Tag Archives: Tips

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Tips to be effective and productive while working remotely

With the current situation with Corona virus, almost every one of us is working remotely.

I have been working remotely for quite some time. As some of you already know, I also deliver various certification workshops in an online environment. In fact, come to think of it, I have been working in online training delivery for quite some time (started back in 2000!)

I am sharing some of my tips on how you can improve your remote participation and get more done for your team, your organization, and yourself. 

”  If you don’t pay attention to what has your attention, it will take more of your attention than it deserves.”
—David Allen

 

Here are my top tips to help you be more effective and productive with working remotely.

Separate Work Space and Personal Space

If a separate room is not available, designate a corner in your room as your workspace and set up the work desk that will help you be the most productive throughout the day. 

Invest in Technology

Ensure that you have the Internet bandwidth that will allow you to work without interruptions.

And, while working remotely, audio quality is very important. If possible, get an external microphone to ensure a good quality audio connection.

I recommend Yeti. I  have been using it for the past 3 years and love it.

Video is a MUST

Turning on video is the next best thing you can do to meeting face to face.

As we know, a lot of our communication happens non-verbal, and with video on, you can ‘listen’ to all the non-verbal communication. You can see confusion and excitement on their face!

I recommend Zoom for all your video conferencing needs. 

Separate Audio and Video connection 

While in a remote meeting, separate audio and video connection.

You don’t want to connect using your laptop and hog the bandwidth entirely with audio and video connection from the same device. 

I generally, dial into the meeting with my iPhone while having a video connection from my laptop.

This is also a fail-safe setup, as it has a redundancy backed in. If you drop a video or audio connection, you are still in the meeting through your other connection. 

Schedule your breaks

It is tempting to work non-stop, especially when you don’t have your co-workers to ‘interrupt’ your work. It is very important to schedule breaks to ensure you are at your optimal energy throughout the day. 

I recommend using Pomodoro – focus on the work at hand for 25 minutes and follow that up with 5 minutes of break.

You must walk away from your workspace during this break. Go for a cup of coffee or tea, go out for a walk and get fresh air or any other physical activity. 

Unlimited Power

Connect your devices to the power supply directly. Yes, they do come with batteries, but them running out of juice is the last thing you need to worry about. You don’t want to fumble around to find a power chord in the middle of a remote meeting.

I always connect my devices to the electric supply before my online meetings. 

Music – the fuel for the day

Music can help you stay focused. Know your personal interest and style, and have your playlist ready. 

For me, more of the instrumentals and classical music helps me stay focused and concentrate on work at hand. I recommend Amazon Music! 

Stay Focused!

It is imperative that you have your routine and schedule. Use an agile approach to manage your daily work, focus on high priority items to optimize value and your throughput. 

I recommend creating your personal Kanban to track the work you have to do using Trello or Kanban Flow.

Online Collaboration Tools

Working remotely does not mean that you sacrifice the collaboration!

You can still use various tools to increase collaboration and engagement from everyone. I commend using online collaboration boards such as Jamboard or Miro

Online Whiteboarding

If you are presenting in your online meetings, you need to find ways to incorporate whiteboard in your meeting. If you have a physical whiteboard, you could have a camera pointed to it. Even better would be to use an electronic whiteboard. Your iPad could double as eWhiteboard

Want to know how to use iPad as eWhiteboard?  Contact me

Water-Cooler time

Don’t forget to schedule some water cooler time! Set up a quick video call, just to say hi to your colleagues and peers. You still need to socialize!

 

Hope this list helps you stay focused and create the most value for your organization. 

Got any of your tips that you want to share with the community? Send us an email!

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Improve Daily Scrum

Daily Scrum or Daily Stand Up is a very important ceremony in the Scrum framework. As part of the Daily Scrum, the team meets on a regular basis for a quick sync up of 15 minutes.

scrum-calendar-daily-standup

Scrum Calendar Events [DS=Daily Scrum]

Remember, you only have 15 minutes to finish this Daily Scrum. We want to use every minute optimally during this ceremony, don’t we? So what are the different ways we can optimize it?  

Top 10 Tips for Daily Scrum

Here are my tips to have the team gel together quickly, as well as eliminate unnecessary churns that will happen at the Daily Scrum. Again, the goal is to maximize every minute of this Daily Scrum and make it a high performing ceremony.

  1. Come Prepared

    Ask your team member to use this tool before they come to Daily Scrum. Have your team members think about their updates before they come to Daily Scrum. Write three things on the Post It notes.

