- Large service based organizations, when they get into agile transformation leap from waterfall, there comes multiple layers of questions like starting from its approach, convincing the client, strategy to use and the initial resistance while convincing the project teams. Earning the trust factor from teams that are "first time doers" was more challenging with multiple negotiation. The Kanban board we used in teams aids the teams to become more open in their daily standups. These are the distributed teams working in two different shifts where ceremonies are not as easy as it would happen in co located teams.
As an agile coach eliminating the fear of just being fearful from various levels of hierarchical organization have given multiple perspectives .When we dissected the roadblock with senior management and middle management , their common query was how Daily standup meeting and retrospective will be exclusive compared to review meetings and weekly meetings that happens as per their cadence?
As per the empirical process control theory, the ceremonies when it get time boxed and practised day in and day out ,there are evidences for behavioral pattern change. Infact weeds out the invisible queues formed.
Techniques used over here in addressing the problems encountered:
1.cross pollinated through demo to hear from team where ceremonies are used regularly
2.Brought in an Infrastructure to bring in free flow communication irrespective of locations
3.Brought in leads in multiple tracks to attend the daily standup meeting when complete team work in war rooms at urgent scenarios.
4.Negotiated with "Work in Progress" limits with client at times whenever it overflows.
5.Retrospective and DSM has brought in better cost of ownership with individuals and triggers for kaizens in retro.
Experimentation results after couple of months.
1.Teams have become self organized irrespective of working from anywhere, nevertheless being in hierarchical org.
2. Open tickets with aging more than a period of time got reduced significantly.
3.Teams are pulling tickets more than a Manager pushes it
4.Scrum Master has evolved with better emotional intelligence where he draws clear cut line to refrain from micro management .Henceforth conscious KPI's are used without touching the sense of freedom among team members
5.Weekly review meetings nowadays uses live dashboards to have discussion with senior management and client
Last but not the least,Client has appreciated the team for making a defect free zone in one of the geographies in a shorter span of time