'Science' of making Teams effective lies in 'Art' of Retrospective

“What is the Retrospective and what do we do in this?” My team asked.
“Apne Girebaan mein jhaankna” – I replied in regional language. Lot of laughs in the room. I said, this Laugh & Pleasant Environment are the most desirable outcomes of Retrospective Meeting. Discussion continued..

To start our discussion on Retrospective Meeting (RM), I’ll highlight few facts first: -

• RM is Scrum Event mentioned in Scrum Guide
• In recent state-of-agile report, this is 2nd most used practice (81%) by the teams
• Importantly, scrum guide says, RM can be used to improve processes & practices to make it more Enjoyable & Effective for next sprint (and did not mention maximize output, increase productivity etc). 

RM is subjective discussion in which Team travel in past & analyse the experience. They make effort to make this experience more enjoyable & effective in the upcoming sprints. But why is RM so popular & widely adopted today?

To understand this, let's see history of society-

1. Late 18th Century, the world witnessed the Industrial Revolution. Many Industries setup & getting revenue & development was the main goal. In that duration, Bonded Labor became the inseparable virtue of industrial revolution. Since poverty, malnutrition, diseases were widespread in the society, people even accepted the form of bonded labor to earn food.
2. Second stage started in later half of 20th century & that was the Information Revolution. The societies around the world improved & people questioned bonded labor. Now Information became the weapon. Organizations & people were hungrier for information. However, people were not objecting the oppressiveness at their workplace.
3. 3rd and current phase - 21st century & that is Social & Psychological Revolution. Today in the Internet Age, the Information is not hidden. But people are more conscious about their social & self-respect, psychological safety, workplace rights, work-life balance & right to choose how they want to operate.

Embracing change is Agile. We have seen drastic change in people psychology since 18th century. It is necessary to make efforts so that these social & psychological needs can be taken care of and humanity-factor is not extinct at workplace. RM gives the opportunity to Teams to talk in these dimensions and perhaps one of the most used practice. But do you think it is a simple discussion where team Inspect the past, Analyse the improvements, and Experiments and Adapt the new way of working?

Unfortunately RM is the event which has most anti-patterns, like:

1. Only 1 or 2 persons speak
2. People feel like prisoner
3. Team suggest skipping retro for one sprint
4. Only Blaming, no productive discussion
5. Psychological insecurities in highlighting issues,

and therefore SM should know the art of facilitating RM. Being an Agile Enabler, it is subject of continuous learning for all of us how to blur these anti-patterns and make retrospective more effective.

Facilitating Retrospective Meeting

During my journey of being an Agile Enabler, I have performed number of experiments to facilitate 'effective' retrospective. But it is obvious that one method which works well for one team, can be disaster for another. Since every team has unique people, psychologies, challenges & strength, the way of discussing the things will be quite different. Still, there are few methods which I found effective with most of the team and I am sharing here with all of you.   

1. Initiate RM (Ice-breaker) 

When all members are present for RM, I initiate with defining sprint in “One” word from one theme. Few Theme:

• Food: (Chosen words – Bitter Gourd, Milk, Fruit-Juice)
• Holiday Destination: (Chosen words – France, Australia, Sahara Desert, Syria, Taliban)
• Railway: (Chosen words – Rajdhani, Unreserved Coach, Train cancelled, Bullet)
• More....

When members chose these words & gave their reasons, in first 5-10 minutes we actually have good idea in which direction our RM will go and what are the points should be discussed.

2. Chose RM Theme

Every RM meeting has one specific agenda i.e. what can we change in our process so that it might be more enjoyable & effective. And it comes in form of ‘went well’, ‘improve’, ‘Action Item’.
But if we just discuss this, it will be monotonous, boring & might not be effective. Based on my research & experience, I used below:

Mythology Theme

• Brahma (To introduce), Vishnu (Continuity), Mahesh (Destroyer/Stop)
• Boon – Appreciation, Positive
• Bane – Problem, Improvement, what held us back

Cuisine Theme

• Junk Food (Stop), Fruits (Continuity), Seasonal Veg (To introduce)
• Water – Positive and appreciation
• Overeating – Problem, Improvement, why unable to operate

Other Themes like

• Weather (Cloud, Rain, Sun)
• 3L (Like, Learn, Lack)
• Satisfaction (Mad, Sad, Glad)
• KALM (Keep, Add, More Less)
• And more..

