The Agile Daily Standup - AgileDad

1. Agility The teams’ ability to react to changes in requirements, development time issues and organizational pivots. You can also consider this as reactiveness to change. 2. Predictability This accounts for commitments made v/s what is actually delivered at a fixed point in time. If the team commits to delivery N number of items in the to-do list in X days, predictability is how close to N the team reaches on an average. It is of course impossible in real world scenarios to delivery N items as was committed since engineering complexities, process dependancies and people factors come into play. There is also the matter of our inability to estimate the size of the work to be done. 3. Efficiency Efficiency looks at how many work packets or items were delivered by the team v/s how much they could have delivered. It is obviously hard to say how much they could have delivered, but you can look at it as a relative (across methods) area. A perfectly efficient team utilizes all their time in delivering items. This is of course impossible as the same factors that plague predictability plague this area too.

I was asked by a subscriber to review an article from Didem Kolulisa titled 'How Do I Become an Agile Coach?' https://didem-kolukisa.medium.com/how-do-i-become-an-agile-coach-23f5af1abece She offered 4 questions and 4 lessons to help you see just how far along you are and allows you to test your clout to see if you are ready to take on the challenges of becoming a team or enterprise coach. 

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet - Romeo & Juliet Does the word developer bother you? Are you ready to rise up in protest and fight for a different title? Join V. Lee Henson as we explore what alternate words are and if they should be an option. 

Join us as we review a recent Mike Cohn Blog post about High Performing Teams..  https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/what-is-a-high-performing-agile-team

“Every Sunday morning I take a light jog around a park near my home.  There’s a lake located in one corner of the park. Each time I jog by this lake, I see the same elderly woman sitting at the water’s edge with a small metal cage sitting beside her. This past Sunday my curiosity got the best of me, so I stopped jogging and walked over to her. As I got closer, I realized that the metal cage was in fact a small trap. There were three turtles, unharmed, slowly walking around the base of the trap. She had a fourth turtle in her lap that she was carefully scrubbing with a spongy brush. ‘Hello,’ I said. ‘I see you here every Sunday morning.  If you don’t mind my nosiness, I’d love to know what you’re doing with these turtles.’ She smiled. ‘I’m cleaning off their shells,” she replied. “Anything on a turtle’s shell, like algae or scum, reduces the turtle’s ability to absorb heat and impedes its ability to swim. It can also corrode and weaken the shell over time.’ ‘Wow! That’s really nice of you!’ I exclaimed. She went on: ‘I spend a couple of hours each Sunday morning, relaxing by this lake and helping these little guys out. It’s my own strange way of making a difference.’ ‘But don’t most freshwater turtles live their whole lives with algae and scum hanging from their shells?’ I asked. ‘Yep, sadly, they do,’ she replied. I scratched my head. ‘Well then, don’t you think your time could be better spent? I mean, I think your efforts are kind and all, but there are fresh water turtles living in lakes all around the world. And 99% of these turtles don’t have kind people like you to help them clean off their shells.  So, no offense… but how exactly are your localized efforts here truly making a difference?’ The woman giggled aloud. She then looked down at the turtle in her lap, scrubbed off the last piece of algae from its shell, and said, ‘Sweetie, if this little guy could talk, he’d tell you I just made all the difference in the world.'”

