Spikes And Stories

Scrum tips and agile insights from a Silicon Valley agile coach

Heuristics for an Agile Context

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Heuristics are useful, especially in the complex world in which we find ourselves.  Unfortunately, they’re often underutilized, and the notion of heuristics is largely misunderstood.  What we frequently find instead are platitudes that, while inspiring, do little to help us determine our next step.  In fact, I have my own set of these platitudes that I’ve dubbed north stars. 

So why are heuristics useful?  They’re immediately enactable, straight forward, and they can help us determine what to do next in real time.  Consider this heuristic from the Marine Corps:

Capture the high ground. Stay in touch. Keep moving.

Clear, right?  Hell!  Anyone–with or without military experience–can appreciate the advice, I think.  So why aren’t we using these more often and in our own agile contexts?  That changes today, and it starts with my own.  

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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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