3. Facilitation Techniques

We decided themes but I, as SM, will adopt different way of RM facilitation so that I can make people to think more creatively and identify the core areas to discuss. Below are few facilitation techniques which I adopted:

1. 1,2 ka 4 (or 1,2,4) – It is done in 3 rounds. First every member writes 3 improvement separately. In second round, team of 2 people formed and they need to come up with 3 most critical issues out of their combined 6. And so on. It highlights the most critical issues as team assign ranks.
2. Hot Air Balloon – Air balloon rises because of hot air. But excessive sandbags may hold it back. Our team is Balloon. In defined timebox, we identify Hot-airs and Sandbags separately and discuss collectively.
   
3. Sailboat – This is a kind of scenery in which boat (team) need to reach an island (goal) but there are some anchors (impediments) which are holding boat back and some rocks and stones (risks). Team identify each in based on previous sprint.
   
4. Outings – Occasionally, we go out for Retrospective-on-Lunch. This is simple discussion but during lunch.

4. My Favorite Facilitation Initiatives

Few techniques are my favorite and every time, no matter how many times repeated even with the same team, these hit the core. Below:

1. 2 Truth ~ 1 Lie – Every member needs to write 2 Truth and 1 Lie on sticky notes in a timebox. Once timebox is over, each member take chance and reveal his truths and lie. Other members need to identify which is truths and which is lie. It highlights the area where members are not on same page. It is very helpful in identifying the dysfunctions in the team.   
2. Story Cube – 
   
   I arranged the story cubes. Every member needs to pick one cube and throw it on the table. Figure which will be on top surface, need to be described with Sprint happenings by the member. This technique can highlight the issues which traditional RM might not. E.g. – 

• One member got the ‘Snake’ figure and I was amazed by his reasoning. He said “The snakes are very stubborn. I try hard to throw these away from my house, but they are back. I can say these are like “Bugs” in our system, we try hard to resolve but these are back because we are not targeting Technical Debt and applying patches on few places. 
• Another member got figure in which someone was lifting the weight. S/he said this is “XYZ” in our team who really do most of the work. In our team, work is not equally divided.

These are few examples what this technique delivered but I never got these points highlighted through other techniques.

Conclusion

The RM is one event in which anyone can apply any creativity to make team to think in 360 degree. The objective is to inspect & discuss the stuff in productive & healthy environment. And, this can’t be done without Trust. If we see Maslow’s hierarchy of need where Psychological needs are at bottom or  5 Dysfunction of Team by Lencioni where Trust is at bottom, we shall understand how much necessary are these to take care to build a effective & happy team.

Therefore, to build trust and protect members psychology, we have a mandatory practice for everyone to highlight:

Heard – I appreciate that I was heard at.. or I believe I could have been heard at..

Seen – I appreciate that I was seen at.. or I believe I could have been seen at..

Respected – I appreciate that I was respected at.. or I believe I could have been respected at..

Last but not the least - Mostly teams discuss the appreciation in RM. But we are one of very rare teams who believe in Confessions also. Any member can confess anything not done correctly or ethically by him/her in the sprint. Believe me this is very tough to confess in front of team & that is the starting of building trust. I led my team by examples & I still remember my first confession made 4 years back:

“I confess during the sprint I lose my temper and used some words which I should not. I promise my team that I’ll improve my capability to handle the situations & try to maintain my temper.”

Lastly, I remember someone saying correctly –
 “A sprint closed without a effective retrospective is as good as a surgery finished without the stitches”

Journey is more beautiful than destination. So is Agile Adoption Journey!

“…Congratulations! Management is ready to adopt Agile. Soon, we shall be an Agile Team. We'll adopt Agile way of work, stop traditional practices & become a high performing team …”

These talks from a team is quite exciting as they are about to start Agile Adoption Journey. But, is it really that simple as it sounds? Is this change quite linear? Is there any challenge to achieve this change?

I believe, CHANGE always comes from CHALLENGE; Only need is to attack the core of CHALLENGE i.e. LLE. The same is true with Agile Journey also.

