You will find at least a few tips that you can implement right away to maximize your presence on Linked In. And, if you are not on LI, you better get started! Act now!
If you want to build and strengthen relationship with your client. If you want to share your knowledge and experience with the world. And in the process build your influence over the community you are serving.
You will find at least a few tips that you can implement right away to maximize your presence on Linked In. And, if you are not on LI. Better get started now! You should not ignore this book if you want to build and strengthen relationship with your client. And in the process build your influence over the community you are serving, if you want to share your knowledge and experience with the world.
In this book, @stephsammons provides 7 powerful rules that can serve as guide posts as you work towards building your influence. You will find at least a few tips that you can implement right away to maximize your presence on Linked In. And, if you are not on LI, you better get started! Act now.
You should not ignore this book. If you want to build and strengthen relationship with your client. If you want to share your knowledge and experience with the world, and in the process build your influence over the community you are serving.
In this book, @stephsammons provides 7 powerful rules that can serve as guide posts as you work towards building your influence.
Three Quotes from the book
Linked In is a global, virtual, perpetual networking event!
Influencers do not try to help everyone. They know exactly whom they can help.
Remember this! Business is personal. People do business with people.
Three tips from the book
Don’t look at your LinkedIn profile as an online resume. Your LinkedIn profile is a client-attraction center. You should value it as such!
Use these three Ps to personalize your profile. Personality, Passion, Perspectives. It will greatly help.
LinkedIn is leaving you a trail of breadcrumbs to help you discover relevant people to connect with. Pay attention to these clues!
[bctt tweet=”You are not finished building your LinkedIn profile until you reach “All-Star” status.”]
[offer-box href=”http://amzn.to/1N1hQi5″ linktext=”Start building your influence now!” securecheckout=false]
When was the last time you looked at the burnup chart? This burnup chart draws a good portrait of how the team is handling the work and creating value. Are you worried that your burnup chart is morphing into a Hockey stick? Go ahead.. grab a copy of the burnup chart!
Burnup Chart – Hockey Stick for an individual sprintBurnup chart-Hockey Stick for a releaseBurn up chart-Stepping Stone-for a release
Let us pause for a moment and look at your Story Burnup chart. This chart can take on many forms, as beautifully described by ScrumDesk in this article. How does it look? Does it look like a straight horizontal line (showing no progress)? Does it look like a Hockey stick as depicted in the two charts above, or Stepping Stones as depicted in the last chart? Or, perhaps, in between!
You have to pay close attention to this chart on a regular basis. The Story burnup chart can tell you a lot about your teams’ mentality and mode of operation.
If your chart looks like a hockey stick, then it is telling that the teams are scrambling to close the stories and burning midnight oil. This hockey stick can hurt you, a lot!
Quality is the first one to take the hit!
It hurts you in multiple ways! To begin with, I would question the quality of work completed (or at least, marked as completed) as a result of this 11th hour scrambling. Apart from quality, you have several other issues such as:
overworked team members
frustrated teams
frustrated business and Product Owner (PO) becuse they are not getting what they want. They are giving acceptance at the last minute and not satisfied with the quality
dejected, demoralized teams
Burnup and Root Causes
There are several reasons why your Burnup morphs into a Hockey Stick, such as:
Team members working in silos
having too much stuff open or too many User Stories open and in progress,
The team is spread too thin across many User Stories, too many balls in the air!
Team not clearly about the end state for the stories. Do they have Acceptance Criteria listed?
This hockey stick is an indicator of poor quality (or absence) of Backlog grooming activity.
Product Owner (PO) should be able to give you clear Acceptance Criteria. You can also focus on improving the quality of backlog grooming sessions, to come out with better stories, with better understanding of the functionality sought and the end state, the validation criteria.
Red Pill and Blue Pill
The hockey stick chart also suggests that there are lot of delays in closing the stories. These delays could also be caused by impediments not being reported or not being worked on agressively. Trade this hockey stick for stepping stones that lead you to the top line!