A recent student in my Advanced Product Owner Workshop taught me about the concept of building a Team Motivation MAP M = Mastery: denotes the inclination of people to become a better version of themselves in any given field. Also, the skills that any individual wants to improve what they do next in a continuous manner. The Scrum Master strives to master the application of Scrum in order to foster a psychologically safe environment where the efficacy of value delivery is realized at all levels of the organization. Influencing and inspiring people to embrace Scrum to improve and sustain it. Exploring creative ways to engage people while performing work. Building enduring professional relationships during interactions with Scrum Team(s) and stakeholders. The Product Owner strives to master his Product management skills in order to maximize and optimize the value of the Product. Relentless focus on exploring creative ways to communicate product vision and roadmap. Identifying impactful interventions to improve the adoption of product features for sustainable growth. Improving product discovery techniques to better understand the customer experience as a whole. The Developers strive to master their software craftsmanship in order to deliver high-quality products for their end customers. Learn and build emergent engineering architecture and practices to improve product quality. Identify ways to innovate the product features in the marketplace to improve time to market and generate business value. A = Autonomy: refers to the choice of freedom provided to people. So that they will self-select ways to achieve the outcomes that create enduring impacts. The Scrum Master needs the environment with autonomy to devise and experiment with initiatives. To build awareness and co-create paradigm shift towards contemporary management techniques. So that people become aware of their improvement areas and unlock their potential with several unlearning and learning moments. This paves way for them to gain mastery on their path towards becoming a self-managing team. The Product Owner requires autonomy to take key decisions to maximize product value and optimize the value resulting from the work delivered by the Developers associated with the Scrum Team. So that (s)he gets the appropriate environment required to improve accountability and nurture the Product Ownership to the next level. The Developers require autonomy to improve development standards and sustain built-in quality while building product increment(s) every Sprint. They must be guided and supported with relevant tools and resources to deliver value. This helps in reducing the accumulated technical debt within the product and fosters their cross-functional skillset and improves self-management capabilities. P = Purpose: 

Let's face it, we are all SO TIRED of online meetings via Zoom, Teams, etc. The truth is there are some phrases we are all tired of hearing as well. Here is a short list:  “We’ll wait five minutes for everyone to get here.” This disrespects the time of people who arrived on time. And it discourages a timeliness culture. Most of the time, you should start the meeting without the tardy people. But there are occasionally good reasons why someone is late. If you must wait, you could begin with quick tone-setting exercises. For example, ask everyone to write down their goal for the meeting. It doesn’t have to be made public, but it is valuable to create a practice of thinking about your purposes before a meeting. You can also start by asking everyone to eliminate one distraction. That distraction could be moving something from their desk, shutting a window on their computer, or opening a window in their room. “You’re on mute!” This is a quick way to tell a speaker we can’t hear them. But this is usually said simultaneously by a chorus of people . It has become annoying, making the muted person feel dumb. Saying “If you’re speaking, I can’t hear you,” is a friendlier, more supportive alternative. Rather than making the muted speaker feel foolish, this tells them that you genuinely want to hear what they have to say. “Let’s talk about this offline.” This phrase dismisses someone’s idea, putting them off forever. It is also nonsensical because the follow-up will inevitably take place online. Why not say something like, “That’s an important issue that goes outside the scope of this meeting. Let’s talk about it when we’re finished here.” “We’re flying the plane while it’s being built.” Many of us have heard this metaphor in meetings. But it should prompt a host of questions from the audience. Is the project moving so fast that we won’t be able to recognize or debate its flaws? Is this an excuse for poor performance? When you’re tempted to use this phrase, be explicit by communicating the project elements that we’ve figured out, what we’re now working on, what we don’t know yet, and how we plan to make changes based on what we discover. That will give people a clearer understanding of the development. “I’ll give you ten minutes of your life back!” I’ll end by returning to this phrase because it’s one I’d like to never hear again. I don’t mind when meetings end early. But we should look forward to our next meeting when they are well-run, well-structured, and unexpectedly short. So we should emphasize that at the end of the meeting. When you are tempted to give your team a few “minutes of their life back,” think about saying, “Wow. We finished 10 minutes early because everyone worked so hard. Thank you very much for being here and taking part.” This straightforward rephrasing has the potential to redefine how people leave your meetings and feel about the next one.

A recent article by Gabor Csomak discusses how doing fewer story points will over time increase your velocity. The concepts presented are on point, but a clear discussion needs to be had regarding the use of the words Capacity and Velocity as they are not interchangeable.  https://medium.com/nerd-for-tech/why-committing-to-less-story-points-will-increase-your-velocity-d821380c6c5

What are the 5 tips to be an exceptional product owner? I am glad you asked:  1) Master Soft Skills - Human Interaction 2) Fundamental PO Skills - Behavioral Driven 3) Team Skills - Team Engagement & Management 4) Product Skills - The PO Skills one would expect to see... 5) Technical Mastery Skills - If you are working in a tech environment.. 

Do you know and appreciate your friends? Join V. Lee Henson, President and Founder of AgileDad as we learn the tale of two friends that encountered a bear and what they did to stick together. Did their friendship stand this awful test?