Changing Teams Changes you

Some weeks ago there I was with this team doing a retrospective. A team with no appointed Scrum master, luckily a team with a Team Leader, a true leader with an open, honest, transparent and human mindset. He was leading the retrospective, something he actually does pretty well.

At the end I asked them how did they felt about rotating the organization of the retrospective. They kind of looked  and said that yes, they could give it a try. It actually might be funny!

It was not easy for that Team Leader to let it go, not because he wants to control but just because he’s actually pretty good at it and he enjoys doing it. He obviously accepted it and later we talked about how important it is to leave our comfort zones.

And this is where I come in.

I am.. hum..probably like you are!  I talk about comfort zones, I understand them, I smell them and  I actually have abandon some in my life.. but if I stop, I know : there’s still a lot I can do about it.

And that is what makes the difference right? I mean,  we  actually can do great talks, presentations, trainings, face to face conversations.. but can we be the best of us if we don’t live our own disruptiveness?

Answer: I don’t know. It might be.

So I’m trying now. I’m changing everything.  Job. Home. Country. Friends. Leaving all behind. Moving forward.

I can. I have lots of comfort zones to leave. And do you wanna know what I’ve realized these days? People come to me and wish me good luck… and all I can think is: I should be wishing you good luck, not the opposite.

I may crash along my path, but it doesn’t really matter!..it’s part of business and life if that happens. I’ll grow bigger.

These days, I feel more energize and motivated than ever! Yes I’ll miss you guys.. of course I will. But you know me, I can always do better ;). You have taught me that, changing you has changed me.

 

BRING IT ON!

Scrum Master TIP #5 – Retrospectives

 

Retrospectives are probably the most important event for Teams, and probably the less valued.
What I’m writing now is just a glimpse on retrospectives.. just a minor part of it. I truly advise you to read more about it (check bellow recommended book).

 

What are Retrospectives?

 

Retrospectives are the right time for the Team to get together and talk about whatever is getting in the way and whatever helps them performing better.

 

Whom should be in the retrospective?

 

Retrospectives are a team event, so only teams should participate (Scrum Team). External participants will probably make team members to be more quiet and shy, after all you’ll be talking about weaknesses, not only strengths. External participants should be, at the very least, trust-able observers.
I believe that when a team is mature enough (meaning that members have been together for a while) external participants presence will impact less in team openness.. but then again, it’s really important to understand how useful are those external participants. I’ll explain:

Retrospective is a team event, the right place for team to understand and talk about, RECOGNIZE, it’s strengths and Weaknesses. The team. Not anyone else. If the team is not getting there, then whatever an external participant will point out will not be considered. We don’t want that right?

On the other hand, when things are found by teams, just that process of finding, understanding, recognizing and working out the issue, makes the team grow, get more mature. And that’s what we aim for our company. Grow Teams.

 

Retro Script – How To

 

Retrospective session should take 2 hours in a 2 weeks sprint (for other lengths do the math yourself )
Retrospective is supposed to be a valuable, focused, professional, simple and FUNNY event. Funny because we want our team to feel comfortable and to enjoy those 2 hours with the rest of the team mates.
So, best way to lead a retro is by using exercises.
We can break the retro into 5 steps:

1.Set the stage
2.Gather data
3.Generate insights
4.Decide what to do
5.Close the retrospective

So, lets go, briefly through these.

1.Set the stage
This is where you:

• Welcome participants,
• Explain retro purpose,
• Understand participant’s mood and
• May establish some retro working agreements (no telephone,no Blaming)

This step will help people focus .

2.Gather data
This is where you:

• Collect information regarding previous sprint – both good and not so good stuff
• Remember: Strengths and Weaknesses – we need both. The first one to keep on doing it and the second to stop, avoid or change.

This step will help people see the most important things that happened.

 

3.Generate insights
This is where you:

• Ask WHY (where and why all those strengths and weaknesses come from)
• So you’ll understand where info comes from and why things happen that way

This step will help people building new perspectives and understand the root of things.

 
4.Decide what to do
This is where you:

• Define actions for the team to improve

This step will help people build collective decisions

 

5.Close the retrospective
This is where you:

• Thank everyone participation and review actions

This step will help people review actions and understand clearly what’s to be done.

By “you” I mean the TEAM. TEAM Talks, discusses, argues, defines actions. Not the Scrum Master, not the Manager. The Team.

 

When?

