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Why “Retrospectives” should not be pushed to the next sprint
Hi guys, first of all I want to apologize for not contributing with any posts. I moved to another city, changed the job and this took all my energy :)
During this week I had some interesting discussions with some colleagues about retrospectives and when to conduct them. Therefore, I want to explain why, in my opinion, retrospectives should be the last thing to do in a sprint and not dragged to the next sprint.
In my opinion, retrospectives are the most important part of agile software development. This is the time when teams analyse their way of working and suggest new ways to improve a current process. I believe everyone agrees that this is a mandatory artifact and cannot be avoided. However, not everyone agrees that retrospectives should be conducted within the sprint, thus I would like to explain why I think it´s important to do it within the sprint.
First, I see retrospectives as the closing part of a sprint, when team does a retrospective, the sprint is over and everything related to it is gone. This allows the team to start a new fresh sprint without any pending issues from the previous sprint.
Second, during the retrospectives teams come up with several action points and topics to be tackled during next sprint. If we allow the retrospective to be dragged two or three days inside of the next sprint, how can we take all items that will pop up within the retrospective into the planning? This is why I think it´s extremely important to have it within the current sprint.
Just wanted to share this with you.
Do you have any arguments/ideas? Please share them with me.
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Thanks guys,
Luis
What´s going on in the coach´s mind during a coaching session
Hi guys, on my previous post I had the opportunity to present a good framework that helps coaches to develop their skills. This post is a continuation of that post, I want to write about “What´s going on in the coach´s mind during a coaching session. For this I will use the same framework and the same levels of listening presented on my previous post. Let´s take a look into it…
Level I - Internal Listening
At this level the coach is thinking just about him. During a coaching session he thinks something like: “I hear you. I have some things to add about what you said”. Basically the coach hear what is being said by the coache but we are concentrated on what it means to for us. For example, during a coaching session never happened to you that you end up in a situation thinking for yourself: “Hoooo I know the solution for that, I have the experience to solve that”? In my opinion that is a good example of Level I. You should force yourself to be fully concentrated on the speaker.
Level II - Focused Listening
On this level the coach hears the coache and accept him. He gets curious about what the coache says. He is more focused on what the speaker says. On this level the coach can interpret the words on coache´s context rather than on his own. The coach accepts what the speak says and also how is it said, it is not uncommon for the coach to use the same words or expressions back in reflection.
Level III - Global Listening
This level reveals a more global form of listening. The coach is focused on the coache but not just on his words, he can use his own posture, emotions and body language to help the coache. The coach perceives the environment around the speaker. He can place the speaker´s words, expressions, experiences and emotions in the speaker´s own context.
This blog like all the previous ones were taken out from Lyssa and Michael training. For more information about their trainings go to Agile Coaching Institute.
Thank you so much for your time.
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I am trying to improve these blog posts with a help from professional designers and editors to give you even more valuable content. If you want to support me on this effort, feel free to contribute with any amount of money that you think it´s fair.
Thanks guys,
Luis
Levels of listening during a coaching conversation
Hi guys, in my last posts I discussed about “The arc of the coaching” and about “Coaching focus”. I want to devote next two blogs about listening levels and what´s going on in the coach´s mind. I want to present a good framework that helps coaches to develop their listening skills - “Levels of listening”. The framework can be found more in details at the school of co-active coaching, but it was brought to me by Lyssa and Michael. This framework presents three levels of listening, let´s take a look at them…
Level I - Internal Listening
It´s about me, me, me, me. At this stage, everything what the coach listens to, is about himself/herself. The coach might be present and might be playing some attention to a speaker, but everything what the speaker says, is interpreted by the coach´s lens.
Level II - Focused Listening
Hard-wired connection. At this level there is a strong connection between the coach and the speaker. The coach is fully concentrated on listening what the speaker says. At this stage, the coach listens and responds in the moment with questions and silence that help the speaker to move through his/her problems.
Level III - Global Listening
Everything in the environment is used, including your intuition. At the level III, the coach uses everything available in the environment to perform his coaching session. For example, the speaker´s tone of voice, body language, emotions, etc., all these can be used by the coach. Like Lyssa and Michael say “this is where intuition lives”. This is the highest level of listening.
During a coaching session it´s normal to go trough different levels of listening, especially new coaches will spend a lot of time on Level I. It´s ok, but if they are aware they can always try to jump to level II. As soon they become more mature, they will spend less time on Level I and move towards level II and III. Lyssa and Michael tell us that a good way to increase the time that coaches spend on level II and level III is to enter each conversation with a fresh mind. We never know what the person will say, so be fully concentrated on a speaker to fully understand him/her.
Did you enjoy this post? Leave some comments ;)
Did you like this post? Do you want to get more in the future? Subscribe my newsletter below and follow me on twitter: @lgoncalves1979.