I, as a SM, helped my team in their Agile journey in these 3 steps below:
L – Losing
L – Love
E – Educate

Step -1: Let Team realize what they are ‘Losing’ now

Until team understands what they are losing now & why Agile needed, the adoption will not be taken seriously and the efforts may not come from bottom of the heart. So firstly i'll discuss the current problems & possible reason of it. In past, I did this by having sessions. Mostly teams had problems like:

1. Missing continuous & timely deliveries – mainly due to either under-estimating the work or scope change during the development.
2. Pressure to make changes in the product – Stakeholder wants the changes in the product at the later stage of development which is difficult.
3. Unresolved dependencies & no coordination with stakeholders – The questions raised to stakeholders, remain unanswered for long time & team is not able to work which results in delay.
4. Fear in releasing the product – Product will work or not in customer’s environment? Release is done at very later stage.
5. Stakeholders never satisfied – Interesting point. They said it does not matter how big efforts we make, we get criticism & dissatisfaction only.
6. No time to learn new technologies – Deadline are so narrow that they never get time to explore new technologies & way of doing things.
7. Lack of Transparency – From top to bottom, everyone had this feeling with each other. No one knows how anyone else is adding value to the product.
8. Being treated like Machines & Psychological unsafe environment – We don’t have “our” time. Questioning on why this much time is required to do particular task. No leave can be availed due to deadlines. Due to unnecessary questioning & conflict, people stopped even putting their points. They just follow commands.

By discussing these problems, I earned a personal touch from team like there is someone who understand their issues. Also gave them a ray of hope that these issues can be solved. The objective of first step was to win the trust of team that someone is there to protect them which I did.
Here we should also understand that SM is an enabler. It is the team who will make efforts to bring the change & it can be done only when team has reason, hope & willingness to do so.
  

Step -2: Make people ‘Love’ Agile

The second step is to let Team know how Agile can solve these problems. But if we just reiterate  Manifesto & Principles, people might lose interest & find it bookish. We need to present agile in a way that they may correlate it with their problems. Personally, I wanted them to Love Agile & so I took below initiatives:

A) Use Interesting Examples:

• Bollywood - Took example how bollywood embraced change & showed what is happening in society & what society wants:
• 1910s – first movie “Raja Harishchandra”
• 1950-60s – Landlord related movies - MotherIndia, Do Ankhe Barah Hath
• 1960-80s – Unemployment, Poverty - Angry Young Man movies
• 1990-2000 – LPG -We started thinking liberally & experienced generation gap (love stories & parent objections kind of movies).
• 2000s - Corporate culture, dis-satisfaction in the society -  Page-3, Life in a Metro
• 2010s - WebSeries with much bolder content because it is the need of time. 

• Demonetisation – One night, Demonetisation (Nov’16) was announced. Country saw currency issues for few months. If I was developing my ecommerce website with Indian culture of cash-on-delivery option, I might not be able to have business at that time. In Agile, I can add other payment options in my website whenever I want. Showed how Paytm blossom during this time.

• http://www.scrumyourwedding.com/ – wedding-planners using scrum.

• Mythology – Took Incarnations example. How the complexity in world increase and incarnations become more & more superior to tackle the situation.

• Comparisons – Orkut vs FB, BB vs Samsung, Kodak vs Nikon – Why One see growth & other      closed?  

B) Concept clarity by Games & Story Telling:

• Flip Coin Game – light weight game to demonstrate iterative delivery concept.

• Calligraphy Game – game to focus on completing the things.

• Ham-n-eggs - Story to showcase difference between involvement & commitment and relation to Agile Teams

• Water Journey from Underground to Glass (Different Analogies)
• Groundwater = Product Backlog,
• Tank on roof = Sprint Scope
• Filtered Water in RO = Increment
• If we take water in glass = Deployed to customer.
• I highlighted, if ground water is not available, we might not have drinking water. Same way, if product backlog is not maintained, it will directly impact the delivery.        

• ​​​​​​​And many more...

C) Touching the Nerves:

Above #A & #B helped team to understand soul of Agile & by now they started talking Agile. Now, it was the time to showcase how Agile can solve their problems which we discussed in “Losing” section. We had many QnA sessions on how Agile Way can help us, like:

• Maintain Transparency by Having a Kanban board and see the journey of product 
• Release Schedule practice will help in Continuous & timely deliveries. Eventually, we achieved this.
• Highlight how can we facilitate changes in the product. Showcase the importance of scrum events (Planning & Review), refinement meetings.
• How Agile Practices focus on Coordination & collaboration with stakeholder. It is easier to resolve the dependencies.
• Explained that Stakeholders are not satisfied because they don’t get what they need even if the product follows the signed contract. The reason is, expectations change with the time and so we need changes in our product.
• I personally felt that, Most of the members complaint regarding estimates. They do not get required time to do their task or they are asked to cut-down the estimates. I made them understand Estimates, Velocity, story point in a very interesting story-telling way.
• Finally, when we discussed Scrum Values, it was like last nail in coffin. It motivated team towards Agile & Team looked confident, hopeful and dedicated to Agile after these discussion.

