T-minus 10… 9… 8… We have lift-off! by Talia Lancaster & Angie Doyle
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Getting new teams to work together is hard. Really. Hard. Is it because there is so much hype around new Agile teams? Or is it because there is such a focus on “doing things right” (or “doing” Agile right), that we forget about the people actually doing the work? Regardless of the reason, before we can change the way people work... we need to focus on the things that are important for teamwork to work! We believe that the key to high-performance teams is creating an intentional culture that respects and embraces diversity - whether it be race, gender, class, culture, age, beliefs, language, skills or background. So join us as we explore the Team Canvas – sort of like a Business Model Canvas for teamwork - covering nine essential teamwork elements: Purpose - Why we are doing what we are doing? People & Roles - What are our names, roles and responsibilities? Common goals - What do we as a group want to achieve together? Personal goals - What do I as an individual want to achieve? Team values - What do we really stand for and believe in? Needs and expectations - What do each of us need to be successful in a diverse team? Rules & Activities - How do we communicate and keep everyone up to date? Strengths & Assets - What skills do we have in the team? Weaknesses & Risks - What are the weaknesses we have, as an individual and as a team? We will walk through our agenda for team lift-offs, facilitation posters and preparation work required, materials needed, and facilitation tips and tricks. All packaged in a handy pocket guide, that you can use to explore tried and tested techniques for each essential element. We will also have an opportunity to practice some of these techniques during the session. Get ready to lift-off your team in T-minus 10... 9... 8... More details: https://confengine.com/agile-india-2019/proposal/8348/t-minus-10-9-8-we-have-lift-off Conference link: https://2019.agileindia.org
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T-minus 10… 9… 8… We have lift-off! by Talia Lancaster & Angie Doyle
- 8. What are our names, roles and responsibilities?
- 11. Competencymatrix
- 13. - Team Name - Method of collaboration (Slack, Zoom) - How do we visualize work? (physical or virtual?) - Core working hours (flexi hours, religious events) - Multiple time zones - Leave (sick leave work buddy) - Team Framework (Scrum) - Definition of Ready - Definition of Done - Team calendar - Conflict protocol Rules&Activities More comprehensive list in AdamWeisbart – Scrum Kick Off Planner
- 14. Rules&Activities
- 16. BigValuesList
- 21. CommonGoal
- 23. What do each of us need in order to be satisfied and successful in a diverse team?
- 24. NeedsInventory Centre for Nonviolent Communication
- 27. Do it yourself values Needs and expectations card game Each team will have the opportunity to select one of the following techniques to practice SMARTER Canvas Personal Goals
- 29. Time Section Activity Materials/Supplies/Handouts 2’ Introduction Introduce speakers, ask questions on high teams - One booklet per - Colored markers - Post-it notes - Sharpies - Agenda/ Parking Lot - Action Log 3’ Introduction to the Team Introduce team canvas, ask to follow along in 5’ Purpose Play sample purpose video in the background 5’ People & Roles Perform “on-stage demo” of role exercise - Role flip chart poster for demo - Post-it notes with: Role, Name 5’ Strengths & Assets and Weaknesses & Risks Perform “on-stage demo” of Skills matrix Assets, and Weaknesses & risks - Large colored dots: Green, Yellow, Red (20 of each color per person per table) - Flipchart paper 5’ Rules & Activities Review elements of working agreements 5’ Values Perform “on-stage demo” of values exercise - One A4 Management 3.0 Big Values per person - One sheet of blank A3 paper - One A3 “We work best together poster per table - Strips of colored paper (many) - Glue 5’ Common & Personal Goals Read sample team SMARTER goal - One A3 SMARTER goal template for demo 5’ Needs & Expectations Perform “on-stage demo” of needs and exercise - One pack of “All you need is…” cards person - 5 needs statement cards per person 25’ Practical Activities Explain the format of the exercise section - Practical kit per team 10’ Feedback & Closing Answer questions and close off with this slide Sample Facilitation Guide
Editor's Notes
- Hi, I am Angie Doyle. I am an Agile Coach, Trainer and Facilitator from a company called IQbusiness in South Africa. Hi, I am Talia Lancaster, otherwise known as the Sketching Scrum Master … TALIA TO ADD SOME NOTES Stand up if you have heard of high performance teams… PROCESS AS IT PLAYS OUT… (Angie) Stay standing if you have been in a high performance team? This might even be a sports team from school or university or the army. PROCESS AS IT PLAYS OUT… (Talia) Those of you standing… What kind of things did the high performance team you were in value? What attitudes or behaviors did you see in the team? Don’t sit down yet PROCESS AS IT PLAYS OUT… (Angie) Those of you standing… How many of you were involved in helping to create that high performance team culture. How easy was it? PROCESS AS IT PLAYS OUT… (Talia) Just out of interest… for those of you that were in a high performance team… put up your hands if the teams were using an Agile approach… (Angie) Angie: Now team culture is a funny thing. Because it’s all about how people work together and how they treat each other. It’s a difficult thing to grasp because it’s generally unspoken and unwritten. But if it is unspoken and unwritten, how can we be sure that different people in the team have a similar understanding of what is considered normal and acceptable for this team? Now most of us probably work in pretty diverse teams. And this makes team work even more challenging! Because when you work people who look different to you, and speak different to you, and who come from a different background to you – you need to bring your A game! Because you know that not everyone in the team is going to think like you. And that is exactly what we are looking for. Teams that think differently about new problems, together. So in this perfect storm of different opinions and viewpoints, how do we create an intentional high performance culture in our team? Well, we never leave a team culture to chance. From the start, we focus on the things that make teamwork work. And once people can work together well, regardless of the approach they are using, well… then pretty much anything is possible!
