Agile Gurugram 2023

1. Sandwiches , Trash
and Doing the Little
Things Right
@munishmalik

2. 📖 🙌

3. Story of SEAL
officer Lieutenant
Commander
Conway*,
who turned
into a glorified
garbage man.
*Conway is a pseudonym

4. About me
I’m Munish. Currently, living in Gurugram.
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I am a Lead Product Consultant at Equal Experts.
I enjoy cycling and reading books.
I have two kids - 7 and 4 years old.
Thank you for having me!
ProductTank Organiser - Delhi NCR

5. The ask

6. Coach a strategic cloud platform
team to transform behaviors,
embed new ways of working and
build software delivery capability.

7. Discovery

8. Here’s
what we
found

9. ● Loud voices 📢
● Far away from the users 󰳕 ↔👫👫
● Long lead time 🕧
● Efficiency > effectiveness ⏱
● Burn out 🔥
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10. Photo by hang niu on Unsplash

11. Our Approach

12. Being small and time bound
Permission to try new ways of working
Ambition to prove out new ways of working
before scaling to the rest of the platform team
Being a ‘glass tube exercise’ - visible but
protected from the rest of the organisation
*courtesy - Jon Dickinson, Chief Commercial Office, Equal Experts
Test-tube approach*
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13. How did we
go about it?

14. One

15. *Conway is a pseudonym
Story of SEAL officer
Lieutenant Commander
Conway*, who turned
into a glorified garbage
man. Served the
collective mission
- from trash to
fighting terrorism.

16. We wanted to find our ways
to take out the trash
and bring the team the
sandwiches .

17. Supporting the SM in facilitating ceremonies
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Helping the program manager prepare reports
Helping the PO with spreadsheets and backlog
Helping the BAs to craft stories
Supporting developers in solving their problems
Spending time with the QAs to understand their challenges
📊 ��
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18. Learning

19. Prioritise building
relationships and establish
trust to create an environment
of safety before coaching

20. Two

21. Picture by Lisa Scott - Northumberland/Great Britain - on Pixabay

22. Photo by Zhivko Minkov on Unsplash

23. Result Obsession

24. Constantly thinking about
the result, especially when
the team had failures
previously, puts the team
under immense pressure. 😓
🎯

25. Target delivery dates
⏰
Quarterly milestones
Release deadlines
Release stabilization activities over the weekend
Personal appraisal goals
… remember the loud voices!
⏳ 📢
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26. I love deadlines.
I love the whooshing noise
they make as they go by.
“
Douglas Adams
“

27. What could be an
alternative?

28. Three

29. "The process is more important
than the result. The result is a
by-product of the process."
"We are so much focused on
the result that we get away
from the process."
"Take care of the process and
the small things; eventually,
you will get the desired result."

30. Don't focus on the
result? Really?
I wanted more data.

31. “Forget about goals,
focus on systems instead.”
Problem #1: Winners and losers have
the same goals. #SurvivorshipBias
Problem #2: Achieving the same goal is
only a momentary change
Problem #3: Goals restrict your happiness.
Problem #4: Goals are at odds with
long-term progress.

32. How did we
go about it?

33. We started to focus on the
little things.
🔎
🐜
🐜

34. Current state and explicit policies
Intensified refinement efforts. Small slices. Similarly sized.
Three amigos
Started working more closely with our users
Specification by Example
One at a time. Repeatable. Iterative. Habit.
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➰

35. Outcome

36. 40% ⏬
Lead Time

37. Photo by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash
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38. Learning

39. If you’re looking to improve
behavior or skills,
then shift attention away
from the results and goals,
instead focus on the process
(or the systems).
󰩤

40. Develop little habits and
improvements. As you
consistently practice them
over time, the big things get
taken care of.
🌀

41. Photo by Loan on Unsplash

42. Thank you
linkedin.com/company/equal-experts/
LinkedIn
@EqualExperts
Twitter
www.equalexperts.com
Website