The organization has
been going through an 'Agile Transformation,' transitioning some teams from
Waterfall software delivery to Agile.
Over the past several weeks in the Agile Transformation effort, I've
watched one of our tracks mature as an Agile team. We're not a development team but we're a team
practicing Agile nonetheless and one that tries to stay as true to the
framework as possible.
Stand-up can be a
good barometer for a maturing team. It's
an event that happens EVERY day so there are tons of opportunities to improve
and notice the changes.
We start no matter
who is in the room. We actually stand
up. We finish within 15 minutes. We're diligent about not letting stand-up
just be about 3 questions and we work through
issues, especially the sneaky ones that aren't really blockers but have
the potential to get us to spin. We're
good about allowing for discussion to work through those issues but disciplined
enough to pull ourselves out of the rat holes and back on topic. We still chat when we first get there and
enjoy our time together but we know when it's time to start, it's time to
start.
My proudest moments
of being on this team are when I see evidence of our practicing Agile. Self-organize. We don't look to for our Product Owner or
our Scrum Master to start stand-up.
Every day it's someone different saying, "Let's
start." I love that. It makes my little Agile heart smile every
time.
Reflect and adjust. Having an effective stand-up is something
we've learned to do as a result of a retrospective. Someone on our team brought up that we talk a
lot before stand-up. "It's not necessarily a bad thing; it's because we like each other and we want to catch up but then we don't start on
time and stand-up ends up being 30 minutes long."
Okay, we decided, we
will start on time. We can chat but someone needs to get us to start and
no one should take offense to being cut off because, well, it's stand-up
time. Everyone okay with that? Good.
And that's what we
do now.
What makes us a
maturing team is that we're not *just*
having stand-ups and retrospectives.
We're using them for what they are meant to do. Stand-ups keep us up-to-date, accountable,
and help us help each other.
Retrospectives help us improve.
These ceremonies aren't just questions and words on a whiteboard
anymore; they have become sources of real and tangible actions. That is
"Being Agile."
During our last
retrospective, I questioned whether we should continue to have daily stand-ups
for a virtual team because it's become a lot of commitment for me
personally. Our Product Owner said he
wanted to continue to have them because as
a virtual team, it's too easy to lose discipline. He said that stand-up keeps us Agile and
accountable to each other. I've been
known to be wrong on occasion and, this time especially, I'm glad our Product
Owner shut me down.
