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.