The use of boards by teams is nothing new, every team I work with has some way of visualising their work. Many teams seem to stall at changing the board, leaving ownership to some individual (maybe the ScrumMaster or the most vocal member of the group).
This is a shame. Since the board mirrors the teams process, which is owned by the team.
I was in a situation where the board was being dictated by a single person and the team looked too scared to change it. People would compain about the board by not try to do anything about it.
In a moment of frustration, I thought "Fine, you fix it".
Enter the 'Board God'.
If anyone ventures a strong opinion on the board you can appoint them as 'Board God' for a week.
The Board God can do anything to the board they like and the team have to follow their direction for that week. At the end of the week, the team decides what they will keep and what they will reject. Stripped of his or her powers the Board God must accept their decision.
If I hear someone grumbling about something on the board, I usually appoint them 'Board God' to see how they will solve the problem they are grumbling about. Eventually, people will start to ask if they can be 'Board God' to address a specific issue that they can see.
This can trigger a spate of change, where different 'Board God's' mess with each others changes. This is a positive thing since people are getting involved with the board and ultimately the process itself.
Teams that have learned to embrace changing the board often evolve their process outside of the retrospective, shortening feedback to days or even hours.
When used in conjunction with scoring stand-ups, a team can inspect and adapt quickly. I have seen stand ups of 20+ people go from train wreck to useful in under a week using peer feedback. A score of 3 or under means you have to share what was wrong for you and the team agree corrective actions for the next day there and then.
'Board Gods' provide a solution to a problem that is then inspected by the team. The process adapts to the use the good bits and things that do not work are discarded in a safe to fail way. One team I worked with even versioned their board to help them understand when a lasting change was implemented.
This idea started as a punishment but has turned out to be a useful tool to remind teams who owns the process and encourage them to get involved in shaping it.
Showing posts with label board. Show all posts
Showing posts with label board. Show all posts
Thursday, 22 February 2018
Monday, 21 March 2016
What's in your tool kit?
Yeah, yeah so you have a million different Post-Its and Sharpies. Time to experiment.
Recently, I have been spending an obscene amount of money on other bits and bobs to help me come up with some better (or longer lasting) visualisations. There's also some stuff that I ended up using in retro's a lot. Here's some stuff I have tried:
Magnetic Tape
Most boards are magnetic these days (mine turned out not to be but I have stopped crying now) so this is an alternative to blue tack for avatars or other icons. Pretty pricey but it does hold well and is easy to move.
Sticky Tabs
I have begun to hate Blue Tac and these are promising. They are sticky tabs that stick and re-stick. The hold on them is often a little too good sometimes but they do what they say on the tin. Early days, wondering what happens when they get 'fuzzy'
Egg Timers
I love these in retros. They are very unconfrontational and allow you to keep everything moving along - if you need to work to a timebox, these are awesome. You can also use them in meetings to keep people from rambling on. 3mins is a nice time, will be ordering more - they come in a range of times.
Phrase and Date Stamp
I found this rubber stamp that had phrases on it too - nice for dates on story cards. Now people will not have to suffer my handwriting.
Stapler
I have found that stickies often don't make it across the board - one of my teams started stapling them to the main story once they accepted it to cut down on picking them off the carpet. Can't live without one now....
Large Ruler
Tip: add a little some Blue Tac on each end to make it easier to draw a dead straight line on any surface
Chalk Pens
These turned up one day and are brilliant for writing on glass. They come in a range of funky colours and are more difficult to rub off than whiteboard pens - good for lining out task boards. They come off easily with a bit of water.
Lining Tape
Great for lining out boards when you don't want them to move. Not sure when then really 'stick' or what will be left behind if you have to remove.
Sucker Cups
If you cannot use tape or afford Chalk Pens then this could be an option. Sucker cups with string work OK but do have to be pushed in everyday or they have a tendency to fall off. Good on glass not sure about white boards.
Magic Whiteboard
Personally, I don't like this stuff but it does have it's place in the emergency corner. I am usually lucky enough to have a whiteboard but this fills the gap when that luck has run out.
What have you got in your toolkit - have I missed anything? Let me know :)
Recently, I have been spending an obscene amount of money on other bits and bobs to help me come up with some better (or longer lasting) visualisations. There's also some stuff that I ended up using in retro's a lot. Here's some stuff I have tried:
Magnetic Tape
Most boards are magnetic these days (mine turned out not to be but I have stopped crying now) so this is an alternative to blue tack for avatars or other icons. Pretty pricey but it does hold well and is easy to move.
Sticky Tabs
I have begun to hate Blue Tac and these are promising. They are sticky tabs that stick and re-stick. The hold on them is often a little too good sometimes but they do what they say on the tin. Early days, wondering what happens when they get 'fuzzy'
Egg Timers
I love these in retros. They are very unconfrontational and allow you to keep everything moving along - if you need to work to a timebox, these are awesome. You can also use them in meetings to keep people from rambling on. 3mins is a nice time, will be ordering more - they come in a range of times.