I am trying to improve these blog posts with a help from professional designers and editors to give you even more valuable content. If you want to support me on this effort, feel free to contribute with any amount of money that you think it´s fair.
Thanks guys,
Luis
Coaching focus during Iteration
Hi guys, in my last post I explained a tool that I learned in one of Lyssa´s and Michael´s workshop. This tool is a great guidance for coaches in their coaching sessions. Now I will explain where you coaching focus should be placed. During an iteration, a coach must be aware that sometimes his coaching skills are needed to help both teams as well as individual team members. So let´s see when these different skills are needed…
In the beginning of each iteration, the coach must lead the team as a whole unit. Activities, like an iteration planning, require the coach to fulfill all elements in a group. At this point, there is not much work for individual coaching.
As soon as the iteration begins, team members approach the coach with their specific problems. Here, the coach must give an attention to each of them. At this point, the team coaching is not needed. The further the iteration proceeds, more attention towards individuals is required.
When the iteration reaches its end, team coaching is again desired. Activities, like retrospectives, are fundamental and here the coach must help the team as an whole unit. The coach will immediately address individual concerns together with the team, making the individual coaching almost no existent.
Below you can find a picture I took from Lyssa´s and Michael´s material - Coaching Agile Teams Workshop, that concludes what I wrote. The reason why I conceived this post is to create awareness among agile coaches. Coaches need to be aware that we need different skills for different situations. I believe, to be a good agile coach, we need to master not only the individual coaching but the team coaching as well.
Hope you liked this post.
Did you like this post? Do you want to get more in the future? Subscribe my newsletter below and follow me on twitter: @lgoncalves1979.
I am trying to improve these blog posts with a help from professional designers and editors to give you even more valuable content. If you want to support me on this effort, feel free to contribute with any amount of money that you think it´s fair.
Thanks guys,
Luis
Arc of the coaching conversation, a tool to help coaches
Hi guys, this blog will be about coaching. I want to bring you a simple tool that I learned in Lyssa´s and Michael´s workshop few months ago. I believe this is a fantastic tool, especially for beginner coaches. It´s a great way for them to learn how to keep a coaching session. The tool is called the “Arc of the coaching conversation” . Below you can see its representation, this picture was taken from Lyssa´s and Michael´s material - Coaching Agile Teams workshop.
A coaching session usually initiates because a coachee needs to take one or several things out of the mind and he/she needs to be heard. The coach must create the environment in order to make the coachee comfortable for a discussion. The most important characteristic for a coach is the listening part. A great coach is a great listener. Try to think about it and do not interrupt the coachee at any point. You will have an urge to interrupt him/her, you will start to think yourself that you know the answer and you don´t want to wait to give it to him/her… Do not do that, instead, let the person release the feelings. You must self-manage yourself.
At some point, you must be sure that you understand exactly the couchee´s problem. Try to use the phrases, such as “If I understood correctly, the problem is…” This will allow you to confirm the problem and give you a better understanding what does truly bother the person. After understanding hiser/h problem, start to explore the topic. At this point you should use powerful questions. Here under “Skills for Agile Coaches/Powerful Questions Resources” you can find several powerful questions that can be used. After some time, using exploration and powerful question, the coachee will find some possible solutions for his/her problem.
It is your job as a coach to help him to narrow down actions. Together you should figure out which approach he/she wants to try first. After that, specifically ask what he/she will do, by when and how will you know what was the result. This will end the coaching session.
I personally think this is a good way to keep a coaching session valuable and I wanted to share this with all of you. Hope you enjoy it and find it useful.
Did you like this post? Do you want to get more in the future? Subscribe my newsletter below and follow me on twitter: @lgoncalves1979.
I am trying to improve these blog posts with a help from professional designers and editors to give you even more valuable content. If you want to support me on this effort, feel free to contribute with any amount of money that you think it´s fair.
Thanks guys,
Luis
Techniques to make sure that everyone is heard
Hi guys, in this post I want to bring you some techniques that can be used, for example, in retrospectives. Using these exercises will help you to make sure that everyone will be “heard”. Sometimes teams consist of shy members that usually do not express their opinions that much. With the help of these exercises, they can express themselves without going out from their comfort zone. Some of these exercises were already known to me, others I learned with Lyssa and Michael
Consent Check
This exercise is to be used when the facilitator knows that the group is in an agreement or the stakes are low. This exercise will serve to make sure that everyone´s opinion is the same. The facilitator can ask “Does anyone object to ? After this, just confirm that everyone is aligned.
Roman Vote
The facilitator makes a statement, on the count of 3 people hold up their thumbs up,down or sideways. Let the team see each other´s opinions. After that, invite the ones with thumbs down or sideways to talk.
