Watching a Team Mature

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.