tactics – Page 10 – ScrumOfOne

Bust A Rut

One of the biggest things I got out of reading ‘The Secret’ by Rhonda Byrne was the idea of a Secret Shifter:

Secret Shifters, such as pleasant memories, nature, or your favorite music, can change your feelings and shift your frequency in an instant.

By frequency, she’s talking about the energy you give off to attract the things you really want. If you’re not into that ‘frequency’ and ‘law of attraction’ business, that’s cool. It’s actually not as simplistic as visualizing what you want, because you have to pair that with NOT focusing on what you DON’T want, since, per this game, you’ll just attract that into your life, too. It takes a little work, but that’s not what I wanted to get into. I want to talk about the ‘feeling good’ part.

Before I get into work, and after I leave work, and in the morning if I remember to, I cue up my Secret Shifter, my theme song, Thand101. It’s awesome, I love it. It kind of sounds like a galloping horse when fully orchestrated, and I’ll hum it to myself when I’m feeling awesome, like I’m radiating bad-assery, or I’ll hum it to myself, all morose and in more of a minor key than it already is, as a sympathetic back pat as if to say, “Cheer up, ol’ chap, chin up.” Yeah, that bit comes through in a British accent. Self-talk can get weird.

Martha Beck, life coach extraordinaire, has a version of this which is more involved: ask yourself what is your favorite thing to sense with each of your five senses, then ‘sense’ them. Man, that was a clumsy way to say it. Let’s try this:

Right now, what is your favorite thing to see?
What is your favorite taste?
What is your favorite smell?
What is your favorite touch sensation?
What is your favorite sound?
Now, see that thing, taste that taste, smell that favorite smell, feel yourself touching that favorite… touch, hear that sound. Fully immerse yourself in each of these sensations.

They won’t always make sense to… sense all at once, and that’s not the point. You’ll most likely smile, and you’ll take deeper breaths, and your shoulders will slump a little, and you’ll be more present and in your body – that’s the point.

As hustlin’ and bustlin’ humans in the first world, most of us reading this, myself included, we’re often focused on the future or the past, and not in the present. That’s a pretty broad and accusatory statement, so I invite you to analyze that for yourself: are you limiting yourself with regret (past-focused) or worry (future-focused)? One way to bring you back in the present is to then bring you back into your body (vs. your head), and what better way than by sensing. Sure, the fantasy of favorite senses isn’t real, but it uses what your body does to result in a smile.

So there you have it, folks. To bust a rut, immerse yourself in a Sensory Meditation or use a Secret Shifter. This stuff works for me, and yes, the language here can be a little ‘woo-woo’, sure, but we’re not talking about reconnecting with the greater consciousness of the universe (or are we…), we’re just talking about feeling better.

New Perspective On The Daily Stand Up

That morning meeting, where you stand-up for 15 minutes, and folks go around the room answering the 3 questions (and for a ScrumOfOne, I answer them for myself without feeling like I have multiple personality disorder), you know, the Scrum… how are you liking it?

Does it tend to feel like a status meeting?

The Scrum is meant to… have a different feel. Yes, when the Scrum founders whittled down product development process into a few core meetings, the Scrum was one of them, and it was meant to do a number of things:

intensify team focus
collaborate & clarify
crush impediments
motivate team spirit

We get to this different flavor of morning get-together via asking a modified version of those 3 questions:

What did I do for the team yesterday?
What will I do for the team today?
Is there anything blocking me from maximizing team velocity toward the sprint goal?

Team-focused. Go team. Sounds corny, sure, but it does do a great job of removing the focus from ‘me’ to ‘us’ and how fast ‘we’ are moving, ’cause it’s not the individual that wins in Scrum: it’s the group. I think it’s a clever spin.

Kaizen Story

As I’ve worked with Scrum in a context that is not software development, I’ve come to define Scrum thus:

Scrum is a framework for getting stuff done that embraces change, while promoting transparency, inspection, and adaptation.

You get transparency from the Daily Stand-Up meeting (this is called the Scrum, too), and both the Sprint Burndown Chart and the Release Burndown Chart. Everybody starts the day on the same page, blockers are identified, and outside parties are privy to the progress during the Sprint and towards a release-worthy product; these are formats for easy sharing and digesting of Sprint-related information.

From all the data being laid out from the Burndown Charts, we can get inspection. The Sprint-end demonstration (part of the Review) also allows for a frequent check on the state of the software and acceptance of the stories done during the Sprint: inspection of the work. Inspection of the process is done during the Retrospective.

And the Retrospective is THE place where adaptation is determined. After inspecting the process, using methods I’ve mentioned in the previous two posts, we ideally get a somewhat prioritized list of stuff we either want to keep, stop, or start doing: a backlog of adaptation options.

Now, we pat ourselves on the back, go straight into Sprint Planning, and restart the Sprintly cycle.

And fail.

I mean, if we just come up with a list of ways we can get better, but don’t really do anything about it, then the Retrospective was a jolly ol’ waste of time. Does this sound like post-mortem meetings you’ve been a part of? Were they called ‘Lessons Learned’ meetings? See, I passionately dislike that term, ‘Lessons Learned’. You cannot say you’ve properly learned your lesson unless you repeat a situation and then exhibit ‘better’ behaviour, thus proving that you have indeed learned your lesson. Until then, you’re just talking about ‘how it all went’, an ‘Issues Encountered’ meeting, sharing what you’d do better next time.