 

Retrospectives should always happen at the end of each Sprint (or iteration or cycle). Each Sprint should end up with one Retrospective- don’t skip it.. if you do so, you’ll be wasting time for improvement, and you’ll probably making bad stuff worst (this is like a disease, if you don’t take care of it from the beginning, it grows!)

So, do one retro at each sprint end. And do it before the next sprint starts. That is before next Sprint Planning. I’ll explain why: after each retrospective you’ll have improvement actions (if you don’t then the retro was a total failure).. as such you need time to implement those, so you need to consider them in next planning makes sense right? )

 

Traps

 

I heard once @rachelcdavies saying in a  lightning talk (#ALE2011), that :

Retro is about change. If you’re not changing anything nor taking actions, then you should change your retro

Simple, honest, and so true. I always remember that whenever I facilitate a retro or help someone setting up one.
Sometimes this is the biggest trap in Retros: we do them but we don’t get anything from them. This is then a waste. So you need to change the way you’re doing stuff.

Another Trap I’ve found several times is that teams tend to focus only in technical issues. Maybe this is human nature… we just focus on stuff outside our circle of influence or out of relations-sphere. take s a lot of courage to talk about feelings, specially at office.

I personally don’t care about technical issues.
Yes, it’s important to mention that we don’t have enough servers to do testing, and we’ll escalate that..but do we need retro to point that out? No! we actually should have done it before.
Retros are for humans. Retros are the place where we try to grow our team. Where we try to evolve from a group of individuals to a team.

Retrospectives are about people needs, emotions, wellbeing, team’s dynamic and synergy. It’s about strengthening relations and grow stronger.

Another trap is to do same exercises ever and ever. If you do so it will stop being funny, and it will start being boring. We don’t want that right? So, try to change from retro to retro. New stuff, funny stuff. Experiment!

 

Where can I find more about this?

 

You can find several exercises for all different stages in Agile Retrospectives Book (by  @estherderby and @DianaOfPortland )
My advise to you is for you to read the first chapters where there’s a pretty good explanation why retrospectives are so important. And then, just flip through the exercises and see how interesting and funny they can be.
But, I challenge you: next time, try to create new exercises for your team!

IQ? Nahhh..we need EQ!

Some weeks ago I challenged teams to rotate the organization of Retrospectives among Team members. These are teams  that don’t have assigned Scrum Masters, they have Team leaders.

My vision: Share responsibility, tasks and take the chance to learn about it a bit more.

My arguments:

1. While being an organizer, one will intuitively search for and read more about retrospectives.

2. Healthy competition: while being the organizer, one will try to do the best exercises ever (so they will educated themselves while doing that).

3. Last but not least, once you have been an organizer you will respect the next organizers cause you’ll learn that it’s not easy  to facilitate a retrospective.

They accepted the challenge.

So one of this days , while  drinking my coffee,  a Scrummie (aka scrum team member) asked me if I could help out on organizing the retrospective for the next week. And this is where I want to get, how interesting my conversations with people turn out to be..cause I always learn something new..or just have these epiphanies… or just pretty damn good stuff to blog about.

 

…

[Scrummie]-  “You know, just listen out my ideas for exercises and tell me what you think about them ..it’s my first time doing this”

[Me] – ” sure! ..  great that you are taking care of it this time”

[Scrummie]- “Yes, I wanted to give it a try..and I’m reading a lot about it, already read the first chapters on Agile retrospectives book… but still.. you know..it all looked silly and simple, but now that I’m digging in I’m having some doubts”

[Me] -” hum… ok… that’s good. :) Means you’re thinking about the stuff your reading, and you’re trying to find meaning. So, what are your doubts?”

[Scrummie]- ” well… I read a lot about inspect& adapt but then I recall all other retros..and all we do is inspect&adapt working items..”

[Me] – “that isn’t enough isn’t it? I mean if you want to stop being a group of individuals and start being a team..”

[Scrummie]- ” Exactly! we should start discussing other stuff.. like how to improve as a team..relations “

…. this talk went for a long time…

Finally I heard something like ” Nowadays IQ isn’t as important as EQ, isn’t it?”

Can you imagine how proud I am for all the battles we’ve had together, all suffering and pain while trying to save our humanity at work..

Change? No!  we  don’t need to change! We just need to be as human and kind and friendly and trusty as we are outside our offices…  It’s true: Intellectual quotient is not as important as Emotional quotient nowadays.