5 easy to implement ideas to achieve success in Scrum teams
Agile is a beast but a fantastic beast, the concept is very simple but sometimes hard to implement. Here are some ideas to achieve success from the outset...
Sprint Wednesday to Wednesday
Starting or ending your sprints on a Monday or Friday? This could be a tricky business. Mondays in the UK have bank holidays on them, start sprints on a Monday and you will automatically lose the project rhythm, especially with the need for implementing ceremonies at the same time and date in the same place to avoid complexity in projects.
Go from Wednesday to Wednesday, it will alleviate the need to swap and change, if you have stakeholders traveling in, it avoids them having to travel in their free time.
It will also alleviate any brain drain happening over the weekend, talk about things whilst its fresh in peoples minds!
Always, Always, Always allow for remote connectivity
By providing a digital link that is always available for meetings, even stand up with video. It will encourage the team to become active remote workers. This will reduce the disappearance or loss of any remote team members. I recommend Zoom.us as it works well with poor connectivity.
It means that those who aren’t able to attend in person due to family needs can always have input or keep up with the proceedings and no one will be left behind. It also allows any stakeholders to listen in, increasing communication and reducing hidden surprises.
Prioritize
When I say prioritize, I really really mean it. I have worked with people who “need” to prioritize everything. This is a huge risk to your project, the project goals should be the focus, with the highest value items being built first. It’s important to remember that the delivered features all should be usable once deployed, so production of random features that do not connect can produce huge amounts of risk. No one wants to hit the end date without at least some usable products.
Avoid the risk with regular backlog refinement sessions, locate those stories that are going to provide the greatest value to your identified users. If in doubt ask a developer to join you and the product owner before the sprint planning to locate what stories are up next.
Workshop with your users
Assumptions are the root of all cost drains, if we assume a user will need or want a specific feature then it can be costly. Get out there and speak to your users, both internal and external. Workshops are a great way to understand their needs.
“Assumptions are made and most assumptions are wrong. Albert Einstein”
By also only focusing on your end users and not your admin users, you could cost your business by increasing task times and reducing staffs efficiency.
Failure is a method of learning
Micromanagement is the antithesis of innovation. Trust your team, build confidence and empower them to make decisions and do not be scared of failure!
Everything that you have learn’t in your life has come about from a failure of some kind. We cannot hope to learn without making mistakes.
Use Retrospectives to discuss what went wrong is a golden opportunity. It allows Agile projects to pitch and turn at speed learning from their mistakes and not building projects on houses of cards.
In the long run its going to save money and energy rather than reworking ingrained problem features unlike Waterfall projects.
