project, dis-trust in the company and even in other team members. That well-oiled machine got a huge spanner thrown into the wheels and now it’s stuck, it’s at a risk of over heating, explosions are imminent.

So what can we do? As scrum masters, first thing we did is try and create clarity. Force people to stand still and talk to each other long enough to get at least more visibility and get things down on cards. At the same time, manage individuals to keep motivated, keep believing that this is just a spanner and once taken out, we will be running smoothly again. My co-scrum master had the brilliant idea of doing a scrum reset, the perfect time to get back to basics. Together, we set up the process to introduce bitesize scrum (scrumbites) to lead the way back to how it should be. In daily iterations we will get back to basics, diffuse the situation, get everyone motivated again and bring back a productive happy environment.

Well… as we all know, knowledge comes from experience and I think this has shown us again how far we have come through agile and it has shown us that we do not want to go back.