Posts Tagged facilitation

7 Ways to Humanize the Distributed Team Experience

Posted by David Bland in agile, scrum on August 17, 2010

Team Members Are Not ResourcesIf you are involved in a distributed software team, chances are you know just how difficult it is to create personal connections. This is especially true in larger organizations where team members are geographically dispersed around the world and rarely (if ever) meet face to face in person.

I placed the emphasis this problem recently during my talk on distributed agile. My audience received, perhaps unexpectedly, a heavy dose of organizational culture from me instead of “here’s the 1000 different tools you can use” speech.

My message was simple, team members are not resources or metrics, and we should not treat them as such.

I felt the need to build upon that talk. As a result, here are my 7 tips for a sustainable and healthy distributed team experience:… [Read More]

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A Mirror for the Team

Posted by David Bland in agile, facilitation, retrospectives, scrum on July 20, 2010

ScrumMaster Lego MirrorAlistair Cockburn once stated that Scrum is a mirror, and that organizations need to look into the Scrum mirror no matter how difficult it may be.

I would take that a step further and say that the ScrumMaster is the mirror for the team.

A team often unintentionally falls back into situations in which they’ve previously committed to improving.

For example, let’s say that in the last iteration retrospective the team decided that they need to expand the ownership of each story. The last iteration was a success, yet it seemed as though they were not collaborating effectively. Each user story had one developer doing most, if not all of the assigned tasks… [Read More]

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Consuming Iteration Demo Feedback

Posted by David Bland in agile, scrum on July 14, 2010

You are nearing the end of your potentially shippable product demonstration and now you are faced with consuming stakeholder feedback before they leave the room.

Iteration Feedback

So where do you begin?

Step 1: Soliciting Feedback

An empty whiteboard should haunt your dreams!

If you are allowing stakeholders, internal or external, to leave the room without providing feedback then you are neglecting a very important aspect to your software development cycle.

Issues are either being left unspoken or your customers are not engaged at the level they need to be for your team to succeed.

  • Simply ask them.
  • Avoid analysis paralysis.
  • If they have scheduling conflicts send them an interactive demo link.

Tip: Be creative in soliciting feedback and do not take stakeholder avoidance lying down.

… [Read More]

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Passive Aggressive Facilitation

Posted by David Bland in facilitation, scrum on June 8, 2010

Passive Aggressive FacilitationPracticing servant leadership as a ScrumMaster requires a great deal of empathy and patience. This includes suppressing actions that would otherwise cause harm to team morale and self organization if unchecked.

One trait in particular that is extremely counterproductive to the role is passive aggressiveness.

As someone who has been known to be snarky on occasion, I’ve had to practice my facilitation skills over time in a real team setting… [Read More]

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SaMoLo in Retrospectives

Posted by David Bland in agile, extreme programming, retrospectives, scrum on May 11, 2010

SaMoLo, or the Same as, More of, Less of technique, is a fine tuning facilitation exercise with roots in early XP.

‘Same As’ are those traits that you value and don’t want to lose. Many traditional feedback methods end up glossing over these items and as a result the behaviors that should be reinforced, aren’t.

‘More Of’ are those traits that you want to encourage. It may be a newly acquired skill or the beginning of a behavior. Or it may be an area where something is lacking and you want to help ther person find a way of bridging the gap.

‘Less Of’ are those traits that have simply gone too far. They may be great traits, but eventually someone will ‘out Herods, Herod’ and things need to return to normal. – fairlygoodpractices.com

Thanks in part to Jeff Nielsen, I’ve discovered that SaMoLo can also be the sweet spot for easing new teams into iteration retrospectives.

  1. It is easy to remember
  2. More engaging than What worked? What didn’t?
  3. Takes 30 to 40 minutes
  4. Pairs well with other exercises

In a recent iteration retrospective I paired the SaMoLo technique with… [Read More]

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