- Angie: With all of our teams, we create a team charter – which is essentially the north star for the team. Everyone participates in creating it, so you tend to get more buy-in from everyone in the team. It also provide an easy way for the team to hold themselves and each other accountable to the same principles and behaviors. A team charter is different to an Agile Charter, because the Agile charter also includes discussions around the product. We tend to hold a separate product lift-off workshop in the same week as the team charter – but that is a whole other workshop If you want a really great book on Agile Chartering, check out Liftoff: Launching Agile Teams & Projects by Diana Larsen and Ainsely Nies. It is a good idea to create a team charter when you are creating new teams, when you feel stuck in a rut, or when you are onboarding new team members. We tend to run through our team charter at least every quarter or so just to make sure we are still aligned as a team. After running a few team lift-off sessions, we came across a canvas that consolidates almost everything we do in a liftoff in one place. So while we didn’t create it, we do think it is pretty cool. You can check out how the creators complete the Team Canvas on their website. But for the purposes of this workshop, we are going to take you through some of the techniques we use with our teams. Now the reality is that we tend to take one or two days to do a team lift-off. And we only have just over an hour with you today. So we are going to touch lightly on some sections, but will give you a chance to practice some of the techniques. You can follow along on the different sections in your handy pocket guides. - Inspiration, run through – option some activities - Should be 2 days
- Talia: We always kick off our sessions with the central part of the canvas, which is purpose. And of course it helps when you have a strong sense of purpose or reason to exist. There are a few examples of our favorite purpose statements in your pocket guide, but for today we wanted to share an idea of a really fun way to connect your team to their purpose. First of all, get your team in front of their customers. This is the best way to help them to connect to why they are doing what they are doing. And then take some pictures or camera footage of the encounter. Behind us is an example of some footage that was taken of a team that my mom is part of. She is one of the Reading Gogos who operate in the East Rand. Essentially, they are a group of about 40 elderly retired ladies who travel to township schools to help the learners in the foundation phase communicate better in English. They do this by reading books to the learners, listening to the learners read and playing educations games with them – all in English. Now this is a great example of how to capture the interactions your team has with their customers – and is something that you can play back to them during Sprint Planning, or Backlog Refinement if you feel like the team is becoming distant from their purpose. This doesn’t need to be professional footage either – your cell phone camera will work perfectly well.