Step -3: ‘Educate’ people to Execute

Now, last step is educating & helping team to implement practices. It is Bi-Dimensional approach which focuses on – Doing Agile (adopt practices) & Being Agile (change mindset by cultivating values & principles).
I believe we can’t avoid any of it. ‘Doing’ is important to maintain the Deliveries & RoI and ‘Being’ is important to transform the culture & mindset of team. Our Agile Adoption efforts included both. I trained, coach & teach my teams on these by organizing dedicated interactive sessions.

• Doing Agile Workshops - Explain Framework, Events, Role & Responsibilities, best practices in detail.  
• Being Agile Workshops - Explain Scrum Values, Principles, Empiricism, Transparency, Psychological Safety, Transforming the culture and Earning Trust.
  
• Setup Agile CoE & CoP - Setup dedicated environment & spaces where people can Talk Agile, Practice Agile, Discuss their problems and Learn.    
• Agile Maturity Assessment -  Prepare Agile Maturity Assessment which can be taken on regular basis & highlight the improvement areas in the team. 

  
Below are few of my Articles which focus on certain Agile Practices. I explained the core of these to Team in workshops:  

·       TUFE is not TOUGH to understand

·       Krishna: The Ultimate ScrumMaster chosen by Pandavas

·       Estimations​​​​​​​

The idea is to make Team able to understand & execute practices and at the same time develop psychologies & values in their mind.

 

Conclusion

In last 5 years, I worked with many teams & I realized these 3 steps are the core to help any team in its agile journey. It is not the journey from Traditional to Agile, rather it is the journey of Earning Trust & Cultivating Team Spirit which can be achieved by practising Values, understanding Principles & executing Best Practices. Once Netflix CEO said -

"Do not tolerate brilliant jerk. The cost of teamwork is too high." Believe me, I found it so helpful in building an Agile Team.

As SM I helped many teams in their Agile journey but I believe:

“A SM is successful only when her/his team is in condition when SM is not required.”

And so my journey (to attack LLE in CHALLENGE = CHANGE) goes on ...

Understand 'Insecurities' to make your team "Psychological Safe"!

Once my team decided to adopt pair-programming. Team was very good but one guy, ‘V’, was a brilliant coder. However, V never agreed for pairing. Other members proclaimed that V never wants to share skills with others & so he is not agreed for it. I started believing others, but I could never convince myself that ‘this’ is the reason why ‘V’ is not supporting pairing and it motivated me to find the actual reason behind it.

We have been given one beautiful thing called brain to preform so many activities. The outcome & experience of these activities is stored as intelligence, called Mind. This mind makes human a complex entity because we human are controlled by certain psychologies developed in this mind.
Psychology means different human factors like hesitation, fear, happiness, emotions, feelings, complexes, excitements etc. which are growing in our mind and psychological safety is how these are taken care of on personal & professional front.

Before psychological safety, we need to understand Psychological Insecurity. I have seen 3 categories of psychological insecurity: -

1. Job Role
2. Gender   
3. Social Inferiority

1. Insecurity related to Job Role:

We are in highly competitive world. Truly, most of the teams are now started talking coordination, collaboration & team-spirit, still there is a feeling of competition & sometimes it takes negative shape. Being an Agile Enabler, I’ve seen below areas where people are hesitant & feel insecure: -

1. Agile Team means we are building cross-functional team. This idea instils the fear in members that their role/skills might become decentralize. When we talk about cross-functional team, without understanding the core of it, member fills with spirit of competition & insecurity.
2. Scrum Team means there is a scrum master. Because of SM role, the traditional management team (team leaders, managers etc) feel insecurity.
3. Same case is with the idea of self-organized team. Traditional management team feel insecurity here.

Protect & Maintain the Psychological Safety based on Job Role - 

As per my analysis as an Agile Enabler, the main reason of this (job role) insecurity is half-knowledge of the concepts (like cross-functionality, scrum master responsibility etc.) & our own assumptions.
Here, my efforts are to:

• Make all the concepts (Theories, Practices, Roles & Responsibilities) clear to every team members & make them understand the core behind these.
• Encourage them to have communication & talks. Discourage any possibility of assumption building.
• Never leave anyone unnoticed. I try to engage each member wherever possible. E.g. – Earlier, in one of my team, there was practice that in sprint review, QA members will showcase the developed features to stakeholders. I presented an idea that each developer showcases her/his developed feature to stakeholder. This idea was practiced & they feel engaged and have better frequency with stakeholders now.
• Motivating them to learn continuously. We do not have SAFe as such but the idea of hackathon & innovation (IP iterations), we have adopted and almost all member participates into it. This helps us in improving technical skills & better coordination among the members which are the core ingredients of safety.

