Tips and thoughts on using “User manual for me” documents with people and agile teams Part 1: What, why and prep.
I talked about with Scott this during this ‘learn by doing’ session at Agileinthecity:Bristol.
I said I’d write up some thoughts on it, so here is the 1st part which covers a bit about understanding and preparation.
What is a “user manual for me” ?
Thankfully people have done the hard work for me on this, here are a couple of examples which are also the articles that I first read about the concept.
Matt Jukes “A user manual for Matt”
This was the first one I read and Matt takes inspiration from the next one I read..
Cassie Robinson “A user manual for me”
Cassie has included the background for her manual and also helpfully some dropbox links to blank templates, which makes it super easy to get started with this if you do want to do it or facilitate it with a team.
I like to think of it as a set of prompts around being open with how you do things, have a read and have a go at doing one for yourself to get a better idea.
There are also a lot more out there if you have a search.
When it comes to teams and user manuals, the concept I am talking about is asking a team to do their individual ones and to share and understand the others in the team.
So why introduce this to a team?
Teams are people, people are all different. Different experiences, skills and views about things. I’m a believer that conversations and discussion which lead to shared understanding greatly benefit teams and that is held up with things like “individuals and interactions” from the agile manifesto or the modern agile cheat sheet on psychological safety.
So, if I was phrasing this as an experiment I’d hypothesise that helping a team to understand each other and to open up a bit to each other will see dividends to their happiness, their ability to deal with things and also hopefully their ability to deliver things.
If nothing else the discussion around if this is a good idea may also help the same things! = Win-win?
How to prep for it?
When I’ve done this with a team I’ve always talked about it first. People react differently so I think its important that something like this isn’t a surprise.
I’d use some examples (maybe the ones above) and let them read those so they can get the idea of what this is about.
Make sure you can do this in a safe space, sharing isn’t easy for everyone and letting them know up front this is just for the them and their team (unless they choose to share it further) is also a key thing to do up front.
I’d also suggest that you time this so that you can do something social afterwards (lunch, coffee, etc) as often people will want to talk about things.
“I didn’t know you had done XYZ…” , “Oh that’s so like me” or things like “How do we help adjust the things our team does to help people more?”
You may get some people that are against it, it’s worth talking with them and explaining how its being setup (as above) and also to suggest they could participate and only share what they are happy to do.
Remember you are trying this in order to help the team, if the team are not happy don’t force it. Put it down to learning and try other things or pick this up at a different time.
That will do for now.. I’ll do part 2 next week and cover a way and some thoughts around running the session with the team.
Dan