[bctt tweet=”Pick your Pill! Hockey stick or Stepping Stone style Story Burnup Chart http://www.nimeshsoni.com/burnup-looking-like-a-hockey-stick/ “]
If this Hockey stick is so painful for the team, then what can we do to change it to turn into more favorable Stepping Stone chart (on the right above)? We can approach this in multiple ways. Below are the Top 5 ways you can prevent your burnup chart from morphing into a Hockey stick.
1. Change the question
It starts with mindset change, shift in the thinking, shift in the way team approaches the work. We have to shift our focus from completing tasks to completing and getting acceptance on the User Stories that deliver Value to our customers.
[callout](Accepted) User Story = You serving up slice of VALUE to your CUSTOMER 🙂 [/callout]
If we tweak the questions a little bit, it will help us shift the mindset. At the After Party (after Daily Scrum has just finished), ask the team: What stories can we drive to completion and Product Owner Acceptance? What is stopping us from getting acceptance on the stories?
This will help you shift the focus to completing the stories. As you discuss this at the After Party, ask for volunteers to own and act as steward for individual user stories. The steward is someone whose primary job is to continue to drive that user story to PO acceptance.
2. Story Swarming
Encourage the Story Steward to use Story Swarming to drive the story to completion and acceptance.
[callout]Swarming: A small teamlet, smaller sub group within the team to swarm on the story and drive it to acceptance.[/callout]
Remember, just completing story is not enough, you want to get PO acceptance on them for you to mark it as DONE.
3. WIP limits:
Ensure that the WIP limits are adhered to, and adjust WIP limits (with team’s consensus) that ‘forces’ team to focus on User Story acceptance, before that start working on another story.
Restrict your team to few stories open at a time and challenge them to finish the story before they start working on new one. Ask them to stop starting and start finishing!
4. Visible Progress (or lack there of)
Above all, make and regularly update the Story burnup chart. This chart can be an invaluable tool for the team to showcase their progress. Make it visible to the team, and discuss it with the team at a regular frequency. Even if you are using electronic tool (such as Rally or Version One), ensure that you have a printed copy of the chart displayed prominently to the team.
5. Impediment List
Encourage team members to report any impediments as soon as they are known. Keep a running list of these Impediments, and aggressively work towards resolution or alternatives to ensure that the team can continue to make progress. Make the list itself visible to the team, as well as the progress being made on resolution of them.
These steps will help you slowly bend the hockey stick into the shape of steps leading you towards the top line. It is a chart that shows that team is getting small number of stories accepted every few days during the sprint. It is a proof that there is no 11th hour scramble. It’s a proof that team is swarming and working collaboratively towards closing the User Stories.
[bctt tweet=”5 things to do before this hockey stick hurts you. Warning: This hockey stick can hurt YOU! http://www.nimeshsoni.com/burnup-looking-like-a-hockey-stick/”]
Standardized work is a collection and implementation of the best practices known at that moment. We discussed Standard of Work for Product Owner and Scrum Master in earlier articles. I also gave you a template of the checklist with activities for these two important players of Scrum.
Third leg of Scrum stool
As we all know, Scrum is often referred to as three-legged stool. The three legs being the Product Owner, Scrum Master, and the Team. The third leg, the Scrum Team, is charged with the responsibility to build and deliver the product functionality. Everyone on the Scrum team must be rowing in one direction to deliver this in a timely fashion to the customers.
Rowing Team – every effort in one direction
Let’s look at the typical activities that the team must carry out.
[tabby title=”Daily”]
Attend the daily Scrum, on time and in person.
Come prepared at the daily scrum with your updates.
Provide you updates at the daily scrum and listen to others’ updates.
All team members should answer “the three questions”.
If, for some reason, you can not attend the daily scrum, please reach out to a ‘buddy’ and ask her to take your updates to the team. [Do not send you updates in an email, that should be the last resort! ]
Adhere to the Office Hours agreed upon as a Team. Let the team know if you are unavailable during those office hours for any reason.
Work (swarm) on the highest priority stories.
Show all work on the Scrum board.
Update tasks with hours remaining.
Seek out opportunities to help your team members and/or swarm on driving the Stories to completion.
Ensure development standards are followed.
As soon as a Story is Done, demonstrate it to Product Owner to get her Acceptance and mark it as ‘DONE’.