These steps helped, but it still needs more efforts to make people secure on this front because this is directly associated with the feeling of earning bread & butter.

2. Insecurity related to Gender:

Psychologies become more complex when gender comes into the picture. Studies say that Male & Female psychologies are different & most of the time both see the same picture from different lenses, & it is natural. I have experienced some instances:

1. Our organization had a training on “Sexual Harassment". Surprisingly, after that I sensed a behavioral disconnect between 2 gender groups in my team. I talked with each group to find the core and finding was "male group” developed an understanding that Female can use this as weapon in future so better to get disconnected earlier. I was shocked.
2. I witnessed the conflict between 2 male groups: one says - “Females are being treated differently & it is not good”. Other says – “We can’t use the same expression & language with female as we use with males, so we need to treat them differently”.
3. Once, In our cubical sitting arrangement, 1 male & female personnel were allocated seats facing diagonally to each other. One day she informed me – “That member who is sitting & facing diagonally to me, stares at me continuously. I feel awkward & unable to execute my responsibility....”.       

Protect & Maintain the Psychological Safety based on Gender Complexities:

These above incidents motivated me to talk to different people & groups to find the core. What I found was misunderstanding, overthinking & assumptions.

The concept of Sexual Harassment training was misunderstood. To convince the Male group, we had one more session solely on “what males should do to save themselves from false charge”. It took time, but we were able to re-establish the broken disconnect.

Again, that diagonal sitting guy had a habit of being lost in thoughts while thinking. He even did not know that he used to see that girl, while thinking. I facilitated talks between them. Today they are good co-workers & friends.

Finally, we need to understand “No girl wants to be treated differently because it gives the sense of discrimination. She wants “to be heard & responded” so that she might feel engaged. At the same time, boys also need the same & don't want to be the victim of feminism.

3. Psychological Safety related to Social Inferiority:

We all are different from each other, from different background, culture, language & traditions. Day-to-day comparison with each other, on these grounds, create rift & people tend to become insecure. Some instances: -

1. Language – If you don’t speak good English, you are alien to society, forgetting the fact that in many geographies it is not the native language.
2. Skills – Sometime people think themselves under-performer & feel insecure.  
3. Religion – Sometimes we see religion-specific incidents in our society. The people of that religion feel the pressure of society even when they are not involved in incidents.
4. Other difference like Politico-economic opinion, Sports opinion, Financial standard of self & family and Any Different Ability highly impact the psychology of individual. And therefore, psychological insecurities take place.    

Approach to create Psychological Safety:

Psychological safety is a trust that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes.
It is the environment where team members are not hesitant to share their opinion, to ask question, to reveal their mistakes, to receive & give feedback.
All above instances, I handled through communication & certain initiative. I also took below initiatives: -

1. Highlight my own errors – On certain occasions I shared my mistakes with my team so that they feel making mistake is not a crime.
2. 360-Degree Feedback – I started this practice so that each & everyone can listen & understand others view.
3. Listening Habit – When someone speaks, other interrupt. To install the listening habit, we started high-penalty mechanism. If anyone interrupt someone, s/he will be penalized. We had good funds for weekend parties, but the revenue is reducing now.
4. KYT (Know Your Team) – I started this campaign. We play with story cubes. We select 1 cube & members have to interpret this. This shows how different we are from each other and it is OK to have difference. But the best part is when they appreciate each other’s point of view. This helps in bonding among them. 
   
5. Start Informal – I have habit of starting communication informally most of the time. It goes like knowing about her/his well-being, family-well-being, anything crucial at her/his end. And, then we go to actual issue. It helped to get my team closer to me.  
6. Last but not the least, Cultivation of Scrum Values (Courage, Commitment, Respect, Focus, Openness) among the members will be very useful. 

Psychological Safety is complex aspect which can’t be seen by 1 lens. Unique psychologies need to be magnified through different lenses.

Do you still remember ‘V’ who was against pair-programming? I involved with ‘V’, had informal communications and one day ‘V’ told me:

"You know, I am news-freak guy. I have a habit of checking breaking news very frequently. It never impacts my work, but if I am involved in pair-programming, I’ll be judged on the ground that I spent more time on news sites than work.”

