Agile - Scrum with Kavitha

1. What are the basic necessities of humans? Food, clothing, shelter and most importantly, 'attachment'. Let us say, the first three are taken care of by the salary component of an employee.  2. How do we know that attachment is a basic necessity for humans (and other species)? Harry Harlow's unethical experiments on rhesus monkeys proved this theory. 3. How can we ensure 'Attachment' at work place? If an employee has a sense of 'belonging' to a team, there is a huge chance that he/she would stay there longer.  Postive work environment, positive people and leadership team, work-pressure handled with 'care', job security, emotional support during personal crisis, timely encouragements and appreciations, work place harrassments and bullying taken care of effectively, lively work space, retention of energy level and enthusiasm of the team by means of innovative  methods, ensuring work-life balance, aligning personal goals with professional goals, ensuri...

As a fresher, I used to be scared to death when I see escalation emails. Over a period of time I understood that people who escalate us on emails, are only trying to get the job done.  Talking to them and sorting things out, is one of the the best ways that has worked wonders for me. Most of the time, people who send the scariest escalation emails are kind when we talk to them one-on-one. There is no issue that cannot be resolved through proper communication.  In the end, all are human beings from different parts of the world, playing different roles in the corporate world. If we listen, explain and act honestly while having direct interactions with people, no escalation is a threat.  In the end, it is a game of building rapport and confidence with our colleagues at work.

It helps to plan the day of each team member, to align with the sprint goal. It helps in understanding each other's tasks and ultimately the overall goal. It helps to raise the issues and blockers then and there, so that the scrum master will unblock them, while the team focusses on the technical aspects. 15 minutes is an ideal time for the scrum call and each team member talks about yesterday's tasks, today's plan and blockers if any.

The following questions might help us understand, if we are really agile:- Activities Are we delivering a working product every sprint?  Are we conducting a demo and receiving feedback from the customer at the end of the sprint? Are we having a backlog of user stories refined with story points calibrated? Are we planning the sprints appropriately, keeping a tab of the velocity of the team? Are we conducting all the ceremonies like standup, retrospective, sprint planning, demo etc? Values Are all the members treated equally with respect and their views heard? Are we ready to take up changes/improvements from the customer at any point with a welcoming smile? Do we have a good collaboration and rapport with the customer, and among the team and management? Do we give more importance to team collaboration than following processes for name-sake? Do we give more importance in developing a working software than wasting time in unnecessary documentations?

1. It is not a status update meeting to the manager. Remember, there is no hierarchy in agile. Every member focusses on fulfilling their duties towards the sprint goals. Scrum master is in fact called as a servant leader. 2. A strict no to technical discussions. It dissolves the purpose of collaboration and one to one communication of agile. 3. No member can talk anything other than, what they did yesterday, plan for today and blockers. Again, it dissolves the purpose of the call. That is why, it is rightly called as a 'standup call' because we cannot stand for too long :). However, it is easier said, than done. I have seen that, time boxing the scrum call is the biggest challenge practically. We are humans and we are tempted to talk too much ;) Your experiences? #agile #scrum #collaboration #teammanagement #teambonding #letstalkcorporate #letstalkagile

"I am wasting a lot of time in meetings when it comes to agile. I can rather work on my deliverables!" - Development team During agile transformations, the biggest concern from any team that is not familiar with agile, would be on the number of meetings. A typical answer to this : The most important part of doing any work is planning, retrospecting, getting feedback and doing it even better, next time. What if we keep climbing the ladder, spending a lot of time and energy and finally in the last step, realise that the ladder was placed in the wrong destination? Having said that, time boxing the meetings is also an important aspect to be noted. The meeting organizer should go well prepared to keep it short and streamline the discussions inline with the agenda. #letstalkcorporate #letstalkagile #communication #teammanagement #scrum #agile #agiletransformation #agilemindset #agileculture