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Archive for the ‘Well Formed Teams’ Category

Break the Habit

Agile Pathways, Musing, Well Formed Teams | Posted by liz.weatherhead
Oct 31 2011

Want to ditch your Retrospective?  

Are Product Demos painful and shallow on the feedback?

This is what we hear from our Scrum teams over and over.  The Scrum framework is simple and elegant, but implementation can be complex.

Communication and learning are highly intertwined and as Scrum believers, we are compelled to do both at a high level.  We need to shape questions to drive the learning and to forge a path for the product development.  How can we ever gain robust, vital feedback without engagement of our audience?
  • Don’t abandon the Scrum ceremonies, re-frame them with robust and relevant questions that drive the learning.
  • Build better products by building better teams with awareness of communication patterns.
  • Navigate the pitfalls of stuck perspective by shifting team thinking.
  • Tell stories to illustrate a point or perspective.
Asking questions is risky business.  We have no control over the answer and we may not like the answer.  But as ScrumMasters, Product Owners, and developers, we must be fearless in our quest to drive greatness for our end users.   Here are some question examples to bring life to your next Scrum ceremony.  
Daily Scrum
  • What is frustrating you?
  • What new information has surfaced?
  • What skills do we need to finish the story?
  • What’s your gut reaction to _______?
Product Demo
  • What are your biggest dreams for this product?
  • What are the pros and cons to this product release?
  • We have run into a challenge and are seeking your input to solve it.
  • If we could take one risk with this product it would be_____.  What do you think?
These are solutions that will propel Scrum meeting into a higher level of engagement. Break the habit of the same old, same old Scrum meetings.  Learn to ask significant questions.  See where the questions will take you.

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Pathways to Scrum Team Mastery

Musing, Well Formed Teams | Posted by liz.weatherhead
Aug 31 2011

If you could have four great tools in your pocket to nurture your Scrum team to their highest output, what would you need?  You would need to see the product, the challenge, and the way to solve it from the point of view of each team member.  Let’s talk about the four perspectives.

Through the eyes of the Integrator on your team, see inclusion.  Ask:  How is the product reflecting the values of the stakeholders? 

Through the eyes of the Organizer on your team, see structure.  Ask:  What is the criteria for decision making?

Though the eyes of the Producer on your team, see results.  Ask:  Who is best suited for which task?

Through the eyes of the Visionary on your team, see possibilities.  Ask:  What are we willing to risk?

These four “lens” or perspectives will lead your team to higher collaboration patterns which will result in better designed product solutions for your customers.

Join us for 4MAT for Scrum Teams and propel your team to deliver results.

 

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One Scrum Team. Four Languages.

Musing, Well Formed Teams | Posted by liz.weatherhead
Aug 24 2011

Does it ever appear that your Scrum team members can express the same thought in  four different ways?

  • “Let’s knock this product out of the park!”
  • “If we can reach consensus, we can move to the next level.”
  • “The SOP will tell us what to do next.”
  • “To be efficient, we must eliminate the fluff and complete only what is absolutely necessary.”
Some of these languages are pleasant and palatable to us.  Others repel us like vinegar. Our challenge as Product Owners,  ScrumMasters and teammates is to peel the words and find value in the thought.  Let’s revisit the statements and reveal what the intent truly is.
“Let’s knock it out of the park.”  This person is a risk-taker and consistently pushes us to move from good to great.  They share information though experiences and action.  They learn by jumping in and doing.  If the doing is wrong, well, then they learned something!
“If we can reach consensus, we can move to the next level.”  Team community is the cornerstone value of this team member.  They truly embrace the well-formed team approach.  They are reflective, yet thrive in environments that are experiential.  Feelings about teams and the product are not to be discounted.  There is deep realization that teams produce better products when they work in harmony.
“The SOP will tell us what to do next.”  Structure and rule following drive this team member to do their best.  This person thinks in black and white, right or wrong.  They will strive to keep the team on the correct path.  As reflective, analytical thinkers, they speak with great precision and deliberation.
“To be efficient, we must eliminate the fluff and complete only what is absolutely necessary.”  This team member is built with pure efficiency in mind and they expect the team to follow suit.  They are active and analytical and it is a powerful combination. They get down to business and get it done. Executing the thing right trumps doing the right thing every time.
As ScrumMasters and team members, we must navigate the terrain of foreign languages everyday.  They may pop with our customers, our vendors, or with each other.  The sooner we understand the source of the language, the sooner we can find value in it.

Join us at 3Back to learn more team navigation skills with 4MAT for Scrum Teams.

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Scrum Meetings: Painful or Successful?