Covid-19 Distances brought us Closer - A Case Study

Covid-19 is an unforgettable situation in our lifetime on each front personal or professional. It brought disaster to the world (in Socio-politico-economic conditions as well as to the life of individual). Most of the unexpected things are happening around the world.

At our team level also, when distributed work culture adopted due to Covid-19, number of problems were encountered. On one single day, distribution adopted and without analyzing future challenges we followed the government guidelines. But it was not easy as many problems, in our workflow, were about to visible due to this. Although, few of these problems were existing in the teams already but distribution brought these up on the surface bluntly.

But, is this not that one situation which Agile is trying to focus from the beginning, that is: -

• Uncertainty
• Unplanned
• Exponential challenges
• No defined solution to the problem

Let me share what happened with my teams & how we, my team and I (as their Agile Enabler), came out of it.

The first week of distributed workforce was like sailing boat in hurricane and the onus was on myself to help my team to sail this boat through hurricane and reach on the shore. And the journey began as follows:

First Step: Early Retrospective

I (as an Scrum Master of the Team) facilitated a very early Retrospective (after 4 days of distribution starts) with very specific & only one agenda i.e. “Challenges due to distribution and how to address these challenges”

              This Retrospective proved to be boon for us. What we found, were the core challenges of working separately. To be more specific, our main problems were related to: -   

1. Problems of lacking self-organization in the teams (few members faced enormous challenge in organizing themselves)
2. The communication became lesser user-friendly as it was not face-to-face (or co-located) by any means
3. Digital intervention & particular time-box required to begin any communication
4. Home environment is not supporting (disturbance, no dedicated space) to deliver what is expected
5. Technical challenges, VPN issues, Device availability etc.
6. Few members (correctly) pointed that we are working from home does not mean we cannot have personal time. It is expected that we should start early and end late in night because we are at home.

In the same Retrospective, we started discussion to find solution of these challenges. (It was well understood that before leaving the table on that day, all of us should reach to some(expected) solutions of these problems because we can’t go anywhere until we resolve these). After some brainstorming, discussions, arguments, we decided to adopt certain practices.

Second Step: Possible Solutions/Changes introduced by Team

1. Increased frequency of daily scrum to Twice/day – Team decided to have 2 times daily scrum during the day, one when starting first half and second when starting second half (i.e. like 10 – 10:15 AM and 2:30 – 2:45 PM). The whole idea was improved coordination among the distributed members and highlight the blockers ASAP. Now, members were to share the plan only for 4 hours in each daily-scrum session. It helped the complete team in increasing coordination, but it drastically helped them who were facing problem in self organization. They were feeling comfortable as it was easier to plan for lesser time-box now. It really worked for us. I am still following the same with 3 out of 4 teams in my organization.  
2. Common chat group to facilitate discussions – We created a common chat group and all of us were committed to have any work-related discussion on that group only. Until & unless it is very-very specific between 2 people, the communication shall be done on common chat group. It will maintain the sync and information leakage can be cured.
3. If possible, priority will be for video calls – We made an agreement, irrespective of magnitude of discussion, if possible, we shall have video calls. Undoubtedly, on video calls, the engagement was less interrupted
4. Weekly Retrospective – Another important decision taken to have weekly Retrospective with very specific agenda “Challenges in working distributed & solutions”. It is quite different from Sprint Retrospective which focuses on Sprint-happenings. It actually made us better.

Finally: When we got distributed, my whole idea was to strong the scrum values among the team. These values (Commitment, Courage, Focus, Respect & Openness) gave us confidence & courage to be more aligned & have better coordination. And, it happened because we understood the value of communication & alignment. What can be better example than: “One member actually managed to get pass from govt. administration, to visit the remote locality, just to get one device & make it available to another team member so that we can deliver the feature timely”.

Approach for Future:  Now we are prone to have such pandemics in future also and we should be prepared further. In my opinion, the very first step is to understand what the problem is at core & so we need to talk. The approach will be the same, find out core problems & let’s brainstorm to solve these, like we did this time (Retrospective & more coordination). 

I understand that this Covid-19 is unforeseen challenge & might be, we’ll never be out of it. But I cannot deny, it gave, everyone in general, and I & my team specifically, a new way of thinking, new kind of team-spirit, next level of maturity and great confidence to handle such challenges.

