Spikes And Stories

Scrum tips and agile insights from a Silicon Valley agile coach

Invitation Over Imposition: A Four Step Guide to Effective Change

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Invitation over imposition.   This is at the heart of agility.  Scratch that.  It’s at the heart of being a sincere and empathetic human who believes in others and wants to make a difference.

Unfortunately, I’m sure many of us have seen Scrum imposed on teams.  They’re told to begin using sprints.  They’re required to conduct sprint planning, sprint reviews, and so on.  Some lip service might be paid to why, but when the team doesn’t buy into it, someone’s will is imposed on them.  Is this really an effective way of affecting change?

Some might argue that change is hard.  That if we impose these changes for long enough, teams to begin to realize the value and accept it.  I’m not buying it.  Change isn’t hard.

It’s unwanted change that’s hard.

If people didn’t enjoy change, would we ever change jobs?  Or would we ever marry?  Why would anyone ever have kids?  As a parent of a 16 and 18 year old, I can’t imagine a change more life altering than children!  Can you?

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Seven Simple Metrics for the Sprint Review

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Mike Cohn inspires a lot of my work.  In fact, when I began this blog years back, Mike stopped by and offered a piece of advice on my first blog post that has stuck with me.  He said he’d often track the number of questions he’d ask and compare it to the number of statements he’d make.  If there were more questions than statements, it was a good conversation.  And that’s where today’s blog post about metrics for the sprint review begins.

These aren’t metrics in the traditional sense.  They’re also not vanity or actionable metrics as Eric Ries writes about in the Lean Startup.  Instead, I’d call them trivia metrics. They’re useful talking points based in reality instead of the abstract, and they’re meant to drive home observations from the sprint review.

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Is Your Team Struggling With Sprint Planning?

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I began helping out a team recently.  This team had been together for some time, but they still had a number of struggles.  One of those struggles was sprint planning.  They realized they could be getting more out of it, but they weren’t sure how.  My first thought was to educate and then step in, facilitate the plannings, and nudge the conversation to a place where they’d gain more valuable.  However, I’m glad I didn’t.

Instead, I remained silent for a while longer, and as I observed their planning for a second time, a thought came to me.  After attending hundreds of plannings, I’ve internalized what makes for a richer conversation.  Is there a way I can share my thoughts in real time so they can decide where and how to adjust for themselves?

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So You Want More Predictability?

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I think many of us have been going about this predictability thing all wrong.  Don’t misunderstand.  It’s not for lack of trying, and we’ve had all the right intentions.  Still, in many cases, we’ve done more harm than good, and I’m just as much to blame as anyone else.  A colleague had much the same top of mind as well.

I think it starts with where we spend our time and what we attempt to control.  But why does that matter?  Opportunity cost.  When we invest our time attempting to control the uncontrollable, we lose the opportunity to influence something within our grasp.  Let me explain.

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