Remote Teams and Virtual Facilitation

Interesting article from Ram Srinivasan with some great tips on working with distributed teams, including research why having co-located teams is better can be found: https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/remote-teams-and-virtual-facilitation

Here are my major takeaways.

  • Facilitator tip – Rather than merely trying to replicate a technique that works for  in-person meetings, try to deconstruct why that technique works and reconstruct that technique for virtual meetings
  • Participate in the virtual meeting with the same level of attention (or more) and engagement as though it is an in-person meeting (that means no multi-tasking)
  • There is a self-fulfilling prophecy with regard to virtual meetings  – you experience poor virtual meetings, you expect bad meetings, you get bad meetings, and the cycle perpetuates itself
  • Set expectations upfront – very clearly and this is how you break the self-fulfilling prophecy
    • Ban phone only meetings, use videos for ALL the meetings.
      • People get a lot of cues when seeing the face and having a video helps in non-verbal communication, not to mention that it actually engages people
      • Have you heard the toilet flushing sound when in conference calls(because someone forgot to mute their phone)? Bet you will not hear that when you have your participants turn on the video.
    • You got to be on the video, else we close the meeting right away. You join on video, else you don’t. Period.
    • You got to join the meeting from a quiet place, not “dial-in” it from the bus when you are on your way home. And you must be on the video. Period.
    • Even if one person breaks the expectations once, we close the meeting right away. We break it once, it is an excuse to break it the second time and we are back with the self-fulfilling prophecy of bad virtual meetings
  • Normalize the communication channels – One person is remote? Then everyone is joining remotely using their own video from their laptop.  Two people cannot join using the same video. Don’t have a camera? GET ONE !!
  • Facilitator and participant tip – try having the video right below the camera (than having the video on a different screen) in your laptops/computer. It creates an impression that you are looking into the camera when you are looking into the video
  • In-person meetings and co-located teams work because we “socialize” quite a bit. Try having some “social” time in virtual meetings as well. Try “bring your own cider” (the choice of drink will depend on the timezone of the participants)
  • As a facilitator, you got to have everyone engaged – here are a few tips
    • Get everyone on video.
      • This minimizes the participants’ tendency to multi-task
      • This also prevents people from anonymously snooping in. Have you had people join a conference call and not announce themselves?  Will you let someone walk into your in-person meeting with a mask on? If no, why would you have someone snoop into your virtual meeting?
    • Avoid PowerPoints – it is just one-way broadcast. Use tools that support “virtual” break-out rooms.
    • Increase psychological safety (more on this in a different blog later) so that people can actually speak up.
  • Facilitator tips –
    • Like my friend Mike Dwyer says – use the NOSTUESO rule – No One Speaks Twice Until Everyone Speaks Once.  And the participant has the right to pass.  This creates space for people to speak up.  Also, if participants speak up in the first five minutes, they are much more likely to speak again.
    • Hard to pass a talking stick and figuring out who should talk next in a virtual meeting when facilitating round-robin discussion – try this idea –  Have a participant speak and then nominate the next person. And repeat till everyone speaks
    • Prepare… prepare… prepare. You cannot wing a virtual meeting. You need more preparation. And you need a Plan B as well. What if the internet connection fails? What if your laptop crashes?
    • Pay attention to discomfort – participants can only sit in once place for so long
    • Bring psychological safety and engagement from everyone into the working agreement.  What might be the few ways that we damage psychological safety (sometimes unconsciously)?
    • Have someone paraphrase what a speaker said. This makes people pay more attention and also ensures that the speaker’s message landed as intended
    • If appropriate, use tools like https://www.mentimeter.com/ or https://kahoot.com/ to increase engagement during the meeting by having participants answer questions.
  • When women speak first, the probability that other women speak is higher.
  • Remote meetings are a lot smaller than in-person meetings. It is hard to have more than 12 people in a virtual meeting (and then expect them to be engaged). If you are new start with six, then build up.

The Scrum Master’s field guide to a newly formed scrum team

This guide is a list of suggestions you can implement as a Scrum Master when you are joining a newly formed scrum team. However, many of the suggestions described here may be useful in case you become Scrum Master for an existing scrum team.

