by on

Repetitive things gets boring too soon. I observed team retrospectives to be one of them. I introduced this format in my current project and it worked out well by making everyone speak and voice their opinions. Here are the steps to do the retrospective in this format.

Ice breaker or energizer – Any simple ice breaker which can be completed within 5 minutes is a good start. It loosens up people and also makes them forget work if they were pre-occupied with some problem.

Reflection time – Give the team around 10 minutes of silent time to think about what went well and what needs to change. They can write it down if they think they will forget. Make sure to run through the previous retrospective’s action items with the team.

Writing space – Have white board markers in two different colours such that you can capture points in alternating colours. It is easy to read the board from everywhere in a hall. One whiteboard is sufficient

Questions round – Prepare questions which reflect the priority of the business and team. Some examples

  • Do we manage product owner’s expectations well?
  • Do we understand the business drivers?
  • Are we satisfied with the quality of solutions that we are providing?

Questions

  • How do we rate our delivery standards?
  • What is our elevator pitch?
  • Do we understand the best practices and follow them?
  • Is the team proactive or reactive?
  • Is this a fun place to work?
  • Are we gaining something as an individual and as a team?
  • Is our staffing model right?
  • How well do we interact with other teams and share knowledge?
  • How are the Ownership and Satisfaction levels?
  • What are your inputs to the project management?
  • Do we understand the various milestones?
  • Are dependencies/risks/issues tracked and addressed?
  • Are risks and issues tracked?
  • How is the Team Morale?
  • Is there a work life balance?

Ask these questions to individuals in a round robin format and capture the highlight of that point on the whiteboard. If someone else also has an opinion or an alternate answer, then capture that as well. Some questions could be made on the spot to spark discussions. After the questions are done, open the floor for people to provide inputs which might not have been covered by the questions.

Analysis time – This phase can get longer if not facilitated properly. Read each point and capture ‘Action items’ and ‘Ideas’ from the team. If any point gets into a debate or a solution mode then quickly interrupt and capture the resolution of that problem to be an action item for a focused group or the team itself based on how severe it looks.

Ownership for actions – Request for volunteers to implement the action items and try out new ideas. Capture their names against the line items on a poster to put it up in the team area later.

Recognition time – Though teams should not have heroes, it is natural for individuals to go through phases of ups and downs, which makes some individuals contribute more than the others in a given span of time. Give the team the last five minutes to reach out to the individuals whom they think that life was made easy because of their help or contribution; and thank them mentioning what made their life easy.

Regardless of what we discover, we understand and truly believe that everyone did the best job they could, given what they knew at the time, their skills and abilities, the resources available, and the situation at hand.

Image courtesy of David Castillo Dominici / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

by on

The first thing that I noticed was the title of the audio book, which mentioned that it is ‘Illustrated’. I had my doubts, how an audio book could be illustrated, may be it was named not to clash with the book by Francesco Cirillo. The narration is lucid and it was easy for me grasp most of content while driving to office, so the illustration here was more to help paint the picture in the listener’s mind. After the drive to office when I sat down to review what I heard during the drive, that is the time I felt the disadvantage of the audio book format. Fortunately ‘The Pragmatic Bookshelf’ had made the table of contents available which helped to review the chapters after I had heard them. I would say the audio book is a complement to the Paper/e-book than a standalone audio book.

Coming to the technique discussed in the book, I was surprised the speed at which I found the technique to be effective. The simplest change I did to myself was to handle the interruptions and backlogs well. As a consultant I was used to constant interruptions and as a result grow a huge backlog of tasks. I set aside just two pomodori every day for some tasks (like blogs, presentations) which required some concentration, I was able to accomplish those tasks in far lesser amount of time than I used to take earlier. The effectiveness of that prompted me to get a diary to help plan and record my days. I have begun to find the difference it brings by keeping me focused and organised on my tasks and also made me come to a mindset to drop or delegate tasks I am not able to do.

Will I recommend this audio book to anyone? I had a glance at the paper book in the library, compared to that I would say the audio book as a standalone makes it difficult to go back and refer or review what you have listened. The technique is very useful to learn and it makes a good impact in a short amount time, my suggestion is to go for the e-book/paper book, and proceed one chapter at a time, try to implement, review and introduce your variations. You will be surprised to see how quick it starts changing your lifestyle.

by on

Sometime back read an article about how proximity to goals motivates individuals to move faster towards the goals. It is very important for people to know their progress to understand the proximity to the goal. I found that it worked on me when I was driving back to town and finished the last 30 kms significantly faster than the average speed during the rest of the journey though the travel conditions were almost similar. I also observed this behaviour with my niece & nephews in kindergarden; I used to carry them from school to home but the moment they see the house, they jump off and run inside.

How do we relate to this at our workplace? No, I am not talking about the carrot and stick approach. It is like having feature completeness charts, burn down charts and other visual indicators at work that helps visualize progress. Brain tends to reward itself with dopamine which gives a sense of accomplishment. Completing a small task does not give much of a sense of accomplishment, but pursuing a tough task may be daunting.

coffee

If people are helped with progress indicators then the task becomes easy. It is the most commonly used part in the loyalty points, people are found to be rushing their last two coffee purchases for a free coffee than the speed in which they consumed their first few. It has also been observed that people will slow down once the milestone has been achieved, they would not be buying their 11th coffee at the same speed they got their earlier onces before their reward. That is because we want to be in a state of Anxiety Neutrality (otherwise known as Comfort Zone) that we would  not kick start something. An illusion of progress or things already started may get people started.

TwoCoffeesMore

In the above illustration both coupons have the same target of 10 coffees but people are likely to get started on the second one faster as already two of them are struck out. This illusion of getting started is used by many organisations which run loyalty programs by giving joining bonus. At workplace I have observed that people at work in long duration projects initially start out slow for few weeks~months and then increasingly put hours to get the project out. Once the project is over then the resetting to a slow pace happens.

I figured out that this kind of behaviour is less common in an iterative approach and there is always a healthy sustained pace. If we plan entire work in small chunks then visualisation of progress get much easier, which gives a sense of progress and creates multiple short term and long term goals. Goal gradient effect plays an important role in iterative development.