12. THE
SYMPTOMSScrum
•Unproductive ceremonies
•Lack of clarity around Product Backlog items
•Regularly not achieving deliverable increments
•Team members working in silos
•Scrum deteriorating to the point of being a series of mini-waterfalls
•People start leaving
37. To what degree do you feel you …
1. are doing meaningful work that comes to fruition on our site/apps?
2. are allowed to do what's best for your work by focusing on one thing at a time?
3. have direct influence on how we work and solve problems?
4. work in a group/squad where people support and challenge each other?
5. have been able to learn new skills at work?
6. can be creative at work through success and failure?
7. Is there anything specific that has affected your scores?
Survey by David Mole at Trademe
HIP SURVEY
38. EVERY FORTNIGHT:
• On a scale of 1 to 10, how happy are you at work?
EVERY IN-BETWEEN WEEK:
• Do you feel comfortable providing upward feedback to your supervisor?
• If you were to give notice and leave our organisation, what would be the primary reason?
• What was the primary reason(s) that motivated you to join us?
• What three words would you use to describe our culture?
TINYPULSE
Gavin
Ex-frontend developer
Fell in to project management
8 years ago I started working with an Agile team
Love at first sight
Agile coach
A little bit about Boost and it’s Agile journey
“Battling Scrum Fatigue” is not a slight
Great for people starting their Agile journey
My favourite benefits (transparency/morale/working software/adapt to changing priorities)
Almost old fashioned to say I love Scrum as it is almost 20 years old
Used on large and small scale projects
Version One survey of almost 4,000 individuals
58% using pure Scrum
75% using either pure Scrum or some sort of hybrid
Groundhog day reference
No breaks in between Sprints
Can seem relentless
Ceremonies get stale, ennui sets in
What was once a fresh codebase is now a legacy system
Changing members can make it difficult for knowledge to stay within the team
The propose and vision around the project can get lost in the mix over time
With no end date, the motivation can be destroyed when looking at an eternal backlog
Because I have seen occur in many of these teams.
Agile isn’t a silver bullet for avoiding burnout or fatigue.
You can have the best Product Owner, and amazing product and a team that works well together but still the Scrum process can takes it’s toll after a while.
So without a lot of care a long running Scrum team can lose sight of their goals and tire of, if not resent, the Scrum ceremonies and artefacts.
And an unmotivated team is an unhappy team.
A 2009 study from the University of Warwick found that people are 12% more productive when they are happy, and I have seen studies claiming 31%
10% less productive when unhappy
A 2002 study found that a positive approach fosters an environment where highly collaborative teamwork can thrive.
204 backlog refinements
204 sprint plannings and forecasts204 sprint backlogs and goals
204 2 week sprints (although we did experiment with 4 week sprints)
1,836 standups
204 product increments
204 reviews
204 retrospectives and sets of goals
Talk about why we still do Scrum after 8 years
Helping to make New Zealand digital content easy to find, share and use
30,000,000 records
Aerial photos, posters and memorabilia, newspaper clippings, artworks, and publications
230 content partners
Earliest paper in Papers Past is 1839
API enables developers to find and query data from across the New Zealand cultural, education, and government sectors and create new digital experiences
Lifelines table consumes our API
4 POs
Lack of engagement in the ceremonies
People just going through the motions
No solid results in meetings
No real ownership of backlog
Tortuous ceremonies - painful and with poor output
Product Backlog items never ready for development - and rolling over and not getting done as a result
Regularly not achieving deliverable increments
Team members working in silos
Scrum deteriorating to the point of being a series of mini-waterfalls
Start losing people
We ran moving motivators by Jurgen Appelo (Management 3.0)
Based on the ten intrinsic (not extrinsic) desires from the works of Daniel Pink (Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us), Steven Reiss, and Edward Deci
Most motivating factors left to right
Which ones Boost were supporting up and down
We set up a moving motivators board (Seinfeld reference)
Number 1 motivator
Show and tells
Lunch and learns
Mentorship (andy gray and new recruiting drive based off WHO)
Training and conferences
Changed r&d day
Number 2 motivator
Developer retro (getting great results, my favourite meeting)
Company wide retros
Democratic workplace
Number 3 motivator
Escape mate
Asiana cooking
Werner Herzog movie (Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World)
More celebrations!
