The New Visual Board

2 weeks back I blogged on Measuring Team Effectiveness in a Sprint. I thought it would also be a good idea to SHOW-OFF the new visual board that the team uses. Below is a snapshot.

We use this board during our daily standup discussions. We start from the right most end and do a vertical scan of each story card. Each team member spends just enough time to update on progress and the dependencies to close the specific activity. We are 20+ team members and we take about 20 minutes each day scanning through every card that we have on the board. 

There are 4 categories:

1. Express Highway items(PINK cards): These are unplanned activities which might need immediate attention. We do have constraints on having them coming in the first place. However, once in, they are given the topmost priority
2. P1 items (WHITE cards) : These are  Priority 1 planned for the sprint (MUST haves)
3. P2 items (WHITE cards) : These are  Priority 2 planned for the sprint (SHOULD haves)
4. Validation items (YELLOW cards) : Validation team does lot of automation and they did not want to be left out. The team demanded a separate lane and we obliged :-)

FF2FF (Frequent Face to Face Feedbacks)

FF2FF (Frequent Face to Face Feedbacks) is the new WoW (Way of working) in our team. We formalized this :-).

Why did we do this?

We wanted to ensure each member in the team is enabled to perform at their best each day. To achieve this, the best approach was to have people talking more and we launched FF2FF

Certain Guidelines for FF2FF

1. Basic premise is to understand and accept that each person is unique and there is no ONE-SIZE-FITS-ALL strategy that is applicable here. What we discuss depends and varies from person to person. However, the end goal is to enable the person to be at his/her best and keep them motivated.
2. It is both ways. Crux is to have feedback both ways, genuine exchange of observation and comments that both parties agree, identify and define time bound actions that can be measured based on its outcome.
3. 3 focus areas for discussion would be to CONTINUE doing what has been done the best, to STOP that did not work well and to START something different to address them.
4. ACTIVE listening from both parties is the most important aspect. Look from different perspectives to understand what worked and what did not work. Acknowledge the fact when things have not worked rather than being defensive and look at what could be done to make it work. Where ever possible give commitments on what can be done different.
5. Identify specific instances, examples to relate to actual situation for better clarity rather than beating around the bush. Be straight forward. Substantiate with proper facts and data.
6. Be aware of the body language. Look for cues on agreements/disagreements and try not to push your views when other party do not agree. In such cases, understand where is the disagreement coming from.
7. One simple way to measure the effectiveness of FF2FF is that at end, both parties involved in the discussion is energized and eager for the next discussion. Instead, if anyone or both are drained, it is a clear indication that the discussion did not go well.

Measuring Team Effectiveness in a Sprint

I plan to summarize my thoughts on measuring team effectiveness in a Sprint. This is something that we have started doing.

For each sprint, we plan list of features/ activities to be completed which is circulated 2 days in advance to all team members.

Recently, we have brought in the concept of MUST haves and SHOULD haves.

1.       MUST haves are high priority ones (P1s as we call it) that need to be completed in the sprint. In case something is seen to be dragging from this list, it is the responsibility of complete team to re-focus.

2.       SHOULD haves belongs to other categories which is good to be completed (P2s as we call it), however, not at the cost of MUST haves.

During our Sprint planning activity, each team member picks up activities that they want to work on. Here, we give priority to individual choice, unless otherwise we see an impact on meeting sprint goals. In case, we see this conflicting with Sprint goals, we request team members to re-pick.

Once picked and plan committed, the team works together on items planned for completion during Sprint. All P1 items are closely tracked during the Sprint.