Agile Pathways, Musing, Well Formed Teams | Posted by liz.weatherhead
Aug 15 2011

 

 

 

 

You have a meeting at 3:00.  Are you looking forward with dread or anticipation?

Scrum meetings are a frequent and essential occurrence as we move through the Scrum framework.  As a team member, a Product Owner, or a ScrumMaster, we have an obligation to facilitate meetings that are engaging.  How to accomplish that??  It requires awareness and practice.

An engaging meeting. That sounds like a tall order.  Webster’s Dictionary defines engaging:  : to attract and hold by influence or power : to interlock with : to hold the attention of : to induce to participate.

I have been to many a product demo that is lack luster.  I have seen daily standups where team members leave asking, “what are we doing next?”,  and retrospectives that are dominated by one or two people. Meetings are a forum for learning.  Learning about the product, the requirements, or learning about the people involved in development.  To craft a successful meeting, we must shift our perspective.  We must view meetings as a opportunity and challenge to expand our ability to engage.

How are we going to accomplish this engagement?  By running a meeting that appeals to all learning styles and team members.  If we use the Learning Type Measure from 4MAT, we know the learning language that everyone speaks. Whether the ScrumMaster or Product Owner is directing the meeting, if a framework is followed, engagement will be embedded.

The first step is to answer the question Why?  Why are these features important, why do the stakeholders value something, why was this process selected?  Then we move to What?  What features have been built, what does the market research say, what are the advantages of the new development process?  How is the next question in the meeting format.  How will the features work in the real world, how can this be built with the resources available to us, how will we test the product in the market?  Finally, we need to know What if?  What if we shift our budget to finance the newest trend in the market place, what if we eliminate feature X for feature Y, what if we re-organize our priorities to meet the deadline?

A meeting framework grounded in good learning strategies will propel your team to a higher degree of effectiveness and achievement.  Want to learn more?  Join 3Back for our new course targeted at teams and meeting dynamics, 4MAT for Scrum Teams.

 

 

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I don’t like my teammates…

Musing, Well Formed Teams | Posted by liz.weatherhead
Aug 12 2011

You don’t have to like your team mates.  You don’t have to go to happy hour together or the office birthday parties with them. BUT this is what you do need.   You need an awareness of their differences and how those differences contribute greatly to a highly creative and productive learning machine:  a team.

Lori was on my team of four.  Lori drove me crazy…always pointing what details I missed, how she could have done better, and how our processes weren’t followed.  Hearing her voice on the phone caused me to roll my eyes and tighten my voice.  My answers were curt.  I kept Lori at arm’s length whenever possible.  And I sure didn’t sit by her at meetings.

As a ScrumMaster, my task was to nurture this team. I had us all take the Learning Type Measure from 4MAT.  Of our team of four, each of us had a strength in different quadrants.  We were a perfectly balanced team.  Kyle’s strengths were involving people in the decision making process and kept the team true to our values.  Jeremy was the best in organization, sticking to the rules and regs, keeping structure at the forefront.  Lori was operation and results orientated.  She preferred to work alone and was highly productive.  My strength was cheering the team on to new heights and evaluating what happened to make it bigger and better next time.

Armed with diagnosed learning styles of my team mates, I began to see Lori through a different lens.  No longer did I view her as an enemy or a thorn in my side.  I realized that I NEEDED her to shift my thinking, to ask different questions of the problems, and to complement my own strengths.  All those comments, that I thought were so nasty, were a manifestation of her learning style, not her opinion of me or my performance.

I never did become good friends with Lori.  But I did come to respect her opinions because they were different from my own.  Different is good.

To discover how to put your team’s learning preferences to work, join us in Minneapolis, MN for the launch of our newest course at 3Back, 4MAT for Scrum Teams.

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The Scrum Wheel and the Learning Wheel United

Musing, Well Formed Teams | Posted by liz.weatherhead
Aug 04 2011

Scrum teams spin the wheel daily.  Every product, story, and task begs for the Scrum wheel to be in motion.  Another wheel is spinning every time the Scrum team gathers.  Whether it be for a daily stand-up, a product demo or a sprint retrospective, the learning wheel is also present.

Learning wheels churn through ideas and knowledge in an effort to increase our understanding and ability to apply. We see this in water cooler conversations, daily stand ups, retrospectives and more.  These learning patterns are hard-wired in our brain.  The outward appearance of these brain patterns is sometimes tagged as our personalities.  In reality, it is a learning style.

