IPL

Rewards and Recognition program for your teams and a continuous improvement technique

With the ongoing IPL, a carnival for cricket fans, one might try an easy technique that might enhance how you reward or recognize team talent and motivate teams which in return enhance the productivity of the teams. I worked on this theme with my team members throughout the last IPL season.

As most of you know, the Indian Premier League is a Twenty20 cricket league held annually in India and played by ten city-based franchisee teams.

To increase Scrum team motivation, I modified the IPL acronym to include the three words that represent continuous improvement ideas, key performance talents, and future leaders who develop stronger and more productive teams to recognize and reward them accordingly.

At the end of each retro, we set aside some time to recognize and congratulate a few "Outstanding Players" who went above and beyond and provided Idea(s) for Continuous Improvement in the current Sprint, as well as who has been an outstanding Performer and has demonstrated the capabilities of a future Leader.

How it works?

Idea :

Whenever someone has an idea for relentless improvement, they should submit it by email to the scrum master or by documenting it in the Ideas spreadsheet on a shared site with all the necessary information, such as What is the main idea behind this? What challenge is there right now? What benefits would the merit team receive from putting this proposal into practice? When and how can we make this concept a reality?

Performer:

The team will choose the Sprint Performer of the season based on a number of factors, including performance, creative and proactive thinking, interpersonal skills, and demonstrated proficiency in testing and development..

Leader:

There is always one team member who can really show off their leadership skills. Throughout the Sprint(s), they will exhibit these attributes. Scrum Masters need to keep a watchful eye out for these traits and select the next generation of leaders in a way that will inspire them even more. These may come from the non-team lead developers or, if the team already has leads, from the current Team Leads. This leader will agree to lead the next Sprint daily Scrum, Sprint Review and other trainings based on their capability.

Runs (points):

Everyone will have 0, 1, 2, 4, or 6 run cards for each of the two selections (IP). If you're doing it virtually, anyone can submit a chat message using Microsoft Teams or Zoom, but numbers are key. One run, two runs, four, and six. Of course, one can adjust these based on their needs and to avoid confusion we can stick with 4 & 6. Even if you choose to go with only 4 and 6 runs, the winner will be the one with the most runs.

If someone provides zero, it indicates he or she must give a reason for bowling them out for duck. If you think 0 will create a controversy and you have sensitive team members avoid 0. Similarly, team members who gave the runs should provide a one-sentence explanation for their decision.

Try this by allocating some time post retrospective and a fun, productive, and houseful retros by trying out this kaizen technique.