Tag Archives: business process

The ‘so that’ of refinement.

05 Wednesday Nov 2014

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Agile is so effective because it has a lot of hidden tools in it that work. Surprisingly, a lot of the scrum masters and even Agile coaches that I have come across don’t talk about these things. Some don’t know about them, some choose not to reveal them, some even think it’s not part of their job to care….

But, I am a strong believer in clarity, as clarity creates meaning, meaning creates purpose and purpose is one of the corner stones of motivation, which ultimately leads to higher efficiency and thus, higher business value.

When people know the WHY, they will follow, they will learn, they will care. ( why do you think the most successful leaders focus on WHY and not HOW )

I am going to talk a little bit on how I do refinement. Not saying it’s the most effective way and you SHOULD be doing it like this, no, you have your team, you have your style, you will learn what works. But, I do want to show you what has been very successful for me and my teams.

REFINEMENT PHASE 1:

– I have 2 refinements, for a 2 week sprint, in the middle of each week. They are 2 hours long at the moment, because our team is not fully aligned yet. They will become less time consuming over time. But you look at your team and at your needs.

Take a look at this MVP drawing I did on the train this morning, this is the visual representation of my refinement ( phase 1 = week 1) – the second refinement is slightly different, but more on that later.

Agile refinement Phase 1

Agile refinement Phase 1

Phase 1:

Input ==> Prioritised backlog of cards

Iteration per card:

  1. Use a visual reminder of what we are trying to get to: estimation in T-shirt size. (WHY? Are the estimations that important? They are important for different reasons, but one of the hidden gems will become clear when you read on, it’s a tool to make sure the team is on the same page and to create more x-functional mindset)
  2. Ask the PO and the team for clarity on 2 subjects: Business requirement and the detail of what they need/want + How the team thinks of tackling this ( on a high level ) – PO should not interfere with the how, but in my team, he does have a voice and we can openly discuss things because it aids in cooperation and x-functional nature of the team, it brakes down tribes and creates a vibe of truly working together to create business value. BUT… in some teams, you CANNOT do it. If you have a PO with the tendency to micromanage, do not give them a voice until you have coached them into being more efficient.
  3. SM: Do we, as a team, have a clear enough understanding of what is involved to do a high level estimation? Yes? OK, 3,2,1 – estimate!!!
  4. If you notice a big diversity of estimation, it means one of 2 things: 1. your team is not estimating as a team (yes, I ask them to estimate as a team, because it has proven much more efficient – promotes x-functional, understanding of each others challenges, they become a more tight business unit and less risk of silo-ing) or 2. There is a level of un-clarity.
  5. SM: Person Small – Why? Person Large – Why? : You ask the extremes to make their cases, the team chips in when they do and the blanks get filled in, the misunderstandings surface and the team reaches a mutual agreement.
  6. Re-estimate.
  7. All on same level – great, we all know what to do on a high level, we have surfaced effort, complexity and our level of understanding to PO and we have done it as a team, ready to go for it and deliver that business value!!! 🙂

So the hidden gems:

  • Estimation as a team creates understanding and respect for each others challenges
  • It’s the basis of x-functional
  • It highlights where there is misunderstanding
  • It highlight areas of improvement in individuals and teams ( is someone constantly estimating too high? Why is that? lack of confidence? more experienced, so they know what is REALLY involved? Tendency to be to perfectionist and not lean enough – depends on case by case of course, sometimes perfection is needed…)
  • It creates a common purpose, the basis of mastery and… they did it all themselves ( autonomy – growth ,…) => basis of motivation ( autonomy, mastery, purpose)

I actually use bright coloured cards with cardboard 3D letters of S, M, L, XL and the physical cards. We have everything in JIRA too, but screens are banned during that meeting… all for a reason.

Why a tangible visual? Cognitive psychology has shown us an insight in how our brain works, the more we understand it, the more we should use that knowledge to find the most effective communication tools. The brain creates meaning through the senses. Visual is one of those senses. Our primary visual cortex picks up basic shapes initially ( circles or squares ) it relais info to the other areas in our brain: Ventral stream, Dorsal stream and limbic system. Respectively for the WHAT (its a card, its a letter), the location of the body in space and the feeling, gut, strong emotional reaction.

I use all of the above to add to the experience, and why not? science it there to use, not just to be interested in. Win-wins for the win 😉

And… it works. You actually see it during refinement, people are more involved, they stand, they sit, the move around, the physically move the cards… it helps embed all the info and associated info in the brain…

We’ve got the tools, we’ve got the knowledge,… use them, explore them, improve them 🙂

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.

The paradoxes scrum masters face

22 Sunday Jun 2014

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As a human being, you have different sides to your personality and sometimes,
those sides don’t always see eye to eye and you are faced with internal struggles, deciding what to do.

Nothing in life is ever black and white, and for a scrum master, that is no different.
A scrum master is faced with paradoxes, the role itself is a huge paradox, servant-leader (or at least, at first glance it seems to be so)
I feel that, managing those paradoxes shows how skilled you really are, more than that, it is part of the attraction of being a scrum master.

One of the paradoxes that I would like to take a closer look at is the Agile fundamental of ‘delivering business value’ and the ‘protector of the team’.

Business value is a very wide term, and does not just apply to the product you are delivering. You need to be sensitive to all elements at play.
What stakeholders are involved and what are their ‘other’ agenda’s?
I have encountered several companies where some stakeholders had as part of their agenda to see agile fail,
because it wasn’t the ‘right’ manager, team or project that was introducing Agile.

For me, part of being a scrum master is picking up on those things and seeing how you can be true to the agile values in the best way, always with the bigger picture in mind.
Is there a one size fits all solution? No there isn’t. I always try to find out why those agenda’s are there, what is the underlying need?
Can you find a different solution to meet that need and create a win-win? Sometimes the anwser to that is no, but at least it gives you information to find solutions.

Another challenge is the work load of a team, or even how self-empowered a team can be at what stage. Again, I believe there is no ‘one’ right solution, different scrum masters will have different approaches.
Some teams are very new and might need some guidance in the beginning, especially if you have external forces at place.

Let’s say you let them fly and they crash and burn, great lesson and they will be so much stronger for the next iteration, but combine that with an environment like I described above and there might not be a next time.

And what if your team has internal struggles themselves?
Not every one can cope yet with crash/burn/learn. Again, you need to be sensitive to these dynamics.

That’s what makes it fascinating, and the more you are faced with these challenges, the more you learn as a scrum master, the more value you can add and the more valuable you become.

What do you think?

Yours truly,

Brigitte.