When the team works together for some time that Friday and solves all the initial difficulties, it gets into a state of pleasant functioning. The team went through all four stages of formation — forming, storming, norming, performing — and stabilized in the fourth. It has a rut of its dorms, the members know each other, they know what to expect from each other. We may have a couple of existing problems/initiatives that we are gradually clearing away, but they are not very critical, we can continue to work with them. We just have a functioning team. This is great news, not every team can do this. But sooner or later the thought comes, “Well... okay? And what next?”
Typically, the Scrum Master/Agile Coach points out the stabilized situation after a retrospective. After such a retrospective, where nothing new was actually shown, existing problems and ideas were again taken up a bit and other events planned... but otherwise nothing special happened. In particular, the Scrum Master/Agile Coach may then tend to perceive the resulting calmness unwell.
We have a number of tips for you on what to do in such a situation.
1. Enjoy it
We can just enjoy the situation. Especially it applies to dynamic companies and teams that have gone through a period of twists/actions/crises/changes. It is enough to realize with the team that we are in a quiet period, that we have a little mental rest and that there is nothing wrong with the temporary state of “no changes” at all. It doesn't mean we stop improving and collecting ideas, we just won't push for it for a while.
2. Try giving yourself a retrospective “from scratch”
Let's try the next retrospective to give the so-called. “from scratch”. Invite the team to pause for a moment, drop the backpack of existing changes/problems/activities off their backs, take a breath of fresh air and try to look at each other with a new look — the look from the outside, the look of a newcomer. Someone who has no idea what has been tried and rejected, what is currently running, everything we cannot. What would such a novice notice first? What would he praise and where would he pause? Where would he find bananas right away?
Sometimes just a little thing is enough to refresh our view of the current situation and better prioritize our list of problems to solve (impediments backlog).
Bonus: If you have someone who is unbiased (e.g. a newcomer to the team, or a borrowed Scrum Master/Agile Coach from elsewhere), this situation tends to be particularly effective. As a guest Agile Coach, I use this technique almost every time with great results.
3. Team Challenge
Sometimes the team would continue to improve and change, but they simply do not see other possibilities, they think that there is nothing to improve. Here is the opportunity to use the team challenge — “From the next sprint, we need to operate at twice the velocity — to deliver twice as much value. What do we have to do for it?” After a moment of hilarity, when ideas such as “we will also program with our feet” and “we will start taking drugs” fall through, make it clear that this is not a humor, but a serious question. After another moment, filled with variations on the word “can't” you finally get to the stage of inventing options. We accept the first option “hire more people” without discussion and ask “Okay, what next?” And this is where the right thing comes in, when the team often starts throwing ideas like “someone would have to handle calls for us”, “we would need 3 new servers”, “the Product Owner would have to start writing more striking stories” or “it wouldn't take a week to test”. A lot of ideas will be phrased negatively (which is wrong), however, they all point to the real limitations of the team. And we can investigate all of them and really try to do something about them (set up L1 support, negotiate the purchase of servers, educate the Product Owner, or invest in test automation). Often a team doesn't give ideas like that because they think they're impossible/expensive/unrealistic... but that's not always the case.
4. New inspiration
Similar to the previous case, it often helps to arrange for the team some inspiration from the outside. Now we don't just mean the standard professional education of each role, but something extra. For a long time, scientists have been inspired in other fields. An interesting lecture, training, or gamified workshop will bring new inputs and perspectives. What's so
- learn Walt Disney's Creative Technique
- try checking out RB EDU on the show Teams of the future
- look at meeting some of the communities (Produkttank, TechMeetup, CzechAgile, Ministry of Testing)
New information and experience will bring a different perspective and allow the team to deal with their existing topics and problems in a new way. Inspiration by something interesting has a positive effect on its own — more on the topic of inspiration hereunder.
5. Try things new
Similarly, interesting results can be achieved simply by changing habits. One of the first things the new Scrum Master Googles is “fun retrospective formats” to make the team more engaging and engaging. We definitely recommend trying different formats of retrospectives — more in our article hereunder.
However, innovation does not have to end with retrospectives. Similarly, you can try looking at any ceremony of yours, or duty. Daily meeting on the roof of the building? Planning with printed flashcards? Retrospective in the park? Who breaks release, pays beer? Team 360k? If you have a friendly creative person, he will be able to go crazy on this topic and will prepare a lot of options to bring the settled team to life.
And if you do not want to change the ceremony, there is also the so-called. Challenging Gamesin which the goal is just to try something. We used the attached list a long time ago and went through the whole ourselves (and this includes sorted ideas).
6th. Gamify your daily routine
If you have time to think about it, you can turn to the comprehensive, great, but slightly complicated topic of gamification. Gamification sounds simple at first glance -- I'll make it a game and that's it. On the second, you will find that it is not so easy — find the right one, tweak it, avoid sub-optimization... it can be easily stepped on the side. In one company, we experienced a failed gamification where they rewarded the one who “finds the most bugs to produce in a month”. That's when we learned how easy it is to knowingly get a hidden wrong code into production.
However, whoever takes it for the right end can inspire themselves and their team to have fun and beneficial activities. In order to gamify something, I need to know something about it (and thus I can describe and share, for example, the process in question). Next, I should figure out how to recognize the winner (and often by scoring I come up with some handy metric that we were missing). And in conclusion, I usually do it in an area where some positive change is needed.
This category also includes practices that you may already be doing (“reward” for being late to the meeting, beer for the highest score at “bug bash Thursday”, etc.).
7. Conclusion
Moving the homesteaded team is a relatively common theme. If you think your team falls into this category and you want to do something about it, then:
- First, think seriously about idea No.1 above, whether something really needs to be done about it.
- If so, then think about why this is the case — isn't there a specific reason for homesteading that can be addressed?
- Then consider the culture of the team and the company, how wild ideas you can try and what will already be over the line.
- And then take inspiration from any of the options above and set off moving.