I just read an article by Luiz Quintela, otherwise known to me as ‘Q’. I think I met Q when he attended one of my Certified Agile Leadership classes in Dallas. He has since moved to LitheSpeed in DC, but that’s another story.
Anyway…
In the article, Q shares some of his experiences, learnings, and advice related to conducting powerful Scrum sprint reviews. I love all of his advice, so I won’t be nit-picking at any of it.
But I was inspired by his perspective. You see, it was from the point of view of the Product Owner and the team level responsibilities for conducting efficient, effective, and informative reviews. Ones where you get lots of feedback.
But the inspiration was that the role of the ATTENDEE was not really highlighted and that’s where I want to augment the article a bit.
The Role of Sprint Review Attendees
While the Product Owner and team members certainly play an important role in successful Sprint Reviews, the attendees are not simply innocent bystanders. They have a job to do as well. Or a responsibility or a role to play.
There are literally three things that come up in any of my training adventures—
How to handle estimates and forecasting with fixed-date projects?
What are “Good” agile metrics?
How to be “Agile” with distributed teams?
I thought I’d explore the last question on distributed teams in this post by listing some references that you might find helpful.
First, I think the Jutta Eckstein was the first author in this space. She wrote—Agile Software Development with Distributed Teams: Staying Agile in a Global World in 2010 and updated it in 2018. She was probably one of the first folks who started sharing her experiences in distributed agile and her work has stood the test of time.
Next, Johanna Rothman and Mark Kilby have written perhaps the most complete work on the topic in agile contexts. From Chaos to Successful Distributed Teams: Collaborate to Deliver is an incredibly useful look at how to make distributed teams work in agile contexts. Written by two seasoned coaches from their work in the real world. And here’s an Agile Alliance article they wrote about collaborating on the book.
And here’s Johanna and Mark’s contribution to Comparative Agility’s assessment tool.
I got into a debate with a coaching colleague the other day. Well, debate, disagreement, argument, and other terms could apply. We kept it respectful and, in the end, I believed we agreed to disagree.
I’ll call my colleague, Ken.
We used an analogy as part of our discussion that I’d like to share. Here’s the analogy—
Meniscus vs. TKR?
I’ve got a problem with my knee. I’ve done the web research and self-diagnosed that I have a partially torn meniscus and I want some simple surgery to clean-up my knee and fix the meniscus.
So, I start looking for the best surgeon I could find. The best “knee-person” out there. And I found her. She’s expert at all sorts of knee surgeries from the meniscus to total knee replacements. Having performed thousands of successful surgeries.
I scheduled a visit to explore the surgery. And she runs some tests (X-rays, MRI, etc.) on my knee in advance of our discussion.
I enter the discussion telling the doctor what I need. I even go so far as telling her when to schedule it. As, clearly, I’ve determined what wrong and what to do about it.
She listens patiently but tells me clearly and firmly that I need a total knee replacement. That my knee is irreparable with anything other than that sort of corrective procedure.
I argue with her. And I insist that I simply want the meniscus repaired. I’ve made up my mind AND I want her to do it…
Ask vs. Need
Clearly, in this example the doctor has a decision to make. And I don’t think it’s that hard. The options are:
Tommy Norman is an agile coach in Nashville and he recently posted the following on LinkedIn:
As a Product Owner, do you know how much it costs to run your team per week/sprint?
Having this information can re-frame many of your discussions. When talking to stakeholders you can ask questions like "That would take about 1 sprint, is it worth X dollars to you?". With your teams it can help them understand the impacts of process inefficiencies by showing them how much they cost the company/client.
It does not even have to be super accurate, just a decent representation of the cost. If you have a dedicated team, it's pretty easy. Get a blended salary across team members, add 35% for overhead costs, then figure out how much that comes to per day. Even without a dedicated team you can use rough percentages.
Knowing the cost of delivery is a good first step towards moving discussions next to value delivered and return on investment!
Ever since I read it, I’ve been thinking about the notion. Believe it or not, it’s not something that I’ve thought about much in my agile journey. And I’m stewing over the implications.