At the end of Sprint, the validation team provides a summary of completed features (meeting DoD criteria [definition of done]). They also provide details on lead time and cycle time as well as the pending P1s. We use these as the measure of evaluating Sprint success criteria. The team also looks if there were any express highway tickets [these are unplanned activities, but needs to be picked up immediately as soon as they come]

How we measure and come to conclusion whether the Sprint was a success or not:

1. P1 completely met: Good team work :-)
2. Measure of Cycle time Vs Lead Time:  The more close the values, the better they are. We check alignment with plan as well.
3. Measure of express highway[EH] items: We look at number of EH items to understand deviations in plan. It is considered best when EH=0. In case not, we analyze root cause and identify actions to reduce the EH items in forthcoming sprints.
4. Measure of P2 completed: If P2s are completed in addition to P1s, the team is doing great. In case, this is not the case and we have pending P1s and P2s are completed, we look into why these P2s were looked at in the first place. Until and unless we have reasons to do so, this is considered to be an execution problem. We compare the ratio of P1 slip and P2 completion percentage to derive whether the effort expended on P2 items were worthwhile or not.

Now that we have started with these and have collected the information for a few sprints, we will continue with above for few more sprints to derive at a working effective model.

A Better Retrospective

This was an action pending on me, where I brought in a few restructuring in the retrospective format. Still miles to go :-)

From the earlier discussion, one important point I noticed was a lack of proper structure, to the way retrospectives were happening. [PS: I always believed there was a structure, but my team members thought the other way – it is always better change the way you perceive, especially when the majority is on the other side :-)]

What I did was to make the structure more explicit with a diagram and explain it to my team members. Below is the diagram I prepared. [Reference: Agile Retrospectives - Making Good Teams Great by Esther Derby, Diana Larsen]

Setting the stage:

I briefly explained the team members on what each item meant, to ensure that each member in the team is on the same page and then we started with our retrospective.

Gather the data:

We presented the data for last couple of sprints. Once this was done we split into 4 separate teams (we were 16 of us).

Now it was the turn of each teams to discuss and come up with top points on what worked and what did not.

Generate insights:

Each team presented their summary with high level views on why they thought so. We requested each team to explain when things were not very clear.

Decide what to do:

Once all points were explained in detail, we started picking up the items and decided what action needs to be taken for each item.

Close the retrospective:

Before we closed, we checked back on actions from earlier retrospectives.

[PS: By this time, one of my team members indicated that they are too hungry and this is one focus point in forthcoming retrospectives i.e. to reduce the time taken for retrospection.

Are you enjoying your work?

If not, there is only one cause - YOU

Let me explain that. When I don't enjoy what I am doing, the obvious question is, "OK, what am I doing about it?". It all boils down to the answer I have to this question. I believe no one else can make me feel good about my work other than me.

I have heard my colleagues/ accomplices telling, "You know what, my first job was the one I enjoyed most. I felt my contribution was at its peak there". Especially when I hear that a person does not enjoys his job now, but his earlier or first job, I feel "not something is right". 

This is my side of it. I believe, our first job is where we have the least of influences. Since we are on a new job, we are under more scrutiny. Someone else is driving the show, and we are having minimal contribution in most of the decision making process. As we spend more time in job, people around get more confident on our capability and we get freedom to choose, the way we work. For me, when I do my job on my terms and achieving the desired goals is what makes me really happy (And definitely not when someone else drives).

Are you telling me that you enjoyed your work when someone else was driving it. In that case, the simple question is :
What are you doing? 
What is your contribution? 
What is the difference you are bringing on to the table?

The Personal Touch

I am part of  MITR - an employee counseling initiative at Wipro. In simple words, “MITR is Just about anything”

Every year we celebrate our anniversary and this year too we had this function, however, it was special (for me as well as the complete group). On our anniversary day, we spend a complete day together, reflecting on how the year went by, on a new learning, a great lunch together. We volunteers are also provided a gift coupon (as a token of appreciation on efforts we put in J. This year, however, our anniversary celebrations were quite different

Most of the members joined as usual from various locations. We exchanged our joy of meeting everyone, we reflected on the MITR journey over years, our future vision etc. We had a  wonderful learning session where we discuss on stress management and a great lunch as always. One simple act that was done different made a huge impact. As I mentioned, every year, there is a gift voucher provided, which was not given this year and instead it was a bunch of gift packs. All neatly packed, arranged and handed over in a wonderful carry bag.