Vote with your feet
This exercise is a bit similar to the one explained here. The facilitator makes a statement: “How successful this iteration was”. People imagine a line on the floor where the left side means: “not successful at all” and the right side means: “a complete success”. People will move themselves according to their opinion. If there is a big difference between opinions, invite people to discuss about it.
Consensus Check
You can use planning poker cards for this exercise, but you have dozens of different options. The facilitator makes a statement and on the count of 3 people will show their cards. Higher the score of the cards, higher they agree with the statement. Lower the score, less they agree with the statement. As in a normal estimation meeting, if the scores are too different, invite people for a discussion.
These are small exercises that can be done in order to help everyone to be listened… Hope it was useful for you.
Did you like this post? Do you want to get more in the future? Subscribe my newsletter below and follow me on twitter: @lgoncalves1979.
I am trying to improve these blog posts with a help from professional designers and editors to give you even more valuable content. If you want to support me on this effort, feel free to contribute with any amount of money that you think it´s fair.
Thanks guys,
Luis
What kind of rewards should we use in our organisations?
Hi guys, several weeks ago I brought you a polemic post that generated quite interesting feedback. Based on this post, I would like continue the polemic and bring you when should we use rewards towards employees. This blog is inspired by Daniel´s Pink book - “Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us”.
In one of my posts, I explained that goals tend to narrow our focus. This is good only for activities that use the left part of the brain; simple tasks that do not require creativity. But for complex and conceptual taks, giving a specific and measurable objective can blinker the wide-ranging thinking that is necessary to come up with an innovative solution. Based on this, I would like to explain for what kind of rewards should we use the Daniel´s flowchart.
Basically, Daniel refers that we should use “If-Then” rewards when a task is boring, not challenging or when we cannot connect it to a wider purpose. This means, “If you do this, then you get that”. We just need to offer a reason for the task, acknowledge the boring task and allow people to come up with their own solutions to solve it.
When the task is not straightforward and it requires using the right part of our brain, we should impose different type of rewards. First, we should use non tangible rewards such as praise and positive feedback, and then provide useful and positive feedback about their work.
As you can see, most of organisations are doing it completely wrong. What can we all do to help companies to change? I guess its our job as Agile Coachs, Agile practitioners and Agile passionates to do something about it. Give me your thoughts…
If you want to know more about Daniel´s book you can take a look in the video below…
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc]
Did you like this post? Do you want to get more in the future? Subscribe my newsletter below and follow me on twitter: @lgoncalves1979.
I am trying to improve these blog posts with a help from professional designers and editors to give you even more valuable content. If you want to support me on this effort, feel free to contribute with any amount of money that you think it´s fair.
Thanks guys,
Luis
How to use crowd sourcing for localization validation/testing
Hi guys, several weeks ago, as some of you already know, me, Vasco and Wim started this project: www.agile-localization.com. During this time we have been taking notes and thinking about several topics that we want to talk tackle in the book. After collecting all topics, we realised that we could write a pocket book in parallel with several “How to´s”. This small pocket book could attract readers that are not interested in a full story of the original book, but instead, they want practical exercises to implement within their teams/products. This is the result. Below I want to share the first “How to” and I would like to get your feedback. Your feedback would be important for me to improve and write a final text.
How to use crowd sourcing for validation/testing
Several years ago one of the authors worked in a big mobile manufacture company as a Localization Manager. He was responsible for localizing several products within the organization. These products were delivered to millions of users all over the world, so the localization quality was extremely important for the company in order to keep a good brand image. Imagine yourself buying a phone and when you start using it you barely can understand the translations. Most probably, you will not get the best image of that company. This was happening not only with customers but also with employees. They were not happy with translation quality delivered by vendors.
In the beginning, the author thought this was normal situation. The problem is that people in the team were too involved with the product and they were familiar with product features, therefore it was easy for them to be unhappy with translations provided by vendors. However, the situation started to be too annoying due to repeating complaints of translations. Everyone started to think that the organization couldn´t afford to ship products with such a poor quality level. Adding more testing would not help much, because based on experience, the author thinks that increasing testing will not improve the linguistic quality that much. So, what would be a possible solution for this?
How about if the company would use crowd sourcing to help the validation of the product? This is exactly what they did, so let´s see how it was done:
1) The author started to take screen shoots of the most important products screens. The screen shots were taken in English in order to compare the English version with the one they would have on their own devices.
2) A survey was created with a question for each different screen shot asking: “Do you agree with the current translation?” a)Yes b) No. If No, please can you provide the correct translation.
