An experiment – Emotion graph

I am planning to have an experiment in retro to understand how team felt during sprint. I am calling this experiment as Emotion Graph. In this experiment in the end of retro, on white board, I intend to draw a graph similar to below picture:

In this picture, x-axis will originate from sprint planning meeting and end with retro. The y-axis will represent the happiness on +ve side of axis while –ve side will depict unhappiness of the team. Happiness as well as unhappiness will just be labels, so can be replaced by other labels like elated, nervous, etc.

Now team will write down major events on the x-axis. Now picture may look like:

 

 

Now each team member may draw a curved line to depict his emotional state (between happy and not happy) during sprint. Once every one drew his curved line, team starts to discuss why they felt happy or unhappy at that particular event.

I suppose this exercise will help team to understand itself better.

Please share if you have performed similar exercise, your views and outcome of it.

 

Game: Story Book

Session 1

Goal

The goal is to create a children’s story book of 10 to 12 pages within 40 to 60 minutes using 3 distributed teams each having 3 to 5 members.

Timing

40 to 60 minutes

Material

Computer for each participant with

·         MS Word or similar software

·         MS Paint or similar software

Roles/Teams

Creator – The creator is the one who have answers regarding the story book. He is not member of any team and shared across teams.

·         He wants a story that can be read to baby and babies can read later on when they start reading

·         Book should have only one main character

·         Images and texts should be sharing space on each page

·         Book should be 10 to 12 pages long

Writers – The writers decide what will happen in the story and write the script. They will form a team (e.g. Team Tolstoy)

Illustrators – The illustrators draw pictures; have to be consistent with writers and editors choices. They will form a team (e.g. Team Picasso)

Editors – The editors decide on the overall look of the book, page orientation, grammar, consistency, color scheme, etc. They will form a team (e.g. Team Shourie)

Communication

Each team is distributed. People of different locations can communicate to each other via email only. People who are located at one place can talk only over phone (Two people talking over phone – Both of them stand up and their backs face each other).

Last tip

A children’s story book can be simplified as following:

• ·         Cover page
• ·         Introduction
• ·         Exposition
• ·         Rising action
• ·         Climax
• ·         Falling action
• ·         Resolution
• ·         Lesson learned

Let’s play

Part 1 – Explain the mechanics of the game to participants

Part 2 – Plaining (10 min)

• ·         Teams create plan and self-organize.

Part 3 – Sprint 1 (10 minutes)

• ·         Teams should create book’s draft in first sprint

Part 4 – Sprint 1 retro (5 minutes)

• ·         Retro is internal to each team

Part 5 – Sprint 2 (10 minutes)

• ·         Teams create final version of book

Part 6 – Sprint 2 retro/demo/review (15 min)

• ·         It is all team activity
• ·         Discuss the role of creator
• ·         What can be done to create a book more effectively  and efficiently (not only efficiently)

Learning Points

• ·         Teams want and need to communicate to each other more effectively and efficiently
• ·         We may have trust issues that affects the outcome
• ·         Over compensation
• ·         Not knowing what is happening at other end makes some team members insecure. Teams are performing better when they have visibility
• ·         Communication plays bigger role in outcome
• ·         Horizontal division of teams (similar to each layer of n layer architecture) is not efficient way of team working.

Session 2

Goal

The goal is to create a story book of 15 to 20 pages within 60 to 90 minutes using distributed teams each having 3 to 5 members.

Timing

60 to 90 minutes

Material

Computer for each participant with

MS Word or similar software

MS Paint or similar software

On more tip

A book can be made of following components

• Half title — This page contains only the title of the book and is typically the first page you see when opening the cover.
• Frontispiece — An illustration on the page facing the title page.
• Title page — Announces the title, subtitle, author and publisher of the book.
• Copyright page — Usually the back of the title page, this page carries the copyright notice, edition information, publication information, printing history, cataloging data, legal notices and the books ISBN or identification number.
• Table of Contents — Also known as the Contents page, this page lists all the major divisions of the book including parts, if used, and chapters.
• Preface — Written by the author, the Preface often tells how the book came into being, and is often signed with the name, place and date, although this is not always the case.
• Acknowledgments — The author expresses their gratitude for help in the creation of the book.
• Introduction — The author explains the purposes and the goals of the work, and may also place the work in a context, as well as spell out the organization and scope of the book.
• Prologue — In a work of fiction, the prologue sets the scene for the story and is told in the voice of a character from the book, not the author’s voice.
• Body — This is the main portion of the book.
• Epilogue — An ending piece, either in the voice of the author or as a continuation of the main narrative, meant to bring closure of some kind to the work.
• Conclusion — A brief summary of the salient arguments of the main work that attempts to give a sense of completeness to the work.

Role

Creator – The creator is the one who have answers regarding the story book. He is not member of any team and shared across teams.

·         He wants a story that can be read to baby and babies can read later on when they start reading

·         Book should have only one main character

·         Images and texts should be sharing space on each page

·         Book should be 10 to 12 pages long

Writers – The writers decide what will happen in the story and write the script.

Illustrators – The illustrators draw pictures; have to be consistent with writers and editors choices.