One thing still needs improvement that is related to our geographic culture. In our geography, most of us are not supporter of working remotely ( like Work-from-home) and that is why most of us don’t have certain arrangements like dedicated space, working hour ethics at their end (home or anywhere else) which sometime create unnecessary delays & disturbance. I believe, everyone at her/his level making effort to improve such scenarios and is this not the essence of Agile - “To Inspect the current scenario, Adapt the better way and Learn from it for future”?

Krishna: The Ultimate ScrumMaster chosen by Pandavas (The Team)

Krishna: The Ultimate ScrumMaster chosen by Pandavas (The Team)

As per Vedas, somewhere around 5000 years back, Mahabharat (Kurukshetra war) battle had been fought. There were so many sequential events which led to the circumstances where battle became inevitable. There were 2 sides Kauravas & Pandavas. Both the armies (teams) participated in the event. We all know this.

Have you ever analysed the role of “Krishna” in that battle (event)? What he did? What he thought and to what was he accountable? Let’s see!

1-      Krishna did not fight the battle himself.

2-      He aligned Pandavas to the goal (which is actually not winning the battle rather re-installing the ‘Dharma’ on the Earth).

3-      He facilitated all the discussion among Pandavas to find the solution of problem. He took Pandavas on the same page and let them take the collective decision what to do next.

4-      Only when Pandavas were not able to take any decision, he ‘suggested’ the action-items.

5-      When Arjuna put down his weapons, he asked Arjuna to fight not-to-win but for the goal which “re-installation of Dharma”. He re-installed the Commitment, Courage & Focus among the Pandavas (the team).

Krishna was accountable only for “re-installing the Dharma” and keeping team motivated towards this goal for which he made Pandavas:-

a)       Committed towards the goal

b)      Focused towards the goal

c)       Courageous enough to proceed towards the goal (Here, pandavas were courageous enough to fight but when Arjuna saw relatives other end, Krishna made him & other courageous enough to take step which are required to achieve goal which is re-installing Dharma.)  

d)      Open enough so that they can say/suggest what they think

e)      Respecting each other’s quality among them. (E.g. – Yudhishthir every time spoke truth which created tough situations to handle. But other Pandavas supported their eldest brother.)

This battle had been fought for 18 days and after each day’s fight, Krishna facilitated discussion for Pandavas to inspect the incident and adapt & prepare for next day. He instilled the quality of ‘Empiricism’ (learn from today’s experience and plan for tomorrow accordingly) among the members.

I could see this as the qualities of ScrumMaster. The 2 things:-

1-      Reveal - not resolve, and

2-      Actively doing nothing

are something on which facilitation is based. Krishna was truly a facilitator for Pandavas during the complete event by: -

-          keeping them focused towards the goal (again, not winning but to re-install the Dharma)

-          keeping away from external distraction

-          helping them to identify the blockers (like Bhishma, Karna) towards goal and removing them

Along with this, He made team (Pandavas) able to earn trust on each other. Everyone trusted each other. This was one of the main ingredient of their success.

If not completely, isn’t it mostly in line of ScrumMaster’s responsibility?

Krishna correctly proclaimed:

“It is not my duty to do your work (fighting the battle). I’ll show the correct path to you and set the environment in which you can fulfil your duty.”

Most importantly, he left Hastinapur when the re-installation of Dharma was achieved (the goal).

“And ScrumMaster is succeed only when team is in condition when ScrumMaster is not required.”

Learn From Google Map to Grow as SCRUM Team!

Learn From Google Map to Grow as SCRUM Team

Today, it is very common & easy to use google map navigation when you are going somewhere. Just enter your source & destination and start navigation. Right after this moment, google map will do below activities for you: -

1. Calculate Estimated Time of Arrival as per current traffic scenario;
2. Highlights the best possible path to reach destination;
3. It also mentions the other available paths in grey colour;
4. During the journey, if traffic scenarios changes on the way, google map will highlight the other best alternate route;
5. If you change the destination in middle of journey, it accepts the change and highlights the best possible route to reach changed destination;
6. Once you reach destination, it notifies the same to you;

Along with these standard steps, google-map also does: -

a)       Learn about newly created route on the way. (Eg. – On your way, one new underpass or alternative route was constructed by Govt. When you & other travellers follow that route, google-map learns that there is another route here and after significant learning, it will start suggesting this route in navigation);

b)      It keeps check on time-taken during the journey. If time-taken is more or lesser than the predicted one, it learns whether this route has some issue (like some construction is going on) or the route has been improved. Based on this learning, it adapts the new changes and provide predictions accordingly;

c)       It learns whether a path contains toll booth. Accordingly, it highlights the same thing so that you might know about other extra expenses before journey;

Apart from these, it also does number of things. However, let’s consider only these activities performed by google map.