The Retrospective is different.

At the top of the backlog of adaptation options, there must be an immediately actionable process improvement that can be implemented. How to ensure you do this? Make it a story for the upcoming Sprint: the Kaizen Story. Kaizen? Yeah, it’s Japanese:

Kaizen is a Japanese business philosophy of continuous improvement of working practices, personal efficiency, etc. Kaizen literally means ‘improvement’.

So, via Kaizen, we adapt. Via the Kaizen Story, a properly formed Sprint backlog item with points and acceptance criteria… and is independent, negotiable, valuable, ‘estimatable’, sized to fit, and testable… and is otherwise meeting a Definition of Ready for stories, the team is constantly working on improving the Scrum process, specifically using a measure uncovered and set by the team itself. (What’s that? At the back of the room… is that… is that the ‘self-management’ flag being waved? Why yes. Yes it is.)

I don’t have a clever way to end this post besides expressing how I think this idea is just so damn cool: Scrum becomes a framework for both getting stuff done and for improving how stuff gets done.

Genius.

Hot Or Not, Fist Or Five

If you’re in Boston, you know it’s, like, 105 degrees. Or 85 degrees, dipping into the 90’s, but we adamantly complain about this weather like it’s suddenly our jobs, so it might as well be 105.

(Attempt at a smooth transition in 3… 2…)

Moving to what we can control, and might equally have a few opinions about, Retrospectives are meant to, yes, get people thinking back and talking about the Sprint. You might read that at the end of a Retrospective, there is a meta-Retrospective: the team talks quickly about how that meeting went. One way to do this is via the ‘fist or five’ technique.

At the same time, so have some fun with it by counting down from 3, everybody sticks up a hand with the number of fingers representing how much they liked the meeting. Five fingers mean they really liked the meeting, got a lot out of it, thought it was a solid use of time, and they’re so happy, they want to make love to everybody, like Roberto Benigni.

No fingers is a fist, and this means they really did not like the meeting, are now dumber for it, thought it was a total waste of time, and they’re so unhappy, they want to conduct atrocities of great evil, like not commenting code.

I’ve started applying this neat little technique to not just the Retrospective, but to each artifact and ceremony of the past Sprint. Do this at the beginning of the Retrospective by listing Stand-up Meeting, Sprint Planning Meeting, Sprint Backlog, Product Backlog, etc., and getting the team to vote on each of these, tallying up the number of 0s through 5s for each Scrummy thing.

Et voila: the team opines on pieces of the process as a primer to providing pithy ponderings on the previous passage of purposeful participation.

Tying this back to the last blog post, we now have more to consider for how to adapt in the next Sprint.

Squeezing Twice As Much Out Of Retrospectives

Looking to adapt via Scrum? That’s what the Retrospective is for, and there are a number of ways to conduct this meeting. I’m a particular fan of one way that gets the team to share twice as much input.

We start by everybody getting a few of those sticky notes. Watch ’em comment over the color of the sticky notes – it’s cute. Personally, I go for the neon pink – nothing wrong with standing out.

On a whiteboard, divide it up into three sections: Keep, Start, Stop.

ROUND 1: GET IDEAS

Now we get the team to sit and think. One idea per sticky, they each think back through the Sprint and write down ideas or events, one per sticky, that they would like to keep doing, start doing, or stop doing. Watch how a few ’em will have lots to say, sometimes asking for more stickies.

Alright. If folks haven’t been walking up to the board to put ’em in the appropriate area already, let’s do so. Watch ’em say things like, “Hey, I said the same thing,” as they place their stickies next to similar ones.

Now we walk through each sticky. Retrospectives are the one meeting in Scrum where the most discussion takes place, so things can get a little emotional, and watch a few of ’em change their vocabulary in describing events so as to not directly implicate anybody. This is also where the kudos come out. Encourage verbal back-patting.

During the discussion, group the stickies, maybe even draw a circle around them on the board to clarify. Get the team to agree that the stickies have been appropriately grouped. Excellent. Give yourself a back-pat. Surreptitiously.

ROUND 2: GET VOTES

We continue by everybody getting a few of those sticky dots. Watch ‘em comment over the color of the sticky dots – it’s cute. Personally, I go for the taupe – those are unfortunately rare.

Now we get the team to stand and deliver …a total of 5 sticky dots. One vote per dot, they get to distribute them however they like across the groups of sticky notes, voting for what they would like to keep doing, start doing, or stop doing. Watch how a few ’em will deliberate aloud, ~~undottedly~~ undoubtedly influencing others.

Now we walk through the dot clusters, tallying up the votes per group of sticky notes. Step back. State the obvious, like a sports reporter, “Well folks, looks like this group over here got the most votes, with this other group here in second place.” Things won’t exactly get emotional, but watch a few of ’em nod their heads, with fewer still pumping their fists in the air.

Et voila: the team sources ideas, the team votes on the ideas: the crew is surveyed twice, going deeper into the heart of the issues that matter.

Regardless of the vote distribution, the most voted note groups will be the focus of how the team will want to adapt for future sprints. Excellent. Give yourself another back-pat. This time, don’t hide it.