Learning styles have been studied in depth and can be accurately assessed through a tool developed by 4MAT.  The Learning Type Measure (LTM) assessment tool reveals four brain-based preferences for perceiving and processing information.  The four styles are formatted into a wheel and in every instance when knowledge is being shared, our brains spin rapidly through the learning cycle.  We may prefer one part of the cycle over the other and linger there longer.  This is why learning styles are often mis-labeled as personalities.

Imagine a Scrum team with all four learning styles represented.  There would be a One on the team, an Integrator.  By actively listening to team members, Ones integrate a sense of community with teams, ScrumMasters, and Product Owners.  An Organizer, a Two, would be an asset.  Organizing thoughts, ideas and people, giving structure to the work of the Scrum team.  Producing results is always the goal.  Threes are the Producers.  Threes, constantly striving to root us in reality, lead teams to produce tangible deliverables.  Fours are the Visionaries.  All things possible live in fourness.  Visualizing the big picture of the product is the strength of a Four.

Diverse learning strengths should be at the core of every well formed team.  Ideas that are probable and ideas that are possible.  Solutions that are effective and solutions that are efficient.  This is the collaborative result of a well formed, learning team. Isn’t this the team that should be showing up for work every day?

To discover how to put your team’s learning preferences to work, join us in Minneapolis, MN for the launch of our newest course at 3Back, 4MAT for Scrum Teams.

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When Your Strength is Your Weakness

Musing, Well Formed Teams | Posted by liz.weatherhead
Jul 07 2011

What is your strength?

Is is creating ideas?

Is it researching the latest and greatest data for a project?

Perhaps your strength is figuring out how the system is going to work in the real world.

Maybe your strength is bringing ‘good to great’ thinking to the latest product.

Whatever your strength may be, if it is a deep and strong attribute, it has potential to become your shadow or weakness. Think about a tree. The larger and stronger it becomes, the darker and deeper its shadow.  The same with people.  So, we need awareness when this is happening and strategies to minimize the negative.

Let’s talk about what that may look like in the real world.  If I am a strong, analytical thinker who reflects deeply on all decisions, what are the symptoms of my assets crossing the line into a weakness?  I may find myself commenting on every little detail of situations, projects or even the BBQ sauce on my friend’s sandwich!  Becoming paralyzed by analysis—never believing you have enough data and facts to make decisions—and to make the decisions correctly.

Or you may struggle getting things accomplished, producing results and implementation.  If the strength is fostering corporate culture and team relationships,  then processes, systems and planning may not be on my radar.  I may even be challenged with staying focused and choosing a plan to implement.  When the team asks for direction, you may reply with a dream or a vision for the future instead of a concrete game-plan that can be executed.

So, what to do about it? Awareness is the first step.  Listen to your team and your friends when they point out your habits and share their frustrations with your pattern of thought and conversation.  Ask for what they need from you and make a conscious effort to deliver what they ask for.  Seek out the viewpoint of teammates with the opposite strength.  Look for how their comments contrast and balance your own thought patterns.  Strive to blend the two to create a vibrant, relevant solution and pathway to success.

For more strategies to maximize team strengths, come learn with us at 4MAT for Scrum Teams.

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Learning can be Agile

Musing, Well Formed Teams | Posted by liz.weatherhead
Apr 08 2011

Agile is defined as a ‘quick, resourceful and adaptive character’.  How can we be quick and adaptive in problem solving on our teams? By tapping into the hard-wired learning machines that we are.  Diverse learnings styles that are present on every Scrum team can be tuned for driving rich and vibrant solutions to project challenges.

Learning strengths and weaknesses are hard-wired, but, through awareness, we can grow our abilities as a team to chew through the learning curve. Team members abilities to process information in diverse patterns, is an untapped resource.  A resource that is both efficient and effective.
basic scrum team building block
Preferences in learning are not complicated. People perceive, or take in, information  through experience or through thinking and judging.  Some of us would like to learn by the experiences of feeling, tasting, touching, smelling; being immersed in an experience.  In other words, they prefer to go to Disney World, not read about it.  Others would perfer to read about Disney, to learn about it.  In fact, credible resources, whether print or people,  are very important to analytical, thinking learners.

Once we have taken the information into our brains, we need to process, or digest it. Again, there are two preferences.  Reflection is hard wired for some of us.  The need to ponder and draw purposeful conclusions by observations, serves them well in developing solutions.  Others are active learners.  They process information by doing something with it.  Testing it, adapting it or plunging head first and learning by trial and error.