Usually I handover this gift voucher to my daughter. This time however it was very different. I handed over the gift bag to my daughter and immediately I could see that sparkle in her eyes, when she saw all those gift packets. She was very excited, while she opened each packet and naming who will keep each gift. (She never had any second thoughts on who should keep the chocolate box)

A little introspection on what made this difference

The personal touch. The experience. These two aspects made a significant impact and I am sure we will never forget the sparkle my daughter had in her eyes. A little creative thought actually touched all of our MITR families.

When I look back, the starting point was same. We all wanted to celebrate the anniversary, we fixed the date, we knew who all will be attending, It was almost the same budget available as previous years. The intent to do something different and the approach made this difference. I might say that was one of the special experiences that I am going to cherish. A special thanks to Shreya who actually took the road less traveled. :-)

What is the lesson?

Having in a personal touch brings in huge difference. We all are emotional beings, and when we bring in personal attention, it changes the complete dimension.  A paradigm shift happens as it touches the heart of people who are involved. Be it work place or family affair, it is important to always look at each one as a person rather. It sends out the message, loud and clear, “I care for you, you are important to me” and we being human beings nothing more is important.

How I relate this to business?

This is where apple product makes a huge impact and difference. It is all about “I”. Right from the experience of opening the package to the first use, everything is taken and that is the sole reason why apple is apple

A3 Model to make people effective and efficient

What makes people effective and efficient?

Being efficient and effective can be interpreted in multitude ways. According to wordweb,

Effective : Producing or capable of producing an intended result or having a striking effect

Efficient : Being effective without wasting time, effort or expense

The answer to the question in hand is simple: People are always effective and efficient when they are HAPPY.

A follow-up question would be:

How do we know what makes people happy?

Again, answer is simple, ASK them. Only they can tell whether they are happy or not.

However, there are challenges here:

1.       Each person is DIFFERENT

2.       Each person is different at different TIMES

3.       People respond in different ways for same stimuli at different SITUATIONS

So it is important for us to adapt based on

1.       Person’s NEED

2.       Person’s SITUATION

3.       It is more about understanding each one emotionally.

I always get this question:

Will people tell me, when they are happy and what makes them happy?

Well, the answer is YES, only if they TRUST and they believe that the person asking:

1.       CARES for them

2.       Is genuinely interested in their well being and

3.       There is no hidden agenda.

What did we do?

We use HAPPINESS INDEX to measure how happy people are.

We collect feedback from each of the team members on a regular basis (every fortnight). We analyze and act on it.

There are 4 parameters which we collect:

We ask each person, how happy they are related to their:

WORK, TEAM, LEAD and ENVIRONMENT

Work involves the daily activities that the person is involved and expected to accomplish

Team includes all the members with which the person interacts to accomplish the desired goal

Lead is ideally a senior person who is a stakeholder involved to enable the person

Environment is any external factor that impacts the person related to achieving the desired goal for the team

We ask them to rate them on a scale of 1 to 7 [1: Very unhappy and 7: Very happy]

What do we do with it?

We ANALYZE  the feedback on 2 aspects:

1.       Whether the feedback for any parameter is less than the threshold [we have kept it is as at least 5]

2.       Trend on feedbacks over a period of time

Accordingly ACT, we plan for face to face discussion with team members. We do discussions for both aspects, when we find the trend that people are happy as well as unhappy. The advantage is that we understand what makes people unhappy and we also understand what makes happy people happy.

It definitely was not an easy journey. There were skepticism initially this was launched and many team members gave a 7 of 7 for most parameters. However, when this was continued over a period over time, the team members understood the usefulness as well as importance.

Trust and Open Communication

Today our team had a wonderful retrospective. The topic to be addressed was “Is retrospective useful or useless” [that is why I call this retrospective wonderful]

A little background: I have not been attending team retrospectives for quite a while and I had this concern on its effectiveness, based on what I hear during coffee break chats as well as through grapevines.

