Agile Notes (No. 49)

Happy Friday! Thanks for reading. We continue with Collaboration Explained by Jean Tabaka. This week, we are moving on to Chapter 9: The Organizing Tools.

We get two page grabs this week because I am not skilled enough to combine two pictures into one. :)

These questions are gentle ways to check in with the team to make sure they are still meeting the explicit, stated/written Meeting Purpose. Tabaka refers to “rat-holes” aka those tangents that meetings often take. [I’ve always called them rabbit-holes but to each their own.] Tabaka notes that she uses these questions to make sure teams are being deliberate in their meetings. They have to explicitly agree AS A TEAM to go down an off-topic rabbit/rat-hole.

If this were a Sprint. The rabbit-hole could bust the Sprint if the team decided. Going off a stated Meeting Purpose would effectively “bust” the meeting. It would require a re-set of the Meeting Purpose. Formal. Deliberate. Not just because the person that ALWAYS derails meetings is allowed to attend AND derail the meeting. You all have that person.

[The more I think about the term “rat-hole” I realize that rabbit-hole is just a bit nicer. A bit kinder. A bit gentler. Also, I once saw a rat outside of Fenway Park in Boston. It was the size of a small dog. And yes, I was (unfortunately) close enough to clearly see it was NOT a dog.]

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