3) The survey was spread inside of Beta Community and within the company
4) A script was created to analyse all answers
5) All translations with an acceptance below 95% were written on “Improvement List”
6) An avg translation score was calculated to measure how accurate the translations were for each language
7) For each word on the “Improvement List”, the top three suggestions were collected
8) All words within the “Improved list” and their respective suggestions for improvement were sent to the marketing department in order to select a final translation
9) The changes were implemented into the product
10) The survey ran again
11) All metrics were calculated repeatedly
12) The quality was improved drastically
This is an example how crowd sourcing can help companies to increase a product quality.
What do you think? Do you think its useful or not really? Please leave me your comments :)
Did you like this post? Do you want to get more in the future? Subscribe my newsletter below and follow me on twitter: @lgoncalves1979.
I am trying to improve these blog posts with a help from professional designers and editors to give you even more valuable content. If you want to support me on this effort, feel free to contribute with any amount of money that you think it´s fair.
Thanks guys,
Luis
Change Management tool for Agile Coaches
Hi guys, this time I want to share a simple exercise that I learned last week in the Management 3.0 workshop given by Jurgen Appelo and Mads Troels Hansen. I highly recommend this training! At the end of the training you will go back with a bunch of nice exercises that you can apply right next day at your work.
The exercise is called “Moving Motivators”. To do this exercise, you need a set of cards like these ones. The game is simple, you spread the cards on a horizontal row putting the most important values on the left and the least important ones on the right. After that you think about a change that is happening inside of your organisation and you move the cards up or down depending how the change will impact your values. When you finish, you will have a visual picture how the change will impact you and your values. Below you can find an example.
I believe this exercise can be extremely useful to use with anyone within an organisation that is being affected by changes. I imagine this exercise to be used on a daily basis for Agile Coaches. There are several people, especially middle managers, who are strongly affected when a company goes agile (more about this topic can be found here), performing this game with them can reveal their needs and their fears allowing a coach to work together with them to minimize a negative impact on the work.
Was it useful for you? Leave me your comments and suggestions :)
Did you like this post? Do you want to get more in the future? Subscribe my newsletter below and follow me on twitter: @lgoncalves1979.
I am trying to improve these blog posts with a help from professional designers and editors to give you even more valuable content. If you want to support me on this effort, feel free to contribute with any amount of money that you think it´s fair.
Thanks guys,
Luis
The most efficient way to interview a candidate for a Scrum Master/Agile Coach position - Part II
Hi guys, in my last post I wrote about a great experience that I had when I was interviewed for an Agile Coach position. In this blog, I will write about a second experience that I had, I believe both of them are great ways to get good candidates on board. Let´s take a look at it…
First thing that impressed me when I arrived at the company´s office were friendly and super polite people. I felt we´ve known each other since ages. This is extremely important for a candidate that is nervous and not familiar with the environment around him/her. For me its strange, but there are still plenty of companies that don´t play much attention to this.
After a warm reception, a hiring manager gave me a tour around the office; this was extremely important because I could start to understand they had something that was crucial for me. For example, they had several beautiful salty fish aquariums that created a fantastic environment where I would be more than happy to work. But what really created the “wow” effect, was the amount of information radiators they had all over the places at the office. That gave me a pretty good idea about their “agile maturity”. That means, if something went wrong with the product, everyone could immediately see that something was broken.
After the tour, I was invited to go for a lunch with the team; that was a fantastic way to get to know each other.
The hiring committee took an opportunity to check my CV, my twitter account and my blog before meeting me. This allow them to “bomber” me with questions about my professional life. Based on this, they could get a much better understanding of my skills. Afterwards, they shared several challenges with me and asked me how I could help them to solve those. This is a great way for the team to evaluate my knowledge and for me to see how mature they are.
After many interesting discussions over the lunch, I was invited to participate in their Iteration Planning. Observing what kind of tasks they would need to do, gave me a fantastic opportunity to see what was their level of “agile maturity”. I believe, this exercise is more useful for a candidate than for at team itself. However, the candidate can always give some opinions and share past work experiences, allowing the team to evaluate his/her experience at these kinds of activities.
The previous activity (Iteration Planning) was followed by a series of interviews with top management. This job had both responsibilities - coaching the team and the organisation. The understanding what top management expected from me was crucial. I used this exercise to explain what I would like to do inside of the organisation and to ask them about a possible list of things that we could implement in the future. This exercise was fantastic because it allow us to align our expectations. After this, my interview day came to an end and I left the company with a really great feeling.
This blog is not devoted to techniqual things much like in my last post blog Instead, I mention several activities that can be done with a candidate in order to know an applicant better and allow him/her to know your company´s practises better. I hope you enjoyed this reading.
Did you like this post? Do you want to get more in the future? Subscribe my newsletter below and follow me on twitter: @lgoncalves1979.
I am trying to improve these blog posts with a help from professional designers and editors to give you even more valuable content. If you want to support me on this effort, feel free to contribute with any amount of money that you think it´s fair.
Thanks guys,
Luis
D5 Creation