- Angie & Talia: Now that we know why we exist as a team, it is probably a good idea to start to get to know each other a little more. At the start of the session, we through a few questions to help people get acquainted with each other. Now we want to start understanding what it is they do. The reality is that we often make assumptions about what other people do, based on the roles they held before they joined the team. And we want to uncover those assumptions – because that is what tends to lead to conflict and misunderstandings. Firstly, we ask people to write down each role they fill on a separate post-it note. In all our years of working with Agile teams, we have yet to come across a team who says that they are all development team members. When that starts to change, we will need to rethink this section. For now, this seems to work. Once we have all the roles in the team, we stick them up on the pre-prepared role posters on the walls. DEMO USING A FLIPCHART/ ON THE PPT. We ask the team to write down the responsibilities for the roles they just wrote down on a scrap piece of paper. They aren’t allowed to show it to anybody just yet. We then ask the team to stand in front of a role that is not their own. And we give them a few minutes at that poster to write down what they think this role does. After a few minutes, we ask them to shift to the right and go stand at the next poster. If that is their role, we ask them to move on somewhere else – it doesn’t matter if there is one or two people per posted. They will read what has been written down by the previous person and build on and add in missing information. Once the time slot is up, we ask people to rotate to the next poster and follow the same practice, each time reducing the amount of time spent at a poster. And so we go until each role is populated with some info. It usually takes about 5 or 6 rounds to have sufficient information. We then ask the team to stand by the roles they believe they fulfill and to write their names on a 4x6 post it note and stick it over the role on the A3 sheet. If two people fulfill the same role, they just stick both their names in the relevant section. We give them a few minutes to read through the information silently and then we start to go around the room role by role. Each person will read out the statements written by the others and either agree or disagree that they fulfill the responsibilities listed. If they disagree, we have a chat about where it should go. Once they have been through the written comments, they then review what they wrote down at the beginning and add anything that hasn’t been included yet. We then move on to the next person. Rinse and repeat. At the end of this technique, we will have a consolidated view of what people do and don’t do in the team. SHOW THE POSTERS! We usually finish off the section by adding our contact details on a post-it note so that someone (often the Scrum Master) can create a consolidate contact sheet.
- Talia: Think of a fun example! Competency matrix: Brainstorm skills (not roles) 2 x 4 x group Write names on the top Write the skills down the side Add stickers – Novice, Intermediate, Expert > Add another visual element to show where we do not have the skill, and where we do not like doing that activity e.g. unhappy face on the sticker. Include soft and hard skills – although soft skills I do a bit later once the team has had time to get used to each other Weaknesses – get someone to say what they think their strngest weakness is e.g. I get hangry… It is not a good idea to work through lunch times without eating Highlight the risks of skills not being present. E.g. Put an exclamation mark
- Talia & Angie For this section, we like to use Adam Weidbart’s Scrum Kick off planner as a guide, or a variation of it. This is where we are going to agree on the Team Name, our preferred method of collaboration and the tools we are going to use – like Slack for collaboration, Zoom for virtual sessions, etc. We also discuss and agree how we are going to visualize our work and if we are going to have a physical or a virtual board. We also discuss our core working hours. Some people might start early and leave early, while others might arrive late and leave late. We also discuss if there are any specific cultural or religious events we need to be aware of. Such as Muslim team members that need to go mosque for prayers at Friday midday. Or Jewish team members that need to get home before sunset on a Friday. Obvisouly, if we have a distributed team, we will discuss how we are going to collaborate across multiple time zones. We also discuss how we want to work when people are on sick leave – is there a buddy that keeps them up to date with what is happening… Or when we go on extended leave. We even talk about the process we are going to follow when we are applying for leave – just so there is no confusion. We also talk about the specifics on events that the team will be following. So if they are a Scrum team, how long is the sprint, Which date and time slot will we use for Sprint Planning, Sprint Review and Sprint Retrospective. When and where will we have our daily stand up. We will also agree what Ready looks like for our team, as well as agree on our Definition of Done. These are not trivial discussions and this section usually takes us a good couple of hours to complete. If we are going to use a specific type of estimation, we will also discuss and agree on it here. We will also build up a calendar for the next 3 months and identify if there are any special dates that are coming up – maybe team members birthdays, or a special cultural or religious event. An example of that would be something like Diwali where our Hindu collegaues bring in sweetmeats after their celebration, or Heritage day in South Africa where we all agree to come to work in traditional garbs. Our final conversation point is around our Conflict protocol. How are we going to behave when things start to get hot? When we first start with teams, this usually takes the form of a “safe” word. So if someone is feeling unsafe, or threatened, they say the safe word, the team takes a 5 minute break and then agrees how to proceed. Usually the Scrum Master agrees to handle pineapple siutations.
