Completion of the new Feed-based Intranet Portal

We recently finished a project of converting our intranet landing pages to a unified single landing page for the entire company (rollout of all hospitals is pending). The vision of the stakeholders and the technical excellence of the programmer were at best. But this article is not about the portal but the behind the scenes stories which have changed our working styles and our mindsets.

This project has helped us in becoming a true Scrum team and has made its impact beyond the project itself. For example, now we are using all the Scrum rituals and religiously value them. We value Sprints and Backlogs and avoid on-the-fly assignments. Similarly, our product owner and creative staff are communicating using backlog stories, mockups, in-vision, comments, and backlog refinement meetings. Our technical teams expect the well-written stories/backlogs before our backlog refinement meetings. Everyone "can" and "will" question any unplanned activity and the direct assignments. In the retrospect, team openly speak there mind to reflect and make next future even better. The big deal is that the Rituals, which sounded unnecessary and time-consuming, have become our habits. Instead of "questioning" these rituals, we "expect" them. That's where the mindset changes.

Coming from a traditional project management background, it was not easy for me to adapt to the new Agile/Scrum methods and processes. I was used to doing the reverse engineering of the project milestones based on a given due date and I have successfully completed many projects using that methodology. Obviously, it was my comfort zone and I knew how to get things done using traditional project management processes. By the way, to add more credibility to what I am saying, I would like to add that I am PMP certified.

Our Agile coach Ally, coached us day by day, week by week to transition from conventional methods to Scrum/Agile based methods. To date, I remember her firm, strict but calm face saying - “Vinod, we are not doing that” to every conventional idea I had :). It was because, every time I was facing a difficult situation, I tend to go back to what I knew and what I was comfortable with. For example, making an issue list in an excel file and not using Scrum backlog. Similarly, assigning a hot issue directly to the staff members or bringing them for an ad-hock brainstorming meeting.

Some of the highlights of our set up:

• Our stories include the description and/or mockups, acceptance criteria. Our product owner and team leader meet before the backlog refinement to add additional details. Our developers add subtasks to some of these stories. The idea is that product owner defines "What" and developer define "How".
• During the backlog refinement, we add additional research tasks to help developers in estimation. We also add additional tasks for any non-project item such as support.
• We try best to finish daily standup meetings within 15 min. I could not join all the time but team runs it and our product owner, analyst and scrum master always join.
• The team to demo their items during our sprint review meetings. We make sure our product owner and stakeholder join these meetings.
• Completing a sprint is a big deal for our team and we celebrate these successes.

As a manager, I get a lot of benefits from this. For example, daily standing provides me a snapshot of the work being done yesterday & today along with any blocker. I am no more guessing about what team is doing and what will be done. I can review the sprint anytime to get a full picture. I can manage multiple teams without spending a lot of time into the weeds. Infect for a perfect Scrum, you don't even need a manager :).

As a team, we have done some experiment and tweak some processes to accommodate various situations and to provide a great working environment for our development teams & for our product owners. Retaining this change will not be easy with our changing landscape and current challenges. We have come this far and will continue to make progress.

PS: This article is my brain dump/journal with a goal to share my learning with others. I apologize to the writing genius for my grammar mistakes. Also, these are my personal thoughts and not a reflection of my team/company's opinion.