    Daily standup

    Write your updates to the three basic Questions

  2. Be Explicit

    Announce the start and end of your Daily Scrum. Make it explicit, use some specific music or it could be a simple as some one just announcing that it is the ‘START’ and ‘END’ of the Daily Scrum (at the beginning and end of the 15-minute timebox respectively).

    make it Explicit - Announce START and STOP

    make it Explicit – Announce START and STOP

  3. Parking Lot

    Introduce Parking lot and use it extensively to defer the discussions (after the end of Daily Scrum). This will help you keep the momentum during the Daily Scrum and enable you to quickly go through the synch up from each team member.

  4. 4th Question

    Introduce 4th question: Is there anything that you want to discuss with your team member(s) after the Daily Scrum?

    4th Question - Defer to Parking Lot

    4th Question – Defer to Parking Lot

    If yes, the team member mentions it quickly and someone captures it into the Parking Lot. Review and discuss the items on Parking Lot after the Daily Scrum is completed.

  5. After Party

    This is a time set aside, allocated for the discussion that we deferred during the Daily Scrum. You may have put a couple of items in the Parking Lot. Once the end of the Scrum is announced, some of the team members would stay back for their respective discussions. This is what I refer to as to as After Party!

    All the team members do not need to stay back, only the ones who are required for the discussion would.

    Want to #getHyper?

    Want to know more tips to improve your Daily Scrum? your Scrum implementation?
    Check out and grab a copy of my book Get Hyper [OFFER]

  6. (Better) Equipments

    Just have proper equipment(s) to provide better quality audio and video to the team members.

    Yes, the Daily Scrum has to be in person. And team members have to be there physically for the Daily Scrum. With that said, there will always be some exceptions where a team member cannot attend the Daily Scrum in person. You will have to have a way for them to remotely attend the Daily Scrum. Having better quality audio will tremendously improve the productivity of your Daily Scrum.

    You can provide better quality audio for under $50 investment in a bluetooth speaker. Here is the one that I carry in my beg all the time.

  7. (Update) Working Agreements

    You need to cover those exceptions (as discussed in Tip# 6) in your working agreement, have the team talk about it as to how they will handle those scenarios where a team member cannot attend the Daily Scrum in person. Amend your working agreements to cover that scenario.

    For example, one of my team had this on their working agreement:
    When a team member cannot attend in person…

    1. S/he will provide the updates to his/her Buddy. This buddy will bring those updates to the team in person.
    2. If that cannot be done then the team member will jump on the conference call.
    3. When everything else fails, send an email addressed to the team with your updates.

    Bottom line is to have your team discuss these scenarios and update their working agreements accordingly.

  8. Break the eye contact

    I have seen this time and time again, especially with the new teams. Often times when providing the updates, a team member is looking at the Scrum Master (only) as if she is providing the updates to the Scrum Master and not the team. Now, remember Daily Scrum is for the team. A team member is providing the updates to others on the team, not just to the Scrum master. To break this mode I often encourage my Scrum Masters to break the eye contact. As soon as a team member starts providing updates to you as a Scrum Master, look away from her. Look at the floor or look at your scrum board; do whatever to break that eye contact. This will encourage them to look at other team members.

  9. Be Absent, intentionally

    I encourage Scrum Master to occasionally skip the Daily Scrum, be absent intentionally.The goal here is to see how the team handles your absence.
    Does the Daily Scrum break apart because you are not there or does the team step up and handle it nicely.
    This will also give you indication as to whether the team is self-organizing and tackles those scenarios by themselves

  10. Make it Visible

    The last and the most important tip I think is to make it Visible. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words! So, use all the visual props, you can use a wall in the hallway as your Scrum Board, or use some flip chart papers and start using that as your Scrum Board.

    Put your posters on that and use it while having the Daily Scrum. Post your Working Agreements, Definition of Done, and Definition of Ready in the Daily Scrum area. In short, make it visual!

As I mentioned, in the beginning, these are simple techniques that I have used a lot when I start working with new scrum teams. I often introduced this in an incremental fashion. They are very effective and impactful.

What tips are you employing to keep your Daily Scrum on track, to finish it on time while keeping it useful and productive for the Team?

Let us know and we will include it in this list, along with credit to you of course.

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True Catalysts of Change

True Catalysts of Change. At beginning of 2016, this was one of my goals. As we draw it to close, I am happy to look back to a list of books I have read. These are the true catalysts. They have the power to change your world!

When you review this list. Notice that I do not have agile/scrum related books on my list. That’s easier to learn. The harder part is shifting the mindset. These books will help you there. With the right mindset, you will go further than you can imagine now. You will surprise yourself!

I read about two books per month. And, spend almost $0 for reading those books. [Hit me if you want to know how]

For now, here are the top 5 books from my list with tremendous power to influence and change your world in 2017.

