Appreciate how creativity brings in a completely different dimension of thinking to the inspect and adapt cycles, the retrospectives! The themes used behind making of these techniques are based on some realistic scenarios that enable the teams to really think and have fun at the same time. These techniques can be used for doing in-person as well as online retrospectives using the innovation games platform.

 Participants get a set of retrospective cards describing each technique and how can it be used for doing in-person and online retrospectives. The link to the innovation game platform is embedded on each of the cards that can be used to run the retrospective online.

Adopting to Agile has become a norm, almost every organization seems to be aiming for it! Many organizations have a great start with much rigor and enthusiasm, but are they really able to sustain is the question. How many of them are really able to put up with it!

'The back bone of a sustainable Agile Transformation!' talks about tackling such challenges in the long run! In this session I would be sharing my experiences that I have consolidated during my work with different clients. 

This is an experience report based on my interactions with the Product Owners. 

Scrum introduces a very vital role called the Product Owner who is the key person responsible for the product success; he is one who is accountable for the customer delight.

 In this session we would talking about essential characteristics  and responsibilities of a PO by discussing some of the challenges using specific scenarios.

Format of this session:

1) Commonly seen anti patterns of the PO

2) Typical challenges that can derail a Product Ownership and what can be done to overcome these challenges. These challenges if not resolved, which agile principle we would not be able to adhere to will also be discussed during this session. The scenarios presented here are the real time scenarios that I have seen with the teams while working with them.

The idea of this session is to talk about the challenges seen with the Product group  in big organizations that have a legacy of products and multiple teams working on them.

This is a fast paced workshop of 90 minutes, split across 3 progressive parts/activities. The intent of the workshop is to bring out the challenges that organizations face due to their traditional structure, during their Agile adoption journey. In the workshop, we emulate such an environment and try to have a first-hand experience of the difficulties faced both at the team and managerial levels (Part A). Subsequently, we let people form their own teams which are "Autonomous". (Part B). Now, we deliver as newly formed teams. (Part C).

The final debrief revolves around importance of "Autonomous teams" in terms of quality and individual motivation.

Scrum introduces a very vital role called the Product Owner who is the key person responsible for the product success; he is one who is accountable for the customer delight.

 In this session we would be doing a deep dive at this role, the essential characteristics, the prime responsibilities, challenges and how can this role be scaled in a scaled environment where we would be discussing some of the structural and coordination patterns.

The key take away of this session would be the last part where the participants would build a story map using “Jeff Patton’s” story mapping technique to visualize how a day of the Product Owner looks like.

High performance agile teams are always striving to achieve an effective retrospective that enables the team to discuss the success criteria, and define the areas of improvement further.  This is an important aspect for cross functional teams – the development, operations, database administrators, systems administrators, QA testers, product managers - to focus on excellent communication and collaboration. 

Over the years, my experience has been that retrospectives can get monotonous with time, and hence tend to become ineffective. The more I engaged with the process, the more I felt the need to revolutionize the process, bring out something new, fun, and exciting to make the retrospectives vibrant.  The other interesting aspect I came across during my research into the subject was the theory of gamification and the universality of its application. 

During this session the audience will understand how the concept of gamification brings in a completely different dimension of thinking while maintaining the element of fun as we try and apply it to a few everyday situations!

 I have leveraged Luke Hohmann’s Innovation Games, The Conteneo Collaboration Could platform for this concept of gamification so that distributed teams can benefit by this.  

The key to Scrum team effectiveness is continuous improvement that can be realized through the inspect-and-adapt opportunity: the retrospectives. Retrospectives help the teams inspect on their strengths and weaknesses and come up with strategies to become stronger every sprint. The biggest challenge for geographically dispersed teams is finding ways to leverage the essence behind the Agile value statement "Individuals and interactions over processes and tools" and behind the principle that states, "The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-face communication." However, by using some good collaboration tools, we can reap the benefits of face-to-face communication to some extent. Retrospectives play a vital role for distributed teams as well as collocated ones, and by using some good online collaboration tools, these inspect-and-adapt ceremonies can be really made effective!

This workshop will be an actual hands-on workshop where environment of distributed team is simulated, people actually participate and do an online retrospective using their laptops by playing the games under retrospective techniques at “Luke Hohmann Innovation games” website https://innovationgames.com/content/vc/instant

Published games:

1. Fly High 2. Team Journey 3. Team Craft 4. Mountain Trekking

These games have been published on Innovation games website, that use very effective metaphors that enable the team to wear a different thinking hat while doing the retrospectives.

This session would definitely be an eye opener for distributed teams, for doing retrospectives at ease. It is a lean way of doing a retrospective that saves a lot of time, automatically collates the discussion points of all the participants on just a single click of button. And the most important thing, it is really fun playing this. Teams would really enjoy this! The three game themes that are going to be used for this workshop are based on some realistic scenarios that enable the teams to really relate to what they are doing.