Editors – The editors decide on the overall look of the book, page orientation, grammar, consistency, color scheme, etc.

Communication

Each team is distributed. People of different locations can communicate to each other via email only. People who are located at one place can talk only over phone (Two people talking over phone – Both of them stand up and their backs face each other).

Let’s play

Part 1 – Explain the mechanics of the game to participants

Part 2 – Planing (10 min)

·         Teams create plan and self-organize, even make their own team. Encourage them to form teams on the lines of components of the book. Encourage them to negotiate scape of book with creator.

Part 3 – Sprint 1 (10 minutes)

·         Teams should create book’s draft in first sprint

Part 4 – Sprint 1 retro (5 minutes)

·         Retro is internal to each team

Part 5 – Sprint 2 (10 minutes)

·         Teams create half or more of the book

Part 6 – Sprint 2 retro/demo (10 minutes)

·         Retro – all teams participate in one big retro

·         Teams also demonstrate book to creator

Part 7 – Sprint 3 (10 minutes)

·         Teams create final version of the book

Part 8 – Sprint 2 retro/demo/review (15 min)

·         It is all team activity

·         Discuss the role of creator

·         What can be done to create a book more effectively  and efficiently (not only efficiently)

Learning Points

• ·         Teams want and need to communicate to each other more effectively and efficiently
• ·         We may have trust issues that affects the outcome
• ·         Over compensation
• ·         Not knowing what is happening at other end makes some team members insecure. Teams are performing better when they have visibility
• ·         Communication plays bigger role in outcome
• ·          Vertical division of teams (along the business functionality) is efficient way of team creation.

Reference: http://tastycupcakes.org/2014/06/epic-bedtime-story/

Game: Paper folding

Goal

The goal is to fold a paper sheet as instructed by Product Owner (PO) provided other participants just maintain audio communication with each other.

Timing

3 to 5 min

Material

One A4 size paper sheet for each participant

Roles

Product Owner (PO) – He decides how paper need to be folded and pass on instructions to all participants orally only without making any visual contact

Folders – These people fold paper as instructed by PO. These people can communicate with each other and PO but orally only without any visual contact.

Communication

PO and folders can communicates to each other any point of time in the game but orally only and without any visual contact to anyone.

Let’s play

Part 1

• ·         Every folder stands up in circle but looking out ward (not inward)
• ·         PO stands up at the center of circle. He can see only backs of the participants

Part 2 (3 to 5 minutes)

• ·         PO starts folding the paper and passing instructions orally to all participants.
• ·         Participants fold the paper and ask for clarification from PO and also talk among them selves without making any visual contact to anyone.

Part 3 (5 minutes)

• ·         Team discusses the game and list the learning

Learnings

Communication over phone (without visual contact) is not rich

Teamwork fable

I hope you all know the old story about the race between a tortoise and a rabbit.  Rabbit used to boast about his speed and agility. To his surprise, the tortoise challenged him for a race. Rabbit made fun of the tortoise, but agreed for the race. As the race began, the rabbit raced way ahead of the tortoise, just like everyone thought. Somewhere mid-way, the rabbit realized that he is way ahead of the tortoise. He decided to take a short nap. After a while, when rabbit woke up, he realized that he is already late, and the tortoise is almost on the finishing line. The rabbit ran fast as he could but still lost the race. Now it was the turn of the tortoise to boast.

Slow and steady wins

But story is not finished yet. After this win, confidence of the tortoise was high and rabbit was in shambles. When the rabbit came back to his senses he analyzed the cause of his failure. Rabbit again challenged the tortoise for a race. Tortoise was over-confident and readily accepted the challenge. In this race, rabbit did not take any rest and focused on running. Rabbit won the race by a huge margin. Now it was turn of the rabbit for the glory. 

Fast and consistent always beat the slow and steady

Now it was turn of tortoise for introspection. Next day, the tortoise challenged rabbit for yet another race. Rabbit agreed immediately. Again race started. Rabbit was consistent and fast, so he was way ahead of the tortoise. But mid-way there was a river in this race which rabbit was unable to cross. Though tortoise was slow, he still won the race.

Know your core competencies

After all these races, the rabbit and the tortoise became good friends and decided to have one more race. But this race was different. Here they decided to cooperate, and not compete. In the first half rabbit picked up the tortoise and reached to the river banks in no time. Now it was turn for the tortoise to carry rabbit and cross the river. The race set a new record.

Teamwork is better than individual performance

Now it is your choice to pick the lesson.

Large Agile Practitioner Summit (LAPS), 2016

 July 20th 2016, at SAP Campus at Palo Alto, CA Jeff Sutherland hosted Large Agile Practitioner Summit.  This even uses Open space format which was refreshing and truly engaging. I also hosted a session on “Architecture and Design in Agile”.  The discussion was superb not only around my topic but also other fifteen topics.

Interaction with Jeff is memorable. We discussed on quite a few topics of Agile - why Agile works, Agile in non-software world, career path for Scrum Masters, etc.

Looking forward for more interaction with Jeff and fellow Agilists.

Here is the gallery of topics