Spikes And Stories

Scrum tips and agile insights from a Silicon Valley agile coach

Archives for September 2018

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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How Do I Foster Trust Within My Team?

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I’ve been mentoring a group of young Scrum Masters for the last seven months, and recently one of them asked me a question:

How do I foster trust within my team?

Immediately, two thoughts came to mind:

  1. They’ve been listening.  Affecting change isn’t about process, mechanics, or imposition.  It’s about people.  It’s about helping others, and I couldn’t be prouder that this question came to mind.
  2. It’s a freakin’ tough question to answer.  My response was far more philosophical than practical.  In the moment, no simple, straight forward answers came to mind so I’ve been chewing on it since.

But why?  Whether family, friends, or colleagues, we’re surrounded by people most times of the day, and our relationships with others are built on a foundation of trust.  For example, we trust that the car next to us driving at highway speeds will stay in its own lane.  When a  friend offers to drive us to the airport, we trust s/he will show on time so we catch our flight.  After all these years, we should have a handle on this trust thing, right?

I wish that were so.

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