Posts tagged coaching

11 Hints to Improve Your Scrum Meetings

6
150 days
by in Agile, Basic Scrum

I saw a lot of Scrum meetings out there, that are not more than a skeleton. Everybody is attending but nobody is participating. To improve such situations I collected 11 hints to improve your Scrum Meetings.

Daily Scrum

1 – Walk the Board

Instead of answering the “three questions”, which leads in most teams to answering only the first two questions, walk the board. This means, use your Sprint Backlog to talk about what is currently in progress and what is planned for today. That way you’re concentrating on the really important things, instead of talking about the past.

2 – Show what you’re working on

Pictures are often better than words. Show your colleagues what your currently working on. And yes, it is possible to still do this within the 15 minutes time box.

3 – Appreciate the Daily Scrum as a Mini Sprint Planning

The main reason for the Daily Scrum isn’t the reporting. The main reason for the Daily Scrum is to plan your work for the day. The meeting should be used to plan your next steps in towards your overall Sprint goal. Try to change the context of the Daily Scrum and use it as a Mini Sprint Planning meeting.

Sprint Planning

4 – Demand commitment

I know that in the last update of the Scrum Guide the commitment was alleviated, but I think I’m not the only one who thinks this is the wrong direction. At least in Europe I still think that the commitment is an important part of Scrum. That’s why I demand the commitment of every team member e.g. at the end of a Sprint Planning. Write your Sprint goals on a flip chart and let everybody sign it. Put it on the wall of your team room.

5 – Avoid big tasks

I believe every ScrumMaster heard this sentence more than once “This task is not splittable”. Bullshit! I’m convinced that 95% of all tasks can be splitted in smaller ones. Don’t accept big tasks, just because you want to finish the meeting and head to lunch. And this leads us to…

6 – Bring food

The Sprint Planning meeting is the longest meeting in Scrum. Avoid that the blood glucose level is going down and everybody wants to leave as soon as possible. Bring food!

Sprint Review

7 – Rehearse the Sprint Review

Nothing sucks more than an unprepared Sprint Review. Take your time and prepare the Sprint Review properly. If it’s the last day of your Sprint and a feature is still not running, skip it. Concentrate on what is working and prepare a great show. Your stakeholders will love you.

8 – Use the daily Scrum to plan the last steps

The last Daily Scrum should be used to talk about the last steps that have to be taken to reach the Sprint Goal. Nothing is more important that day.

Sprint Retrospective

9 – Define a responsible

At the end of a Sprint Retrospective you normally have a list of (a few) improvements for the next Sprint. But as long as nobody was assigned to the improvements, nothing will happen. I know there are exceptions, but having a responsible team member per improvement helps to keep the team commitment.

10 – Define a DUE Date

The same is true for a due date. You may decide, that all improvements have to be done till the end of the next Sprint, but there are tasks that will take longer. Set a due date for every improvement to help to track it.

11 – Make the results visible

I saw a lot of teams that put the results of their retrospective into a Wiki or an agile tool. The problem with this approach is, that nobody will see them anymore. Out of sight, out of mind. Put the results on a flipchart and hang it in your team room, so that everybody can see them. If a item on this list is done, put a check behind it. Another approach is, to add the tasks of your retrospective to your Sprint Backlog.

I hope this list is helpful. If you have other ideas to improve your Scrum meetings, I’d appreciate a comment. Stay curious!

 

Open Session: Tai Chi/Zen & Team

0
646 days
by in Agile Coaching

The first OpenSpace session for me today was about Thai Chi and the influence on the team. Christine Neidhardt did some interesting and simple Tai Chi exercises with us and a discussion afterwards what we felt. We started to stand in a circle and focus on ourselves. When we were ready to start we went into the circle and bow to let everybody know that we appreciate that they are also participating. After this introduction we did the first exercise. We took each others hands and started a “La Ola” wave. The challenge was to get a real smooth “La Ola” wave through going round the whole circle. The next and for me more interesting exercise was the following: Clap your hands one after another around the circle and find the rhythm of the team. We got a smooth rhythm with some disturbances in between but after some practice we were able to overcome these and continue with our rhythm. In the last exercise we stood in a line without seeing each other. Christine was starting a movement with her arms which went through the line and back. The first movements were quite easy even if I were the blocker in the first round but it should have been easy because you were able to see the arms of the people in the corner of your eyes but the last movement was really difficult to recognize. You had to try to feel when it’s time to continue the movement without seeing it. Really interesting experience. After the exercises we sat together discussing what we felt during out Tai Chi exercises. You can see the results on the flip chart.

7 things to sabotage an AgileCoachCamp

4
646 days
by in Agile, Agile Coaching

I’m currently participating at the Agile Coach Camp Germany 2010 in Rückersbach near Frankfurt. As some of you already know I’m a lightning talk addict and so I couldn’t resist to do a one this eveAgileCoachCampning. After a bunch of great talks I did my talk on the topic “7 things to sabotage an AgileCoachCamp”. Here is my list:

  1. Don‘t propose any topics for the open space sessions.
  2. Ignore the facilitator
  3. Disturb any sessions by continuously asking questions that are not related to the session topic.
  4. Don‘t participate on any games. You‘re not a child anymore.
  5. Talk on your mobile as loud and often as possible.
  6. Leave, now!
  7. Don’t talk at all.

I didn’t use slides but if you need some, here you are:

Here is the video of the talk. Have fun :-) :


How to kick off your new Scrum team

4
664 days
by in Agile Coaching, Scrum

Kick offI’m currently working on a recipe on how to kick off a new Scrum team that is completely new to agile practices and Scrum. After some iterations I came up with the following recipe. The ingredients:

  • 1 team
  • 1 team charter
  • 1 team room
  • 1 experienced Scrum coach
  • 1 Scrum training
  • at least 1 whiteboard or pinboard
  • at least 1 flip chart or flip chart paper
  • a lot of post-its and din a6 cards

Train and coach the team

First of all you need to train the team. From my point of view this is the crux of this recipe. It is important that every team member knows the elements of the Scrum framework and even more important why Scrum or other agile processes are working. If they don’t understand the principles of agile software development the team will fail. You don’t have to send the whole team to a CSM or CSPO training but it is no disadvantage ;) As we have an experienced Scrum coach in our ingredients we can do in-house trainings and accompany the team through the whole process.

Create the team charter

The next step in our recipe is to create the team charter. The team charter defines how our team is working together. It defines the communication rules, code of behavior, the development tools used, the time and location of the Scrum meetings and one of the most important things: the “Definition of Done”. As the name implies the team charter is build by the team itself. To create the team charter a dedicated meeting is scheduled were all team members attend. Creating the team charter is a perfect way to boost the team building process. I prefer to create the team chart on flip-chart paper so that it can be easily put on the walls of the team room. If you need some input for your team charter, have a look at the great presentation of Simon Roberts called “Effective Team Chartering”.

Collocate the team

Latest now it is time to collocate the team into one team room. I know that this is not possible in every building without excessive reconstruction of the room structure. So if you can’t place all team members into one room they should at least sit on the same floor. This is really important if you want a hyper productive team. The more the team is spread the less is the productivity. So if you’re one of the lucky ones able to put everybody in one room I prefer the following setup. The room should have enough space for the team members, the sprint backlog, the burndown charts, the team charter and some space at the walls to be able to put some flip chart paper on them. This environment supports the communication and creativity of the team and therefore the self-organization.

Now your team is ready an eagerly waiting for their first sprint. This is my current recipe but I’m sure that it’ll change over the next weeks and month. What is your recipe? Comments?

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