Useful Resources for your Agile Journey: Issue 7
Bringing Simplicity to Complexity: How to Design at Scale
I really enjoyed this TED talk from Jonah Jones, using real life data and examples on simplifying complexity, a challenge many product teams face.
The Magic of Not Giving a F***
Maybe don’t turn up the audio if you are at work or have children around you but a great video, I totally see how this can be implemented within teams, we all need to learn to not give a f***.
Can You feel the Burn(down)? How to use burn down charts for good, not evil.
I love burn down charts as they are great tool for the team to use to drive the relevant conversation in their daily scrum and retrospectives. They are used by the team to help them address any dysfunction.
A good burn down should show you the following:
- Work remaining in the current sprint
- Work done so far in the current sprint
- Forecast of when we can expect to be done
A daily burn down is an easy, quick, daily graphical representation of how the team is doing against their plan. The key word here is THEIR plan. If something looks off, it’s a signal for all of them to take a look.
The burn down chart is a great tool when used for good and a Scrum Master can help educate teams and managers on how it is used e.g. it’s not for managers and it is not a status report.
Do your meetings cost too much?
Spoiler alert: The answer is yes.
Using Scrum as an example, when used effectively, Scrum events have the great benefit of eliminating unnecessary meetings while keeping everyone on the same page.
I will confess that I am not a big fan of those meetings where 12 people watch two people discuss and agree a solution. I often found myself asking the question: “Could this have been an email?”
The next time that you would like to call a meeting, try to evaluate the true cost of attendance, as it might be a good indicator as to whether you should invite so many people to your meeting.
Want Your Best Employees to Never Leave You? Ask Them 5 Simple Questions
I will go and pack my bags then!
These are 5 great questions to ask, especially when doing appraisals.
As an employee you can ask yourself the 5 questions every few months to evaluate your position, it is basically a personal retrospective.
I will be doing a retrospective by asking my team these 5 questions, to gauge their happiness level.
Inside the Mind of a Master Procrastinator
As a master procrastinator myself, this video is a great insight into the minds of people in a team that could also be procrastinators. The video is also very funny so always a good start.