Identify ways to get better. Collect ideas for Sprint Retrospective or create improvement stories. Seek out opportunities to get that 1% improvement [ The Rich Employee by James Altucher ]
If required, represent your team at the Scrum of Scrum event, bringing team’s updates and challenges to the community.
[tabby title=”Each Sprint”]
Participate in Sprint Planning. Push back if the Story is not READY; not allowing it to get into a Sprint.
Get into sprint. Participate in Backlog Refinement.
Avoid the group thinking and provide your honest, unbiased estimate based on your knowledge and experience. Be comfortable with confrontation and agree to disagree.
In the daily standup. Participate in the Demo and Retrospective.
Identify opportunities for improving how work is done. Less with more done.
Create stories for improvements to be undertaken by the team.
Communicate improvements to Agile Coach or Process Owner for improvements beyond the control of the team.
Ensure all stories & tasks have a good description and validation.
Ensure all stories/features/epics have sizes.
Make a sprint commitment that you believe in. Work to achieve the commitment.
[tabby title=”Each Release”]
Participate in the Release planning activities
Identify enabling work.
Provide estimates for all work
Identify dependencies and risks.
Collaborate on the “Definition of Done” for the team.
[tabbyending]
[bctt tweet=” Standardized work answers the 5W+1H of a process – the who, what, when, where, why, and how”]
Is your scrum team following this checklist? What is your team doing differently, that is working for them? Share your thoughts and comments below.
We talked about Post It note as my Swiss Knife tool, and I introduced you to several interesting uses. It can be used as a Doodling canvas as well as Yellow Card to short circuit an unnecessary, unwanted discussion. And THE most important use is as Note taking tool. Let’s look at Post It as a tool that can help you create effective and fun presentations and workshops.
Last year, I was engaged by a client in Ohio area, to jump start their Agile journey. As a first step towards that, we wanted to train the staff of 300+ people. Not only we wanted to give them basics of Agile but we also wanted them to experience those events and artifacts while in the workshop. So, we decided to do one week long workshops: Two days of classroom training and three days of ‘experience’ where they go through Release planning and be ready to start their first sprint from the following week.
To create the presentation deck for this workshop. We started with a brainstorming session: four coaches in a room with long wall, several multi color post it notes, and thinking hats on.
Starting with just a Straw man structure of the workshop; listing the days as columns and breaking each day in four sessions; each session having a main topic.
We iterated through this a few times. With each iteration adding additional post-it notes with a different color, focused on different aspect of the workshop. We added topic details (sub topics) on a different color Post Its, and then in the next iteration, added Games and fun activities using yet another color. Here is what our Whiteboard looked like after end of this ‘ideation’ session.
We used this outline as a starting point for creating presentation deck in electronic form. Post Its enabled us, the four coaches, to bring together their expertise and experience, working collaboratively to create a fun and engaging workshop.
Oh! by the way, this workshop was hugely successful!
What are the ways you have used Post Its? What are the other techniques you have used to create fun and engaging workshops? Share your thoughts in the comment below.
We talked about the WHYs of Post It notes in the earlier post. I have used this simple tool many different ways in my quest to transform organizations to deliver value.
I have used Post It notes as my ‘Swiss Knife’, bending it in many different ways to meet my needs as an Enterprise Transformation Coach. For me, Agile is not about complaining (as to what you don’t have) but making the most of what you have been given. It is all about being resourceful!
Let me introduce you to several ways I have used this simple tool in my quest to transform organizations to deliver value. I guarantee that you will have new insights and new found respect for this tool:
Here is the first and THE most important role Post-It plays in my world.
Taking notes:
I almost always walk around with Sharpie pen and a pad of PostIt notes. When I am having discussions or conversations, I am taking notes, capturing important points and action items. PostIt allows me to take the notes while still being part of the conversation. This is comforting and ensuring at the same time for my client.
[callout]
It is calming to see you write on your PostIts. For me, it is a confirmation that you are listening, and there will be a follow through (on action items identified) -AP
[/callout]
I have, in fact, developed my own ‘short hand’ language that allows me to capture the essence of the discussion, quickly without any distraction [more on it in a separate blog post]
Did you think of using it in this fashion? If you have, what has been the response from your colleagues? Share your experience in the comments section below.
