Sprint Planning – Simple, and yet…

It’s really quite funny. I’ve been coaching and teaching Scrum for nearly 20 years. But sometimes, my knowledge and experience sometimes gets in the way, in that I sometimes forget that the simplest of the ceremonies can often be hard to get…”right”.

One of those is sprint planning.  

I recently stumbled across two references that I think are very helpful in executing this simple and important, yet sometimes hard to get right ceremony.

• Here’s an article by Mike Cohn - https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/sprint-planning-for-agile-teams-that-have-lots-of-interruptions

• And another by Mike - https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/dont-estimate-the-sprint-backlog-using-task-points

• And here’s another by Joshua Partogi - https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/upgrade-your-sprint-planning-gain-engagement-your-development-team

The graphic is from Joshua’s article. I really like it!

I’ve also written a quick helper guide around how I’ve found it best to get started in sprint planning. Mostly with new teams. It’s a recipe I’ve successfully been using for well over 10 years and I hope you find some useful hints within.

Here’s the link: https://robert-galen.squarespace.com/s/Scrum-Sprint-Planning-Overview.pdf

Wrapping Up

Sprint planning is one of those ceremonies that embodies quite a lot of agile skills:

• Backlog refinement

• Estimation (at a story and task level)

• Effective story writing

• Collaborative workflow

• Done and delivery

Getting it “right” can help you and your teams accelerate towards delivering on the promises of Scrum.

Stay agile my friends,

Bob.

Checking for Safety

Safety is a hot topic in agile contexts today. Continuously begging the question – 

Is it safe?

With a nod to the film Marathon Man. Safety is incredibly relevant to the level of true agile performance at a team level.

In the following post, Joshua Kerievsky mentioned a technique originated by Norm Kerth that explores ways to “check for” safety.

https://medium.com/@JoshuaKerievsky/norm-kerths-safety-poll-bcccd5be6e44

While this may be a relatively short post, it’s an important one. And this is NOT simply focused on safety at a team level. It’s also applicable for all levels of the organization.

I also really like that Josh gives a nod to Norm. A true pioneer in this space!

Norm wrote the book Project Retrospectives, which is a foundation for nearly all of the agile retrospective advice (books, articles, etc.) that followed it. I don’t think he gets enough credit for this important work.

Anyway, please read the post and renew your focus on safety awareness within your teams.

Stay agile my friends,

Bob.

Choosing Trust

A colleague and friend of mine, Jamie Howard, wrote a short but interesting piece on trust. He called it Choosing Trust and you can find it here - https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/choosing-trust-jamie-howard

What I found most interesting is the personal nature of it. Jamie was introspective, honest, and vulnerable all at the same time. I applaud him for the courage to share what many of us are feeling.

It’s a short read, so please take a look.

Extend Instead

But it also made me think about a different approach to it that I’ve used. I write about it in this blog post.

http://rgalen.com/agile-training-news/2014/7/17/what-comes-first-the-chicken-the-egg-or-trust

I personally think the key is EXTENDING trust. Unconditional trust. A good example of this is the film – Yes Man. And yes, I wrote about that one here.

http://rgalen.com/agile-training-news/2016/4/17/agile-leadersbe-a-yes-man

I’m not disagreeing with Jamie. I’m basically saying, Yes, And…and extending his thoughts ;-)

Wrapping Up

I want to thank Jamie for his courage in sharing. And for the inspiration! I also want to re-encourage all of us to aspire to the mindset of Yes, Man. Try it for a day, a week, or a month. It might be an interesting experiment for you to try…

Stay agile my friends,

Bob.

The Two Most Fundamental KEYS for your Agile Transformations

This is a short blog post. But I hope the brevity doesn’t undermine the seriousness of the message. 

Most firms focus on:

• Reorganizations or flattening their structures

• Bringing in coaching firms that only coach the teams

• Buying a TON of tools

• Sending everyone to certifications classes (everyone on the teams that is)

• Expecting a bottom up success without top down engagement

• Getting more done, lots more!

• When challenged, reorganizing again…and again

• Converting the PMO to an Agile PMO

• Executing agile “projects” with “resources”

• Buying a scaling framework to rule them all…

• Literally, “leaders & managers” are focused on “making” the firm “agile”…

The most fundamental steps…

1. Bring in a coaching partner that has real experience coaching at all tiers of your organization. Starting with your leadership team. A partner who understands the principles of agile and isn’t selling you classes, certifications, and frameworks.

2. Realizing that your teams are your fundamental value proposition. You have to engage or invite them to participate in ALL aspects of your transformation. Listen to their ideas, trust their advice, and act based on it. No longer are the managers running the asylum, Nor the inmates. You are all in it together.

Everything revolves around activating your workforce to deliver customer value. You serve your workforce first and customer value (and ROI) will follow.

Oh, and you need expert help. Help that you trust. Help that is deeply experienced. Help that looks to partner with you, while also being willing to challenge you and tell you the truth.

Wrapping Up

There. That’s it!

Value your teams and get a trusted and experienced partner to help guide your path. 

It’s as simple as that.

Stay agile my friends,

Bob.

Meta-Cast 2018 - Halloween Special

Josh Anderson and I recently published a trifecta of Meta-cast podcasts on FEAR. Consider it our gift to you on Halloween.

I thought I’d provide links to all 3 podcasts here:

1. Fear in the Agile World

2. Agile Coaches are Scary - I personally resonate with this one ;-)

3. Fear as an Agile Leader

I hope you enjoy the theme. And as always, we would love your feedback on the episodes and/or please send us ideas for future podcasts!

Stay agile my friends,

Bob.

Employee Engagement AND Measurement

I had to share this post because I think it hits on two pet peeves of mine.

First, instead of trying to measure employee engagement (morale, happiness, etc.) leaders should instead have face-to-face conversations with their teams to determine it.

We’ve sort of forgotten that old strategy of (management by walking around) which is STILL incredibly effective.

And second, it provides a sound reminder to be careful as to what you try and measure. 

In my perfect world, leaders would only measure a handful of things (1-5) that were both qualitative and quantitative. Then stay laser-focused on guiding the organization by them.

Stay agile my friends,

Bob.