- Talia & Angie For this section, we like to use Adam Weidbart’s Scrum Kick off planner as a guide, or a variation of it. This is where we are going to agree on the Team Name, our preferred method of collaboration and the tools we are going to use – like Slack for collaboration, Zoom for virtual sessions, etc. We also discuss and agree how we are going to visualize our work and if we are going to have a physical or a virtual board. We also discuss our core working hours. Some people might start early and leave early, while others might arrive late and leave late. We also discuss if there are any specific cultural or religious events we need to be aware of. Such as Muslim team members that need to go mosque for prayers at Friday midday. Or Jewish team members that need to get home before sunset on a Friday. Obvisouly, if we have a distributed team, we will discuss how we are going to collaborate across multiple time zones. We also discuss how we want to work when people are on sick leave – is there a buddy that keeps them up to date with what is happening… Or when we go on extended leave. We even talk about the process we are going to follow when we are applying for leave – just so there is no confusion. We also talk about the specifics on events that the team will be following. So if they are a Scrum team, how long is the sprint, Which date and time slot will we use for Sprint Planning, Sprint Review and Sprint Retrospective. When and where will we have our daily stand up. We will also agree what Ready looks like for our team, as well as agree on our Definition of Done. These are not trivial discussions and this section usually takes us a good couple of hours to complete. If we are going to use a specific type of estimation, we will also discuss and agree on it here. We will also build up a calendar for the next 3 months and identify if there are any special dates that are coming up – maybe team members birthdays, or a special cultural or religious event. An example of that would be something like Diwali where our Hindu collegaues bring in sweetmeats after their celebration, or Heritage day in South Africa where we all agree to come to work in traditional garbs. Our final conversation point is around our Conflict protocol. How are we going to behave when things start to get hot? When we first start with teams, this usually takes the form of a “safe” word. So if someone is feeling unsafe, or threatened, they say the safe word, the team takes a 5 minute break and then agrees how to proceed. Usually the Scrum Master agrees to handle pineapple siutations.
- Talia: Now that we understand our team and personal goals, it is time to move on to what we value as a team. What do we really stand for and believe in. We play a variation of a values game created by the happiness at work experts over at Management 3.0. This is one of the exercises that you will have some time to practice a little later. What you do is give each person in the team a Management 3.0 Big Values List Ask the team to select a facilitator if there isn’t someone assuming that role Individually, circle your top 5 values from the list, based on your current project, situation, and personalities. Once everyone is done, read out your values one by one. The facilitator will record on a flipchart each time a new word is read out – so that we have a consolidated list of the most important words. Give each team member 3 dots to vote on which values they believe are the most important to focus on for the team. Either one dot on three separate values OR Two dots on value, one dot on another OR Three dots on one value The facilitator will sum up the votes and identify the values with the highest 3-5 votes. Once we have identified the top values, we need to agree what they mean. Now most teams will want to include the word “respect” into their team values. And it is a really good word. However, in the Zulu culture in South Africa, it is a sign of respect not to look a tribal elder, or any older person in the eye when they are talking to you. It is also a sign of respect to be lower than someone who is who seen as superior to you in the tribal hierarchy – so many people will sit down before being asked to do so. Now while this behaviour won’t be a problem in rural areas, it can be seen at best as odd, and at worst as rude in westernised culture. Unless we share the same definition of what behaviour is considered acceptable for a particular value, agreeing on your values won’t mean much. Show the poster – “We work best together when” – and explain how to write the value statements for each value. There can be more than one behavior statement for each value. Once each pair has come up with a few statements for each value, ask them to pair up with another pair (i.e. form a group of 4) and to consolidate similar behavior statements. Once each quad has consolidated similar behavior statements, ask them to group up with another group (i.e. form a group of 8) and to consolidate similar behavior statements. Once there are only 2 groups left, have a large group discussion to share and consolidate similar behavior statements for each value. We stick them onto a values poster so that we can refer back to our values during retrospectives or discussions as a team. Stick the consolidated list up on the walls. Depending on the environment, we will often stick it up on the scrum board.
- Angie: Now that we understand what people do, it is vital that team members understand how people outside the team will measure the success of the team, as well as how the team is going to measure their own success. Otherwise, how are they going to be able to prioritize their work? When we talk about wording goals, we want to move away from 1980s beauty queen statements of “I want to solve world hunger”. And rather move into something that we can really get our teeth into. The concept of SMART goals has been around for years, but few people really understand what that means. So we still land up with vague goals where we don’t actually know how we are going to know if we are on track. We prefer the acronym of SMARTER because it introduces some inspect and adapt into the process. Just so we are all on the same page, we use the following definition for SMARTER S – Specific M – Measureable A – Achievable R – Relevant T – Time-bound E – Evaluate R – Re-do A better word for Achievable would probably be feasible. But then that would leave us with SMFRT which doesn’t have such a ring SHOW A SMURF ON THE POSTER Let’s go through some things that will help us come up with great goals. And remember to do this with a positive attitude because it has potential to be an energy sapper for the team. S – Specific. When setting a goal, we want to be very specific about what we want to