ScrumBan Coaching Experience

One of my recent assignment is on the verge of a pleasant conclusion and the picture above explains the "pleasant" part of it :-)

Project Context

Team Size: 15 people

Team Distribution: 10 people in Bangalore, 3 people in Vietnam, 1 in Coimbatore, 1 in Germany

Challenges/Pain: No proper planning, lack of predictability, process followed loosely, low team morale, and high attrition.

My Approach = RDCT

[No, this is not Requirement, Design, Coding and Testing but the intent is the same :-)]

Right preparation leads to right results

"Different Folks, Different Strokes"

I spend couple of weeks to understand the situation from various perspectives, and made sure that management is committed and willing to explore agile; I needed to play "Gemini" as management need to hear what they like to hear to start with; and once they are on your side; you can change sides :-)

I have had working agreements with management to support in case the going gets tough to make sure that tough gets going.

Data Collection and Projection

"If you can't measure it, you can't improve it"

The most important aspect is to collect data and show to the team; teams often self-organize themselves and surprise you by what they can do. In my case, they did adapt to the changing structure to improve the system once they understood what is being measured. Daily Stand-up helped inculcate the message repeatedly to focus on finishing the already started items rather than starting new ones i.e managing the work in progress.

Coaching when required

"You can observe a lot just by watching"

After spending a little bit of time with team, you start seeing the invisible and this root of the tree needs to be healed first, nurtured and then can adapt to offer sweet fruits later if consistently coached; and sweet mangoes indeed popped during our recent retrospective:

Trying Best Practices

"The best practice is to follow the advice posted on every rail road crossing: stop, look, listen"

Some of experiments, which worked for me are:

1) Keep changing the moderator/Kanban Master everyday for a daily stand up; and thus everyone over time feels accountable for the board.

2) People clap for the person who moved one or more tickets to "Done" during daily stand up

3) Thanking culture

4) Capturing the Metrics, Daily stand up summary, Transformation backlog and Retrospective summary in an internal social platform so that there is continuous engagement.