Summary of the presentation :

Scrum is a framework. It just suggests some good practices which are like guidelines similar to the good-to-do things. These practices keep the system moving and are like driving directions that enable us to have a healthy rhythm. Now how is this rhythm of scrum affected by the behavioural ecosystem? The blend of people right from the top management to ground level get affected by this adoption of Scrum and also influence the scrum adoption to a greater extent. This adoption is a journey, and Scrum aids in making this entire journey enjoyable and valuable, of course we need to add some ingredients and some spice to it to make this adoption journey valuable and fun-filled. So in this presentation we would talk about the powerful roles in Scrum and most importantly how to make the environment around it suitable to have a smooth ride.

This case study is created based on a real journey of the team and the team is still continuing their scrum journey.

This case study highlights the following.

 Background information
       Project Kick off
       Criticality
      Initial Expectation
      Final Outcome
 Role of organization top-management in this journey?
 How to handle the most important resource-“PEOPLE” in the Scrum journey?
 Some effective ways to clean up the chaos that scrum exposes?
 Learn what are the key ingredients of Scrum?
 How do we spice it up to make the ride a fruitful happy ride?
 Some creative and innovative ways to make the ride a fun and valuable ride!
 How can the master chef, the Scrum Master make this journey a success?
 How to churn the teams to become great teams!

 PS: I can submit a detailed report based on which the slide deck is created to the reviewers. Thank you.

Agile adoption journey is very challenging and expensive but yet would yield great results if we do it in a proper phased manner with good planning and insight. Scrum, one of the agile methodologies, helps the projects to cater to the dynamics of changing market while delivering high quality software when combined with few engineering practices.

True! Let us try to understand the ground realities of scrum and then see how its adoption gets effected by the surrounding ecosystems and environment using simple metaphors and then let us take a deep dive into the depth of the realities. Scrum is like a powerful filtration process that allows the filtrate to pass through smoothly while exposing the residues which are the real bottlenecks, impediments, road blocks in a transparent manner. Once these residues are cleared, crystal clear increments of working software could be seen by the Stakeholders. So it is up to the environment around Scrum to act on the realities that Scrum exposes and clear it up as early as possible so that the working software could be delivered faster. If we do not react to these impediments that Scrum exposes, we would be where we were earlier and nothing might get changed!

Successful implementation of Scrum would need the key ingredients, which are the robust engineering practices like Continuous integration, Daily Builds, Automated build process, Build notifications, Continuous Deployment and Delivery in place to deliver quality software.

We need to enable and empower the most important resource, “PEOPLE” very carefully all through the journey so that they do not get over churned and break half-way through the ride. We need to add just enough lubricant to make the team vehicle move smoothly. Organization plays a vital role in giving the necessary push as and when required by providing the essential support in terms of the infrastructure and other requirements that would aid the Scrum journey. People who have a positive attitude and who are willing to work with the team on the ground would sustain this adoption process. People who try to create roadblocks along the journey should be handled with care skilfully.

Now to make the journey really a fun-filled ride, definitely some spice in the form of creativity and innovation is needed to produce the flavor to make scrum tour amazing and an exciting journey that churns good teams to great teams. The three roles of Scrum, the Product Owner, the Scrum Master and Development team should synchronize well with each other to succeed. Most important role in Scrum, the master chef i.e the Scrum Master keeps the Scrum team intact by ensuring that all the ingredients and spices are in proper ratio. The Scrum Master is the magic wand behind the scenes that can enable things really happen.

The above points would be revelead by going through the journey of a  scrum team that I worked with.

         Retrospectives are the primary learning, reflection and readjustment techniques on agile projects. A good Agile team is always striving to become better than before. And an effective retrospective enables the team to sieze its opportunity to improve! 

Retrospectives enable whole-team learning, act as catalysts for change, and generate action.

R-> Realize where you are and where you want to be

E-> Engage the teams in fruitful discussions

T-> Team work to build “We over I” attitude

R-> Relish the power of Inspect and Adapt cycles

O->Openness and Transparency to make retrospectives efficient and effective

In my view, this is not any new concept or a jargon the team needs to really master, but yes in reality sometimes it becomes challenging to keep the momentum lively all times! Over a period of time, we see these symptoms in a retrospective. 

R-> Repeated issues pop-up

E-> Engrossing & Engaging discussions are missing

T-> Team present virtually, loses trust.

R-> Routine stuff, nothing interests the teams.

O->Observably gets boring over time.

To catalyse conversations among team members, retrospectives need to be viewed from a different perspective. This presentaion talks about why the retrospectives efficacy fades off over a period of time and then talks about some very interesting techniques that I used with the teams to make these meetings lively!  Teams need to do out-of-box thinking and appreciate that these short gatherings need not  be done only by using the techniques or methods prescribed in the book but could be done by quoting some situational specific examples that would make the teams really think and speak!