  1. Creativity Inc – Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration by Ed Catmull and Amy Wallace

Creativity Inc - Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration

Creativity Inc – Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration

2.Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard by Chip Heath and Dan Heath

Switch, Transformation,GetHyper, Agile, Get hyper

Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

3.Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown 

Essentialism, Agile, transformation, getHyper

Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

4.Onward: How to Starbucks Fought Its Life without Losing Its Soul by Howard Schultz 

agile, gethyper, transformation

Onward: How to Starbucks Fought Its Life without Losing Its Soul

5.The Rich Employee by James Altucher

True Catalysts of Change

The Rich Employee

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INVEST in your User Stories – Nimesh Soni

Write better User Stories with this Visual Worksheet

User Stories are the lifeline of an Agile team. Even the BEST, high performing teams will struggle to deliver Value if they are fed bad Stories. As they say, INVEST in your User Stories!

Use this visual worksheet to help you, guide you in writing better User Stories. Help your team Help you with this worksheet.invest in your user stories
Onwards to writing user stories that help teams in creating value, frequently and on a regular cadence.

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The Art of getting MORE done with LESS

Can Agilists use Check Lists? Can checklists help them perform at a much better level? To answer this question, we will have to visit the two bookends of User Stories. Please grab copies of your team’s Definition of Ready (DoR) and Definition of Done (DoD).

Two book of end User Stories

Two books of end User Stories: DoR, DoD

A user story should not be allowed to go onto a sprint backlog unless it meets all the items listed on DoR; in order for it to be marked as READY. On the other end, teams are supposed to mark a user story as DONE only when it meets all the criteria a laid out in the DoD. Aren’t these checklists? Can we expand them to other areas of doing Agile?

Why use the Checklists?

If NASA can use checklists to send satellites into the outer space. If surgeons can use the checklist to eliminate contamination in the surgery room, why can’t we, the Agilists, use the checklists to eliminate the worst, minimize the waste, and improve our productivity? As Atul Gawande describes in his book, The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right, the knowledge exists, but often times we fail to apply it correctly.

We need a different strategy for overcoming failure, one that builds on experience and takes advantage of the knowledge people have but somehow also makes up for our inevitable human inadequacies.
– Atul Gawande,  The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right

Listed below are some additional benefits of using Checklists.

  • Helps you analyze what you are doing, why you are doing and then eliminate unnecessary steps and optimize it by combining some of them.
  • Makes work results more predictable.
  • Helps you in making Repeatable, predictable process.
  • Helps in delivering consistent quality and results.

Outline path to Success

Checklists, in essence, can help you improve your performance. They outline the path to success, with minimal resistance, because they are infused with your experiences and learnings from the past.

As Edward Deming once said, “don’t look at the individual, look at the system.” You can start with a simple checklist, and infuse them with your experiences and learnings. Refine them as you use them by incorporating the lessons learned with each use.

checklists

make it-use it-refine it-agile checklists

You can create a checklist on pretty much anything! If I know that I’m going to be doing a specific activity more than once, I would create a checklist.

I follow a simple process to create them. Start with an outline of what tasks you would have to carry out to complete the activity. You don’t have to put in a lot of time and effort and come up with an elaborate checklist. Once you have the initial outline, just do ‘the thing’! And, as you do it, refine the list.

Yes, the initial list may not be complete. Yes, it may not be elaborate. But you have a checklist that you can improve on and make it better as you do it again and again. To ensure the ‘continuous improvement’, one of that last item that I almost always have is:
Is there any way I can improve this checklist?

Automate or Delegate

In his highly successful book The Four Hour Week, Tim Ferris suggests four simple steps to freedom:  Eliminate-Simplify-Automate-Delegate.

One of the side benefits of having checklists is that it helps you delegating the activity or individual tasks. It also helps you eliminate the unnecessary steps as you use them and optimize them. Once you have used a checklist to complete the activity couple of times, one of the three things could happen.

  • Automate:
    Find a way to automate the activity.
  • Delegate:
    If you cannot automate this process then find a way to delegate it to somebody who can follow your checklist.
  • Do It yourself:
    If you cannot delegate it and you are ‘forced’ to do it,  you should be able to finish it quickly and efficiently as you have optimized your checklist. This should allow you to finish the activity quickly, with a higher quality, minimizing, if not completely eliminating, the waste.

Enabling and Empowering

Checklists are enabling and empowering! They are ‘concentrated doses’ of experiences and learnings, acquired over multiple iterations. They help you in improving your Sprint Planning, the Backlog Refinement, Sprint Review, and many other events and activities.

Even the most expert among us can gain from searching out the patterns of mistakes and failures and putting a few checks in
– Atul Gawande,  The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right

Create one, use it, and you will realize how liberating they are! Let us know your experience in the comment below. And, don’t forget to share it with your peers and community.

Why reinvent the wheel? Get this booklet (containing various checklists) and get a jump start!

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