When the retrospective started, we started with question “Is it USEFULL or USELESS?”, the team members were little puzzled. They were not sure what needs to be said. Initially 2 members, responded that retrospective were very useful. This prompted me to give reassurance/reminder to team members that the purpose of retrospectives is to identify areas of improvements and as long as we do not open up the weak spots, we stay where we are. We need to do something different, lest we continue making same old mistakes. The outcome would be same as earlier sprints. This clicked and slowly team members started opening up. Below gives a summary on what did not work in earlier retrospectives.

1.       Team members were hesitant to talk freely

2.       Discussion concluded without actions (at least a majority felt so)

3.       Identified actions were not acted upon

4.       Even when actions were taken, these were not tracked to closure

5.       All stakeholders were not aware of what had happened to earlier actions

It was clearly evident that there was a total lack of TRUST among team members. Team members felt there was no use raising area of concerns, since there were not going to be any results. Yet another area that was lacking was adequate communication. When team members are not clear on specific actions taken, it clearly shows a complete lack of adequate communication.

Now, it is action time to bring back the lost trust as well as better means of communication. I will keep posting J

Accountability and ownership

I was on a workshop 2 weeks back with one of our customers, planning to launch agile in a big way and this interesting thought on accountability came in.

Being involved in agile way of working for the last 4-5 years, I am connected to many agile practitioners in the organization I work for. One of the Agile consultants suggested me to get involved in this workshop. Since I am passionate about agile, I was excited to get involved in this exercise.

The workshop was for 3 days and I would not be available for my team.  I am pretty confident that my team will manage during my absence. I also thought I could spare an additional 2-3 hours on my work in case required. This was the balancing game I planned when I committed my availability.

Agenda was Day 1, 2 to work and conclude on various practices, approaches to be considered, Day 3 was to come up with an integrated approach of overall way of working.

Day 1 went great with lots of discussions and contributions. Day 2, towards 3:00pm we were almost done and there was no specific role for me. However there was dinner planned that evening along with all participants. I was not very eager on the food part and thoughts about work back with my team was creating conflicts in my mind. So I decided to leave. I updated the team(workshop) and left for the day, went back to work and attended pending work.

Later that day, I could see something was disturbing me. (I have this habit of reflecting each day, how it went and I could realize something was not right). Pondering for some time I understood the actual cause. I should not have left the workshop without concluding for the day. Though I did update the team before I left, later I concluded, my decision to leave was not right. It was like not taking complete ownership and leaving the work half done. This thought created a big void and I felt quite disturbed. I realized my big mistake J

Accountability is about taking complete ownership and ensuring that activity picked is brought to conclusion in all respect. It is about DONE DONE.

Incompetency, Arrogance, Laziness only leads to customer dissatisfaction...

Last time I took my car for its periodic service and that was a nightmare for me when I look back... I literally lost 3-4 days of my sleep.

The story unfolds as below:

The service advisor (SA1) is surprised to hear me say the vehicle has no problems and I just need to do the regular maintenance along with the tyre rotation.

After the service, at end of day, I get back my vehicle, and make my payments.

Being curious, I ask SA1 “Where did the spare wheel go during rotation?” And now he explains, he has done a 4 wheel rotation. I was surprised by this remark. I humbly ask him what he means by 4 wheel rotation for which he explains in detail. (He removed wheels in front and put it behind – I do not understand what is meant by rotation). I did not agree and ask him to do a 5 wheel rotation, which he agrees though disheartened. Since it was too late, and neither there were people with right skills to do the job, I agree to bring my vehicle the next day.

During my second visit, SA1 manages to perform the requested task and I get my vehicle after 2 hours. He confirms that balancing and alignment has been done. I drove to office and then parks back at home.

