The Agile Daily Standup - AgileDad

Decide on a good course of actionAfter having observed the environment and oriented on what is important it can still be difficult to decide on a course of action and understand how it links to achieving longer term goals.Which strategy of the many available is the best one to use to move forward?The technique I’ve found the most effective in this space I have named Outcome Mapping.Using an “envision the end state” approach this technique helps teams decide on an immediate course of action in order to achieve a longer term goal. (This approach is also used in other techniques such as The Future, Backwards and the Toyota Kata to help set direction in complex problem domains).Outcome Mapping is as simple as drawing a single line starting at now, and ending in the future. Leaders and stakeholders are asked to use post-it notes to identify any key milestones that exist. This effectively sets constraints for the team that they need to achieve. For example a milestone might be “Ship the product by end Mar 2017”, “Be ready for a trade show on 15th Jan 2017” or even “Onboard 5 new engineers by Dec 2016”.These constraints set an identified end state and when combined with outcome mapping, enables a team to have broad flexibility in determining appropriate action given their environment.Within the defined constraints, teams are then asked to identify the outcomes that they would deliver in order to meet the desired end state.For some teams it may help to provide a simple frame for outcomes.What would a team implement?What information would they get back from?What would it validate for them?Some teams will define a sequential set of outcomes, but other teams will add parallel sets of outcomes identifying work that can be done in parallel, by other teams members or even other teams.The main benefit of having a plan is its ability to align a team around a course of action, so be flexible with how the plan is created. As long as it is visible and intuitive to the team, there are really nothing that you shouldn’t allow them to do here.With outcomes defined, it is now highly valuable to ask the team to group outcomes into mini milestones. These mini milestones help identify what a releasable slices is and the mid horizon goals that define what a team is trying to achieve during that period.I use a 1st Release, 2nd Release, Everything else approach to get teams into the mindset of planning regularly. This helps them avoid attempting to define the mythical perfect plan, and get into a regular cycle of planning out what they are currently working on, and what they thing they will work on next.Depending on the type of work release slices can really be anything.Greenfield products often have customer validation, development of prototypes and/or steel threads as the first goals. In established products these are more likely to look like enhancing specific areas of the product, or improving or expanding existing customer journeys.

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The Elements of OODAThe OODA loop is comprised of 4 majors elements:Observe — Orient — Decide — ActIn a team environment I explain these four elements asObserve — Understand the environmentOrient — Align on what is importantDecide — Agree on a good course of actionAct — Do itOrient on what’s importantTo me the things you really want to keep an eye on when trying to ship a new product are the factors that could significantly affect delivery be it positively or negatively.Putting my finance hat on, all of these can be classified as risks because they relate to an uncertainty of some kind.With that in mind, my favourite approach to orient is the Risk Impact map.Because it is so simple, it is also extremely powerful.The Risk Impact map is a tried and tested favourite within traditional project management. Blended with a little bit of design thinking though you can really push its application. Primed with a few simple risk categories, both customer and delivery centric risks can be explored.Teams are asked to raise any risks they have in any one of four categories.Desirability — Will a customer want it?Feasibility — Can we technically build it given our current environment?Viability — If we build it, will we be able to make money from it?Consumability — Will a customer be able to find it and consume it?By providing this starting frame we shift thinking away from mainly feasibility orient risks towards a holistic systems view that helps expose additional risks that would typically remain hidden.In practice you’ll find risks don’t fit in neat boxes so it’s ok to just pick any of the categories that suits. It’s more important to capture risks and expose them, than it is to perfectly categorise them.Because your information about the environment is imperfect, don’t worry about finding every risk possible. What your team captures are likely the things that trouble them the most. As long as you revisit the risk map regularly you can operate effectively with a high rate of uncertainty.With the map completed, teams are challenged with thinking about the smallest thing that can be done to de-risk items that have been identified as the most likely and impactful.Visually, teams are tasked with taking the items in the top right quadrant and doing the least amount of work possible to shift these left or down.With this in mind, it’s now time to decide on a plan.

The Elements of OODAThe OODA loop is comprised of 4 majors elements:Observe — Orient — Decide — ActIn a team environment I explain these four elements asObserve — Understand the environmentOrient — Align on what is importantDecide — Agree on a good course of actionAct — Do itIn complex changing environments enabling these 4 elements to occur quickly and effectively can allow teams to leverage their broad range of skills and experiences to increase the likelihood of successful delivery.Although there are different ways to do each of these steps, irrespective of the way you choose, I would encourage you to use something to anchor a team’s focus and visualise what is discussed. This will help enable complex interactions to emerge which would otherwise not occur.Observing the environmentMy preferred approach for observing the environment is Jeff Patton’s Story Mapping approach. This technique has become the defacto standard for visualising product backlogs, and helps teams focus on how a customer interacts with the system.Story Mapping is awesome as it encourages, amongst other thingsStorytelling as a technique to flush out any gaps in the environmentA two dimensional backlog enabling better visualisation of priorities and dependenciesIt also happens to be an awesome way to observe the environment and what a team will need to deliver to create value.

I recently received an email from Richard Branson talking about the importance of family in all that we do. Join V. Lee Henson. President and Founder of AgileDad as we explore what Richard has to say and how it can make us better people. 

Do you truly understand and Value Openness? Are you honest and open in all of your communications? Join Sara Bierman, Business Agility Guru & AgileDad Coach as she takes you on a journey to learn why Openness is the Key to success!

Join V. Lee Henson, President and Founder of AgileDad as we explore why hard working teams are often rewarded with more to do instead of receiving a better incentive. 

Last week during a CSM Class, one of my students Charity had a brave observation regarding Product Ownership and Limiting WIP. Her observation was that when we say yes to something, we are in essence saying no to something different. Join V Lee Henson as we learn more about how this impacts all that we do. 

Join V. Lee Henson, President & Founder of AgileDad as we have a lesson in integrity and what it means to truly stand by your word. 

As a ScrumMaster, how do you handle the act of juggling multiple teams. I quite honestly have never been good at physical juggling whether it be balls, clubs, rings, knives or even chainsaws. Mental juggling has not proved to be easier. Join V. Lee Henson, President and Founder of AgileDad as we discuss what it takes to get you ready to work with multiple teams.