accomplish. It isn’t a detailed of how you are going to meet a goal but it does included some answers to your popular “W” questions. M – Measurable. How are we going to know if we meet the goal? Well, first of all we need to know where we are coming from. Which means we need to know the current state of affairs, or we won’t know if we have made progress. It is always a good idea to set some milestones (maybe every 3 months or so). This way, we will be able to break things down into specific tasks to achieve those milestone. A - Achievable or Feasible helps us to focus on what we need to make a goal attainable. This might require developing new skills, or even adopting a completely different mindset. And it is important that it inspire the team, and doesn’t disillusion them. R – Relevant. Is this goal in line with the broader business strategy? Or are we going in an opposite direction? Is it worthwhile? T – Time bound. Anyone can set goals, but if it doesn’t have realistic timing then it is very unlikely to succeed. Providing a target date for specific deliverables is very important. Providing time constraints can create a sense of urgency, but remember the “A” for Attainable. We need to be able to do it or we risk completely de-motivating the team. If a goal will take 6 months to complete, define what should be achieved half way through the process (or even sooner). E – Evaluate and R – Re-d0. The idea behind the E and R is that you should constantly be evaluating your goals and re-setting them as needed. Company directions change, personal goals evolve, so maybe a goal you set six months ago no longer makes sense. Show Goal for Blog traffic on PPT In addition to how we will measure our success, we also want to know what the personal goals are for people in the team. This will ensure that there are no hidden agendas in the team. If levels are trust are still pretty low, this can be pretty edgy for some. So we might wait to explore this more during a future retrospective. Or we keep the statement pretty light e.g. Become better at business analysis. Take 3 minutes and use the goal template on your table to come up with your own personal goal statement. You aren’t going to finish it because these take some time to craft. But it will give you an idea of an activity you can use with your teams.
- Angie: Now we move onto something that is hard for many people. Expressing needs. A need is something that is essential to us and is very important for us to live a healthy and satisfied life. To create high performing teams, we need to tell our team members what kinds of needs we hope to have met through being part of this team. Everyone is different, so this is one of those things we don’t want to leave to guess work. We sometimes do this exercise once a team has been together for a while as it might be a bit edgy to do at the start. Regardless of when we do it, we do this as a silent technique. This is one of the techniques you will have an opportunity to play around with a little later. We have created a pack of need cards that we give to each team member. These needs cards are a sub-set of needs based on the list from the Centre for Non-Violent communication. You are welcome to create your own cards using all of the needs if you prefer. We have found that these ones are good enough to start the conversation in the right direction. Each team member silently orders the pack of needs cards in order from left to right. Left being the least important and right being the most important. We then ask them to move the needs that might be impacted by being part of this team upwards. This will give us a sense of what are our personal needs and what may be impacted by the team. Now the reality is that no one can give you your needs. They can only help to align their strategies for meeting them to each of the other people in the system. Now that we have identified which needs should be shared with the team, we want to give people a low risk way to communicate the needs to the team. We quite like using a user-story type format here. As Angie I need…the space to be creative…. So I request from the team… the opportunity to include visual elements in our requirement dicussions. We only need to write these statement for the top 3 to 5 needs per person. Once done, we ask each team member to hand them to the person sitting on their right. This is also done silently. If someone needs clarity on what was written on the need statement, we ask them to write it down on a piece of paper that they keep for later. Continue to rotate to the right until all the needs statements have been expressed. We then have a conversation to discuss the questions that people have about specific need statements. Once everyone has read all the needs, we have a conversation to see if our behavior statements need any additions to incorporate the needs of people in the team. This is again one of those things that we will periodically review to see if how we are helping each other to achieve their needs. Each person keeps their own needs statement as a reminder that no one else in the team can give them their needs. This is still something that they own, and take responsibility for if conversation need to happen about needs that are not being fulfilled.
- Now we don’t have time to practice every single technique we have mentioned today. But there are 3 techniques that take about 20 minutes to complete. On your tables you will find a kit to complete one of the following techniques: Do it yourself values Team Competency Matrix Needs and expectations card game In your team, decide which game you would like to play for the next 20 minutes or so. If you finish early, you are welcome to start another one.
- In order to facilitate the session, we still need the normal facilitation tools you would have in any other normal facilitated session: A question based agenda – the brain loves questions, which is why we do it this way A parking lot for parking topics and discussions that are going to completely derail us from our purpose An action log to record all of the actions coming out of the session – we like it to be very specific on what the action is, who is going to do the what and when they think they will be able to do it by. We have also created a facilitation guide for the lift-off so we know what we are doing where, together with an idea of timings, the timer we are going to use for timeboxed activities, the outcomes we hope we are going to get, and any materials we need for each section. We also prep all the posters and flipcharts beforehand so that we aren’t wasting valuable collaboration time. For this session, we are going to pretend that each table cluster is a team and we are going to work on what we hope will be a fun and meaningful case study…