Phrase and Date Stamp
I found this rubber stamp that had phrases on it too - nice for dates on story cards. Now people will not have to suffer my handwriting.
Stapler
I have found that stickies often don't make it across the board - one of my teams started stapling them to the main story once they accepted it to cut down on picking them off the carpet. Can't live without one now....
Large Ruler
Tip: add a little some Blue Tac on each end to make it easier to draw a dead straight line on any surface
Chalk Pens
These turned up one day and are brilliant for writing on glass. They come in a range of funky colours and are more difficult to rub off than whiteboard pens - good for lining out task boards. They come off easily with a bit of water.
Lining Tape
Great for lining out boards when you don't want them to move. Not sure when then really 'stick' or what will be left behind if you have to remove.
Sucker Cups
If you cannot use tape or afford Chalk Pens then this could be an option. Sucker cups with string work OK but do have to be pushed in everyday or they have a tendency to fall off. Good on glass not sure about white boards.
Magic Whiteboard
Personally, I don't like this stuff but it does have it's place in the emergency corner. I am usually lucky enough to have a whiteboard but this fills the gap when that luck has run out.
What have you got in your toolkit - have I missed anything? Let me know :)
Thursday, 29 January 2015
Symbols not words
It is rare that something I try just works but this is something that was simple and helped one of my teams.
We were finding it awkward to track the overall state of a story on our manual board. Without this it was easy to miss something interesting during the stand up and even more difficult for the business to look at the board and understand what we were working on.
The team always talked about 'bringing an item into play' so I started to use a CD/DVD play symbol to indicate the items we were currently working on. This quickly evolved to use the stop symbol to show a story had not been started yet, a pause symbol to show the story had something blocking it and eventually a fast forward symbol to indicate that the team were swarming on that single story. Once we used the eject symbol when a story was pulled from the sprint due to a really late change in customer requirements.
It seems almost trivial, but the mere fact we could see the state of all the stories on the board helped with:
1) WIP - before it was too easy to start working on something without finishing something else. There were several instances where we had a high WIP and some items could not be done by the end of the sprint. Being able to see status of the board pretty much stopped this overnight. Never quite understood why but the added visibility meant it was much more difficult to hide opening another story, allowing the team to form and keep an agreement on WIP.
2) Stand ups - we focus the stand up on the 'in play' stories, drilling into each one and organising the day around closing them. We often update the symbols to reflect what we agree to do for the day e.g. pausing a story so we can swarm on another one if we feel it is stuck and we won't incur waste in doing so.
3) Waste - the states of the story give clues to any waste that might be happening during development. If a story is paused - do we have a delay or hand-off? If a story is in play but seems to be stuck in a particular phase of development - maybe we have re-learning happening? If we have to play a paused story - maybe we should be looking for task switching? I can ask questions that help the team see waste and record it more accurately but the clue's start with status of the story.
We have also used padlocks to indicate if something should not be touched - happens occasionally if we are working on anything that needs approval by the organisation but we are slightly ahead of the curve and have already planned the item.
The key observation is that everyone 'gets' these symbols. They convey specific information quickly and easily with no training required. They drive team conversations and most importantly, the team has adopted them which is probably the best endorsement you can get.
We were finding it awkward to track the overall state of a story on our manual board. Without this it was easy to miss something interesting during the stand up and even more difficult for the business to look at the board and understand what we were working on.
The team always talked about 'bringing an item into play' so I started to use a CD/DVD play symbol to indicate the items we were currently working on. This quickly evolved to use the stop symbol to show a story had not been started yet, a pause symbol to show the story had something blocking it and eventually a fast forward symbol to indicate that the team were swarming on that single story. Once we used the eject symbol when a story was pulled from the sprint due to a really late change in customer requirements.
It seems almost trivial, but the mere fact we could see the state of all the stories on the board helped with:
1) WIP - before it was too easy to start working on something without finishing something else. There were several instances where we had a high WIP and some items could not be done by the end of the sprint. Being able to see status of the board pretty much stopped this overnight. Never quite understood why but the added visibility meant it was much more difficult to hide opening another story, allowing the team to form and keep an agreement on WIP.
2) Stand ups - we focus the stand up on the 'in play' stories, drilling into each one and organising the day around closing them. We often update the symbols to reflect what we agree to do for the day e.g. pausing a story so we can swarm on another one if we feel it is stuck and we won't incur waste in doing so.
3) Waste - the states of the story give clues to any waste that might be happening during development. If a story is paused - do we have a delay or hand-off? If a story is in play but seems to be stuck in a particular phase of development - maybe we have re-learning happening? If we have to play a paused story - maybe we should be looking for task switching? I can ask questions that help the team see waste and record it more accurately but the clue's start with status of the story.
We have also used padlocks to indicate if something should not be touched - happens occasionally if we are working on anything that needs approval by the organisation but we are slightly ahead of the curve and have already planned the item.
The key observation is that everyone 'gets' these symbols. They convey specific information quickly and easily with no training required. They drive team conversations and most importantly, the team has adopted them which is probably the best endorsement you can get.
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