The next day I realize, there is something wrong with the vehicle. Something unusual about the way, the vehicle was moving. I check the vehicle and realize that the alignment work was done incorrectly and now the vehicle steering was misaligned (due to incorrect alignment). I call up SA1 to update this and asks him what he wanted to do further. He does not agree initially that there is a problem with vehicle. When I put across my dissatisfaction, and explain him the details, he finally he agrees. He suggests me to bring my car for check-up the third time.

During the third visit, the front office executive (FOE) indicates that they cannot take my car for servicing since I do not have a prior appointment. I flared at the FOE for her arrogance (from my point, I gave a vehicle in good condition for regular maintenance service and now I am visiting third time come out of the after-service impact). She later updates me that SA1 was on leave for the day. I get a new person (SA2) to check the car. He promptly accompanies me for a test drive and observes the problem reported. I explain him the details and even tries to explain him why the problem would have come. (Obviously because the alignment required for the 5^th wheel during rotation was not done. )

After test drive, he calls in his folks and removes the steering wheel (attacking the wrong route cause) and tries to adjust the handle. I was totally shocked by this and goes back to explain them what they are supposed to do. By then, they had messed up the steering wheel. They take it to wheel alignment bay, does something and returns the vehicle to me. SA2 accompanies me for another test drive where I complain him about the vehicle going towards the right side of the road, when the steering wheel was left free. He even recommended me to just change the orientation. The steering also becomes stiff, which required additional effort (rotating in opposite direction) to bring back to default position once I had done a complete rotation of steering (when I turned any side). I realize, it was useless spending my time here and tells him good bye.

I could feel the difference after the third visit. I was a little disturbed since I did not know how to proceed, since each additional visit only added to my problems instead of solving them. I also realized that the right side of the wheel was getting worn out when I just drove about 100KM. This pricked me hard. Apparently, I was looking at the best option to resolve the problem in hand. I literally lost 3-4 days of sleep (I do mean that and my better half was furious about this – she claims, if I give a portion of attention/ care that I am giving for this car (to her), she would have been a lot happier J)

After each vehicle service, I usually get a call to check back on how the service experience was. When I got this call, I expressed my complete furiousness and dissatisfaction. The executive promptly apologizes and promise me that required action will be taken. I get a callback from the service center the next day, indicating that they have received this complaint from me and wanted to address it, for which I clearly indicated; if it is the same advisor I would rather not come back (I had enough with 3 visits). They further apologize and disconnect call confirming to update on further action. However, I do not hear from them back. I was clearly surprised with this inaction.

Infuriated, disgraced, I finally call back the main office mentioning that I have a complaint which needs to be addressed. I get an appointment the next day.

During my fourth visit, I meet a new service advisor (SA3). I explain the complete history from beginning to end. He seemed to understand, and I also double confirmed that he did understand the problem before he took the car for further repair work. After about two hours, I get the car for test drive. This time I felt most of the problems were resolved except for the fact that there was a small tilt in the handle (impact due to the initial action done when the steering was removed to refit)

After the long story, let me try to explain, what I wanted to actually discuss in this forum:

The above example has all cases of laziness, incompetency, arrogance and what not. And all these has only added to customer dissatisfaction (me J)

Summary:

SA1 was careless, lazy. He could have done a decent job the very first time. He made me visit 3 times to service center.

FOE was arrogant. Especially, when a customer is totally furious, this is the last thing any customer would expect from the service provider.

SA2 was purely incompetent and lacked listening skills. He did not understand the root cause and tried to attack only the symptom. (Unfortunately we all do this many a times). He did not listen when the complete history was explained to him. He just wanted to get rid of the customer.

However, SA3 had the right blend of listening skills as well as technical knowhow to understand the customer’s problem. He listened, understood and attacked the root cause of the problem rather than the visible symptoms.

I wanted to update that SA3 called up after 2 days to check back with me on the vehicle condition. This did excite me. With SA3, I saw a totally dissatisfied customer, turning around. All these has provided me good lessons, which I can use while I am on the other side of serving...