Let’s give a thought on this, doesn’t it look like standard activities of a project (or journey of a product). During the product development, we do: -

1. Set the product vision (the destination)
2. Create plan as per available resources (people, tools, budget etc)
3. Based on the information in #1 & #2, define the roadmap and estimated time of delivery
4. Since, during the development nothing (vision, people, tools etc) will be fixed or prone to change, the teams need to adapt these changes and come out with the best possible plan in the scenario
5. Once product has significant features, it will be released to customers
6. According to the further requirements, the future development will go on
7. During the development, team learns & enhance skills which results into better & faster product delivery
8. Team can foresee the other challenges, roadblocks, extra-cost during the product development and notifies this to business.

What we have seen, is the quality of Scrum: -

Inspection, Adaption and Transparency!

Google map is the prefect example which Inspect or Retrospect the surroundings and improve its knowledge and learns from the experience (Empiricism). It Adapt the changes coming in the surroundings whether new construction, any roadblock or extra-cost requirement or the destination itself has been changed from the original destination. Having the quality of Inspection & Adaption, it truly satisfies the need of being Transparent. It is transparent to user and providing the most correct information. These are the exact virtues of Scrum Teams who learns from experience, retrospect themselves & adapt the changes, embraces the change requests coming during the product development and ensure transparency among themselves & to organization.  

Scrum Teams, if you want to learn, grow & develop as an Agile/Scrum team, analyse the activities of google map doing for you & learn from it

  

Direction is more important than speed, Really?

We have heard many times like “Direction is more important than speed. Many are going nowhere fast”.

What does this mean? Why is Direction necessary? For software products also, do we need to focus on the direction?

Let’s think about it:

1. when you are going to the office, do you take the correct turn and take the shortest path to reach the office?
2. When you are investing your money to get better ROI, do you consider the multiple investment options and pick which is the most suitable in your scenario?
3.  You get married and as a life-partners to each other, do you consider few parameters (like financials, working-life balance etc.) before starting a family?

If the answers of all these questions are “YES”, it reflects that “you are not only executing your action-items, you are also planning and setting the directions up for the future.”

Then, why should not planning & direction should be set up for the software products?

Let’s consider another point of view:

Once Charles Darwin said – “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.”

We always heard that “Change is the only constant”. Consider below image which showcasing the expectation-zone and product journey: -

As we see in the above image, the expectation zones are moving with time. It is true for products also. There is one set of expectation from the customer when product manufacturing starts. However, as product development goes further, the customer's expectations & requirement also change. Therefore, it is necessary to accommodate these changes in the product development phase. It is necessary to follow the right “direction” while developing the product so that maximum business value might be achieved.

Agile is a culture that facilitates the environment which embraces the changes and motivates the team to work on the most important requirement. It provides “Direction” along with speed to develop the product. (You can read more about agile at the below location: - https://agile-is-culture.blogspot.com/2018/06/agile-inculcating-culture-of-ci-cd.html )

Now, the question is how Agile facilitate such an environment which is responsible to provide the correct direction to team & product? As we already know there are 4-pillars of Agile Team:-

1- Scrum Team
2- Product Owner
3- Scrum Master
4- Stakeholders

Let's see the point-of-view of each entity: -

Scrum Team Member – “I do my work and I do it well, but my race isn’t won until all my fellow team-members cross the finish line with me. We win as a Team. I check my title (as well as ego) at the door; I am willing to do whatever it takes to help the team succeed, even if that means working outside my area of expertise or comfort zone.”

Product Owner – “I own this product and I want to see it succeed. I will only ask the team to build what has Business Value and ROI for my organization. I am a consensus builder and I love marketing and selling the value of what the Team has accomplished.”

Scrum Master – “I don’t succeed unless the Team Succeeds. My mission in life is to grease the wheels and ensure that everyone is playing nice and that the process is running smoothly.”

Stakeholder – “The Product that the Scrum Team produces for me has value, I need to be involved in providing ideas and seeing the results. Please don’t keep in dark and feed me the misinformation. I would rather be a part of development process and informed of how things are actually going, the good, the bad and the ugly.”   

As we saw, each component of Agile-Team is committed to deliver the value. They put their efforts in One-Direction which ensures that highest-possible value is produced for the business.

Agile is culture which sets the sync between the direction of product development & team's effort.

Always remember:

"You cannot change your destination overnight, but you can change your direction overnight."  - Jim Rohn