This world of ours demands that we go fast, fast. It requires that we churn though complicated, complex and even chaotic problems in a rapid fashion. To do that, we need awareness of our team learning strengths and learning gaps.  When Scrum teams have thinking and experiential learners that are both reflective and active, they can derive solutions from multiple perspectives.  With diverse learning styles, they can understand the many voices of the stakeholders.  Well formed teams can question and learn more effectively in daily stand-ups and Sprint Reviews.

A resourceful and adaptive team spins the Scrum wheel and embraces the learning wheel to listen to their product and stakeholders effectively and efficiently.  This will raise your team from formed, to well formed.

Find the latest team tools and skills in our 4MAT for Scrum teams course.

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Teams: Meet Shannon.

Musing, Well Formed Teams | Posted by liz.weatherhead
Mar 29 2011

“That’s great, but what if we try…?”  Is that your teammate’s favorite sentence?  I could guess that ‘risk taker’,’ people lover’, and ‘enthusiastic’ also describe Shannon.  Without a doubt, Shannon is the biggest cheerleader on your team, but some team members may see her having a lack of focus…jumping from one project to another without ever finishing any of them.  And the importance of detailed reports completed in a timely manner is all but lost in her world.

Shannon learns through experience and action. Seeing the possibilities and adapting to change are her strengths, while lack of follow-through and rule bending (or breaking!) are her greatest challenges when contributing to a team.  However, when the project is in crisis mode and it’s all hands on deck, Shannon’s fearlessness and can-do attitude are what you want in the trenches.  If you need to light a fire under her, competition is the answer. It’s not so much the prize that motivates Shannon, just the bragging rights that she came in first.  Without a doubt, in a competitive product market, Shannon will get you to the finish line ahead of all others.

Sometimes viewed as manipulative and pushy, the Shannon’s of the world believe in their point of view deeply.  Shannon has the ability to reach accurate conclusions in the absence of logic…completely baffling the team.  Shannon learns thorough self-discovery.  Let her figure it out herself…just get out of the way.  Shannon is a great coach and cheerleader, but not the best choice to teach the team the new, detailed procedures just released from management.  Constantly pushing the boundaries, rules, and regulations, Shannon is adept at carving her own path and dealing with the consequences later.

So, how to corral this passionate, rule-bender who is intent on winning and learning on her own?  Partner her with the detailed, “facts and figures” one on the team.  But, be sure they have a mutual respect for one another and can be friendly despite their differences.  The trick is for them to see that they need each other to create a balanced approach to the work.  Allow Shannon to lead the team’s celebrations, but also hold her accountable to the paperwork and project finalization.  Help her find creative ways to stay on task and focused.  The minute she believes it’s drudgery, you’ve lost her!

Discover skills and tools to elevate your Scrum team with our 4MAT for Scrum Teams course.

 

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Teams: Meet Keith.

Musing, Well Formed Teams | Posted by liz.weatherhead
Mar 22 2011

I once chaired a small leadership team, just four people.  Keith, my operations lead, was highly tuned into telling us how our ideas could or could not be implemented.  Keith had a million ways to process, but he appeared to have a  lack of caring about the people we were serving.  Keith was bottom-line results focused and preferred to take on projects alone.  As the team leader, I was concerned about Keith’s ability to collaborate and listen to all the voices on the team. Additionally, I questioned Keith’s seeming desire to take over as leader.

As a team, we took learning style assessments.  I discovered Keith’s characteristics had nothing to do with me or his lack of feelings.  It was simply an outward product of his preference to learn. Armed with this new awareness, I began to seek out Keith for decisions.  His viewpoint was juxtaposed to mine and we created a heightened creative tension. This led to problem solutions and pathways that served our organization in dynamic ways.

Keith’s strengths were testing and tinkering with how ideas could be realistically implemented.  Keith questioned the experts…were they really promoting the most efficient methods possible?  Making unilateral decisions was his preferred method to tackle problems. Keith was a hard worker and strove to make the team and organization productive and profitable.  Getting to the point and editing out “fluff” was Keith’s conversation strong point.  Keith had common sense in spades.

As a ScrumMaster, how do you manage Keith’s energy? How does his preference to work alone fit into the team mentality of the Scrum framework?  What does a coaching conversation with Keith look like?  What if you have an entire team of Keith’s?

Awareness of learning styles is essential to managing the energy and patterns of any team member.  Keith may never be thrilled to do team and small group work, but you will find better success by teaming Keith with team members who value his point of view.   Teammates with a strong voice are also important to pair with Keith.  Implementing few, but reasonable and enforceable rules around team interactions will also appeal to Keith.  Acknowledging Keith’s ability to problem solve is the best way to keep him motivated.

To build your awareness of learning styles on your team, join us for our new teams course, 4MAT for Scrum Teams.

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