While I think it’s a good idea, it might have a Yin and Yang nature to it. Let’s noodle on each side:
What makes my Certified Agile Leadership training valuable and different?
I’ve been delivering my version of the CAL-I class for approximately 3-years. I deliver it mostly as a private class, nearly 80% of the time, to client leadership teams. I’ve heard feedback from many attendees that my CAL class is a game-changing experience and quite different from other leadership classes they’ve taken. I’ve even heard this feedback from attendees who’ve attended other CAL classes and been disappointed with those experiences.
I’m not saying I’ve got all the answers or that this will be the best class that you’ll ever attend. But what I am saying is that, within the scope of becoming a better agile leader, I think this class “nails it”. Let me share some of the key differentiators.
Something came up on the September 20th Kazi stream about how to maintain your energy level as a change agent, which is incredibly hard at times. And, on a related note, the challenge of knowing when it’s time to leave.
Change Agency is…HARD!
The harsh reality is that every Scrum Master and Agile Coach in any instance, situation, or context is a CHANGE AGENT. You are in a role that is trying to guide folks along a change curve to a new state.
And being a CHANGE AGENT is, in a word, HARD!
There’s no other way to say it. In many ways change agency reminds me of the Energizer Bunny in that you/we need to “bring it” every minute of every day. We have to bring enthusiasm, energy, positivity, engagement, and a can-do attitude every day to our work.
If you find yourself lacking on the energy front for too many days in a row, you have to seriously reconsider your choice of jobs. It’s that simple.
My colleague Dana Pylayeva has created something really interesting in the agile community. One of her research interests is fear in the workplace. Not in some academic fashion, but in how it shows up, that is what are the types and personas of fear in the workplace?
Dana enjoys creating interactive experiences, so she developed a series of cards (a game) that can help a team surface the various fears they may be experiencing. And, once they (the fears) see the light of day, the team can then discuss how they wish to deal with them.
Here’s some additional information on Fear in the Workplace (FITW):
Estimation FEAR Cards
In the November 2019 Kazi stream, Josh and I talked about teams often pushing back on estimating and some of the root causes. It seems like estimation is one of the hardest things for agile teams to get right (be balanced, feel comfortable with, do effortlessly).
Josh Anderson and I recorded a shared podcast with Jeff Bubolz & Jeff Maleski of the AgileWire podcast.
While we rambled a bit (mostly caused by me) across a variety of topics, it was a lot of fun.
One of the tangents we went on was understanding the agile maturity (readiness, culture) of an organization by the presence of certain words in the overall culture. This would cross everyone…teams to senior leaders.
There would be words or phrases that would indicate a less mature/ready culture and other words that would indicate more maturity. It would be the overall usage and trending of all of the words that would be most interesting and indicative of overall maturity.
(and please don’t get hung up by the word maturity, you could just as easily say readiness or receptiveness or fertility)
Early in 2019, Shelley Carter approached me about sharing a keynote at the Gatineau-Ottawa Agile Tour conference. I’ve never been to Ottawa nor spoken at that conference, so I said yes. I asked Shelley to share the theme with me, it was: "Imagine the Future - Lessons from our Current Selves". And as a keynote, I tried to come up with a presentation topic that would align with the theme. I submitted some ideas and I was honored to have been chosen to deliver a keynote there.
I eventually came upon telling my story around brand-building. How I had, over the years, approached building my personal brand. The focus of the talk was that everyone should build their personal brand as part of their career and professional journeys.
Our local agile ALN group has an annual tradition of doing lightning talks on the last meeting (November) of the year. The group coordinator kindly asked me if I wanted to participate and, since I was in town, I enthusiastically agreed.
But then the hard part began. I would have 5-minutes to talk about anything I wanted to. But only 5-minutes.
I struggled to figure out what to focus on until the day of the meeting. The pressure was building. And yes, I had a gazillion ideas that I could share, but nothing had risen to the top. Around 2 pm something came to me.