Read the complete article here: https://medium.com/@clausreestrup/the-scrum-masters-field-guide-to-a-newly-formed-scrum-team-first-steps-462f41026884

Hand retrospective

Je maakt gebruik van je eigen hand. Je geeft iedere vinger een betekenis in relatie tot de afgelopen sprint. Je laat mensen nadenken over hun eigen functioneren en over het functioneren van het proces. Tegelijkertijd activeer je mensen om actief mee te doen. Teken zelf een hand op een whiteboard, door je eigen hand over te trekken. Schrijf bij de vingers:

Duim: Wat ging er goed?
Wijsvinger: Wat is jouw doel voor de komende sprint?
Middelvinger: Wat ging er niet goed? Wat wil je wegnemen uit het sprint-proces?
Ringvinger: Waar geef jij commitment voor af, de volgende sprint?
Kleine vinger: Wat is jouw persoonlijke zwakte?
(Vooral de kleine vinger is daarbij een afwisseling die het geheel persoonlijker maakt.)

Vervolgens vraag je aan het team om hun invulling op geeltjes te schrijven (5 minuten timeboxed). Hierna vraag je de teamleden om omstebeurt hun eigen hand op het bord over te trekken, waarna ze de geeltjes bij iedere vinger hangen en uitleg geven.

as copied from:  https://www.scrum.nl/blog/retrospective/

Things to consider if you are finding too many problems during your sprint reviews

Scrum’s sprint reviews are intended to surface issues that customers, users and stakeholders may have with the team’s work of the current sprint.

But sometimes, too many issues are identified. Not only can these be brutal for the team, Scrum Master, and product owner to sit through, having a lot of issues identified during the sprint review is a strong indicator that the team’s process could be improved.

Here are a few things to consider if you are finding too many problems during your sprint reviews.

  • Run shorter sprints. Finding a lot of problems in the review often indicates the team has gone astray in understanding users’ needs. They might find that shorter sprints give them more feedback opportunities.
  • Talk more often. One of the best ways to ensure team members are building what’s needed is for them to talk with users and customers more frequently. They don’t have to wait for sprint reviews to get a better understanding of what their users need.
  • Be sure you’re talking to the right people. Talking frequently won’t be helpful if team members are talking to the wrong users and customers. If you’re finding too many problems during the review, be sure the team is talking to the right people.
  • Demo early and often. Augment your conversations with users by giving them informal demos of what is being built as it’s being built.

In addition to trying one or more of these fixes, use the retrospective to discuss why so many issues were found during the review.

Finding problems isn’t necessarily a problem itself, but finding them as late as the sprint review is.

Addressing that and finding issues earlier will help your team succeed with agile,

Mike Cohn

Overcoming Four Common Objections to the Daily Scrum

Some meetings are helpful and worth the time investment. Mike Cohn puts well-run daily scrum meetings in that category.

In this article, Mike Cohn shares how he handles four common objections to participating in daily scrums.

  1. We Talk A Lot Already
  2. Nothing Important Is Ever Discussed
    1. Set Expectations
    2. Determine if the Objection Is Valid
  3. Can’t We Just Do This by Email?
  4. The Meetings Take Too Long

He then shares some attributes of a well-run daily scrum so that there will be no objections to participating.

  1. Meetings Are at the Same Time and Place Each Day
  2. Meetings Start on Time
  3. The Meetings Are Kept to No More than Fifteen Minutes
  4. Problems Are Identified But Not Solved in the Meeting
  5. Participants Stay on Topic
  6. Rules Are Enforced by the Whole Team, Not Just the Scrum Master
  7. The Whole Team and Only the Team Participates

Read the complete article here: https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/overcoming-four-common-objections-to-the-daily-scrum

Truth, Lies, and Scrum

is a great article from Zach Bonaker in which he describes that:

  • Scrum is not equal to Agile;
  • Your context and culture dictates Scrum’s effectiveness;
  • Your organization will likely need a new structure to use Scrum;
  • The Scrum Guide is not a straw-man document;
  • Daily Scrum is a feedback loop.
  • Scrum Master is not a role “in agile”;
  • Scrum Masters are not a sign or assessment of “maturity”.
  • User stories are not part of Scrum;
  • The outcome of the Sprint Review is an updated product backlog;
  • Velocity is not part of Scrum;
  • If retrospectives have no organizational impact, you’re not doing Scrum;
  • Teams are the heart of Scrum, but a bunch of people with the same boss are not necessarily a team;

Read the complete article here: https://agileoutloud.wordpress.com/2019/07/16/truth-lies-and-scrum/