Tracking motivators health over time
Order
We put just enough process in place to make people feel comfortable, but not so much as to impinge on our culture.
Status
No one seemed to care about there status, which is good as we don’t have job titles. Obvious mentors did rise to the surface though, and we ensured they had as much time as needed to upskill more junior developers.
Freedom
Ensured that people could work with whoever they wanted by getting laptops
Were losing sight of how they fit in to an amazing bigger picture and the audiences
We arranged a day out where we would get a tour of the library
Presentations around the future vision and the impacts the project had on its audiences
We went behind the scenes to see old manuscripts and intricate books being preserved,
Cool albums, Katherine Mansfield books covered in mud, bags of staples
The team returned with a new sense of purpose, an understanding of how their work fit in to a huge picture and the knowledge that their work had a very important impact on the culture and heritage of New Zealand
First and foremost on any Scrum team, you need the right people.
Not everyone is good at working with a team, and not everyone works well within the Scrum structure.
The values are now front and centre of the scrum guide
Focus on the values and principles
Don’t just blindly implement the framework
Focus - Because we focus on only a few things at a time, we work well together and produce excellent work. We deliver valuable items sooner.
Courage - Because we work as a team, we feel supported and have more resources at our disposal. This gives us the courage to undertake greater challenges.
Openness - As we work together, we express how we're doing, what's in our way, and our concerns so they can be addressed.
Commitment - Because we have great control over our own destiny, we are more committed to success.
Respect - As we work together, sharing successes and failures, we come to respect each other and to help each other become worthy of respect.
Knee jerk reactions to the hard stuff can be damaging, assess why they are hard
Scrum often highlights an organisations flaws, so people move away
Scrum is a light framework, but takes real work to make it effective
Sometimes they move to Kanban which seems like an easier road, when in fact it can be far tougher
A good question to ask yourself is “when was the last time we changed anything in our process?”
Here are a few examples of just some tweaks we have made along the way:
Noticed the team weren’t using the board except for stands
Asked them if they found it valuable
Changed to a Kanban board
Now the board is for them
Makes sense
Has improved their process
Definition of done for each column
WIP limits working well
Team taking accountability
Meteors
Relative sizing
Just split teams and backlog
Shorten Refining Sessions
Jirandicitis
Tasking and hours
Fist to five for Sprint Forecast
Disregarded the questions, add different questions (good news)
Pre-standup Standup
Product Owner led review
Get outsiders in the meeting
Usually the first meeting to suffer from fatigue
Different every time
Make actions SMART
Not too many actions
Make sure actions are visible
Make sure actions get completed
Almost every tool in Scrum is there to promote conversation, and you must do whatever you can to ensure that conversation happens and everyone gets to have input. Developers aren't always keen to talk, so you have to help those conversations to happen (Use headphones always on example).
I have used a few tools to help me monitor the team’s happiness, motivation and thirst for Agile, all of which have helped me to uncover some unspoken feelings people are having about Scrum.
A simple and fun way to measure happiness on a daily basis.
The team I worked with and incorporated the Niko Niko got really in to it and there smiley faces became works of art over time.
If a team are delivering, but are unhappy, that points to something that needs investigation.
Likewise if a team is really happy but not delivering anything. Have they stopped caring?
Use example of Meridian and what happened when I presented the findings of team happiness to them
Another tool I used was stolen from David Mole of Trademe.
They were sending out a regular survey called the HIP survey, measuring happiness, innovation and productivity.
This questionnaire gave me similar results to the niko niko calendar, but got less response from the team.
EVERY FORTNIGHT:
On a scale of 1 to 10, how happy are you at work?
EVERY IN-BETWEEN WEEK:
Do you feel comfortable providing upward feedback to your supervisor?
If you were to give notice and leave our organisation, what would be the primary reason?
What was the primary reason(s) that motivated you to join us?
What three words would you use to describe our culture?
Industry benchmark: 7.2
Overall benchmark: 7.6
Our average: 7.8
Challenge getting everyone to respond
There was no real replacement for just sitting down with someone regularly and talking to them about what is going on with them.
One on ones are essential, do not miss them!
If everybody turns out to be really happy all the time and Scrum is providing the basis for a collaborative and productive workplace, then congratulations! If you have uncovered areas to work on then congratulations! You can’t improve a situation without the necessary information.