How I learn Agile practices and values

Under the cut, review and conclusions from the MeetUp retrospective about teamwork and reflection, which was conducted on April 3 by Elena Litvinova.

For me, he became a demonstration as an ordinary team (hereinafter the team 1.0), different from the prepared one (team 2.0).

Prepared means that most team members are not just familiar with Agile practices and values, but own them.
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What was the basis of Mitapa

Played a collect comics game. Some history is cut into slides of the same size (puzzles), they are mixed and distributed to each participant for 3 pieces.

Slides could not be shown to the other participants, only words could explain what was on them. Together we had to restore / understand the overall plot and lay out the slides in the manner prescribed by the author.

Who was

There were 15 people. Some people have already seen before, met on another mitap, but most were not familiar with each other. We were lucky, the majority were “prepared” and we were united into one team, team 2.0.

How looked from the side. Comparing the work of teams 1.0 and 2.0

All friends listened and heard, no one dragged the blanket over himself. We started with planning how we organize work in the sprint.

Team 1.0 would just start working “right off the bat”.

The time allotted for planning was not enough and we began to work with what we managed to plan.

The 1.0 team often continues to try to complete the planning, taking this time from the “development / implementation” time.

How best to change the process of work discussed already in the process. The prepared plan helped us get started, but was not viable in the middle. “Collecting comics” was a new activity for us, therefore, there was no idea what to do, and there was no time to decompose it and correctly reassemble it.

On planning, they understood that it was necessary to start by creating a common information space, so that each told others what his pictures were on his hands. During the story about the slides began to try to catch the overall plot. We grouped our pictures into specific scenes and tried to determine the correct sequence of slides in the scene.

Another feature of the 2.0 team is to track time and break work into time intervals by type of activity.

At the sprint we were given 40 minutes. We broke it into 3 parts: planning, work, assembling the result.

Someone always watched how much time was left and informed everyone: “20 minutes left until the end of the sprint. 10 minutes left until the end of the sprint, let's collect what we already have. ” Those who actively collect history are in the “flow” and do not observe hours, so for them such a “direction” / structuring of work on a timeline is very important.

In team 1.0, time is rarely monitored, and if one watches no one is listening, they try to finish their task to the end, the sprint time ends, and the team has no finished result.

We have not assigned the role of a “time manager” to anyone. For some of the participants it was a strong point. He knew what it was and why it was needed, performed it earlier, so there was no need to ask for it, he took it on himself and knew “how to” carry it out / convey this information to everyone, and the 2.0 team was ready to accept this information and use correctly.

The next feature of the 2.0 command is performance. The team knows that at the end of the sprint you need to provide the result in the form in which it turned out, albeit not perfect, with some kind of connections, but generally similar to the truth.

We got three large pieces of history, which we did not know how to dock. We knew for sure that the first two are interrelated, but could not find a point of interconnection between them. Therefore, they simply connected two pieces, the last frame of the first and the first frame of the second, and the third piece was attached to the second.

When they turned the cards over to see the comics ... the team caught the buzz. It was great to see how the frames were collected in the correct sequence, that they were right about the first and second pieces. Even without revealing the point of pairing, we correctly groped her blindly.

In some places the frames were in the wrong order. Just like in life, when you give a prototype to work and understand that something is not working and needs to be corrected. We were given the opportunity to correct (+1 to the pleasure of the result).

The third piece was the beginning for the first. Frames in it were displayed correctly, but we could not find the interconnection point. It turned out that it was not easy to do it because they were not sure that the frames were put in the right order, so they did not know between what and what to look for points of contact.

Reflection of team work and team work

Instead of the traditional retrospective that the team did and did not work, what can and should be changed in the organization of the team’s work in order to get the best result, Elena asked everyone to choose cards that best describe our perception of the person’s / team members that we remember .

For me, it was a Pivot (a 180-degree turn), as I used to think about the result and process, and not about how everyone showed himself in the process.

For such feedback, a table was prepared on which cards with characteristics lay, for example, “open to experiments”, “convivial”, “excitedly pursues a goal” ... It was necessary to take these cards and put the members of the team on the chairs which I evaluated. And also take the 3rd cards that best describe each of us, how we evaluate ourselves.

After that, we returned to our chairs and laid out the triangle cards received from other members of the team.

Each card had a marker of what type it was. Yellow - knowledge and experience. Reds - trust. Green - order. Blue is a combination of three other qualities.

In my triangle strong angles were: knowledge / experience and trust. In the corner of the "order" was just one card. My own cards were about knowledge / experience. It treats it like this:

My strong point is to use previous experience and knowledge for new activities. Before starting to do something new, I try to find the previous similar experience (not necessarily my own) in order to get something from it that will be useful for the work of the team.

A strong block of trust suggests that I trust other participants, their experience and knowledge. That together we have the necessary knowledge and are able to get the result of our synergy.

Therefore, the order / instruction of how we will work is less important for me, since our qualifications will help us make the right decisions during the course of the assignment.

This technique was a discovery for me. She gave to see the portrait of each member of the team, to hear what everyone thinks about him and thinks to herself. At the same time, the default feedback was designed as positive and it also added a degree of pleasure to all team members.

The tool is useful to see the strengths and weaknesses of team members, to distribute the roles in it relying on their strengths, so that everyone does what he does best. Reduce the risk of dissatisfaction with each other and conflicts due to incorrect expectations with respect to another team member, when you expect something from him that is not in his nature.

- Fly ostrich, fly.

Vulture flies, the ostrich runs after him.

- Uh-uh-hey, I told you flew, but did not run. Have you forgotten how to fly?

- I did not know how.

- I did not know how ... I did not know how - we will teach, if you do not want to, we will make. Take off!

"Wings, legs and tails" (c)

How quantity goes into quality

Each team to work in a team / teams is similar to the stage of the beginning of “Agile-transformation” in a company, when teams are formed of people who can work together for a long time in a company, but do not know each other.

In the team they are faced with a new professional activity / task. Previously, everyone was responsible for a narrow area, and now they are together, with a team, responsible for everything: the whole process, the product, the delivery of value.

When you participated in only one mitap, and then returned to your company / team, where you work “in the old way”, its effect on your work is not noticeable. You just got a good mood and looked at how you can work differently.

But when you went through 10 to such mitaps and are capable of on the 11th with people who you see for the first time, organize yourself into an effective team, you understand that the experience of mitases turned into skills, and some of the skills into conscious knowledge / tools that you know how to apply in life, and you carry this knowledge into the “old” team and begin to apply it in its work.



Such mitapy allow you to quickly progress. Every time you “transform” and each time you do it better and better.

For you, it becomes less important at what level of development / training the new team is in order to feel that you are in the right place and with the right people. You turn on faster, experience less stress from less advanced work organization and are able to move the team forward, offering it the right ideas, knowledge and experience at the right time.

Links

1. Learning curve
2. Levels of learning / knowledge