Bored in the standup? Raise your hand...

I just read this interesting post about a scrum team that borrowed the concepts of yellow and red cards from soccer to aid their standups. 3 yellow cards or 1 red card means "move on".

Unfortunately, I live in a country where soccer is not the biggest sport... and I'm sure we would just misplace the cards.

So, let me share what has been working for my team for over a year now...

If anyone in the group feels that the current topic is not relevant to the group, they slowly raise their hand. They do it slowly to not be obtrusive and rude. If other people agree with this person, they can decide to also raise their hand. If there seems to be visible consensus, the people speaking must quickly assess their conversation and decide how to close it. They can either put it on the parking lot, or realize they aren't getting anywhere with it and just stop.

The parking lot is a list on the wipeboard in the team room. The person closest to the board writes the topic and the names of the people who are involved. At the end of the meeting, those people stay behind to pick the conversation back up.

If the person raising their hand is alone when their hand is fully raised, they suddenly realize that they are alone in their stance and drop their hand. At this point they wait for the good of the team since clearly, everyone else finds the conversation valuable.

And yes... our standup is short. We have about 15-20 people every day... and we average about 17 minutes (15-20 minutes) even with these included conversations.

Recently, we had an amusing moment when someone raised their hand on themselves...

The PO is part of the team, get over it!

The other day I posted about charging a fine for being late to the standup. I knew this would get some reactions, but one thing I should have been clearer about was that this wasn't a team problem, it was a PO problem. Sure enough, several of the LinkedIn forums got fired up over it and some heavy hitters had some good points to make (thanks Rachel Davies!).

I agree that this concept can backfire (fine, I'll pay the fine so I don't have to come), and there are solutions to that (double the fine for each offense). I also agree that if the majority of people need a fine to appear at the standup, then there is a much bigger problem occurring.

So, that background aside... one of the conversations appropriately focused on the issues we were having with the Product Owner. Why didn't he want to participate? Why was this an issue?

Lesson learned on that point: when this company went agile, we trained the developers, then the QA and analysts. Following the rules of Scrum & XP, we understood the metaphor of the Chicken and Pig very well. Unfortunately by following this rule, we optimized the team but de-optimized the whole value stream. It wasn't until the PO's got some agile training that they understood how to evolve for the new agile world.

This post is in response to the following comment in regards to fining the PO for being late to the standup:

Why wait for the PO for a stand up? The PO should not be in a position to cause the problem. We try and utilize the Chicken and the Pig approach.

And my response:

There are many people who feel the PO is a member of the team: http://www.danube.com/blog/dan_rawsthorne/who_is_the_project_manager_in_scrum
Thus making them a Pig.

Also, the chicken and pig concept is dead in my mind. It's a coping mechanism for bad managers: http://www.langrsoft.com/blog/2008/08/pigs-chickens-and-asses.html

As our agile team matured, we found that many of our early retrospective discussions led back to the fact that the PO wasn't accessible enough. When your PO is the voice of many customers distributed globally, the PO is very important. If you have direct access to your customers (example: internal employees), then this might not be as important.

The last thing you need is for a team to go to the sprint review and demo lots of software that fails PO acceptance. Instead of making decisions in his absence and hoping they were right, avoid this waste and just treat him as a team member. If you can't do this, then get a proxy in place (lead analyst), or get direct access to the most important users to reduce the risk (beta customer).

Late to the standup, pay a fee! (or not?)

In my last company we realized something very quickly. If the standup meeting is only 15 minutes long, then anyone who is 5 minutes late probably causes the meeting to extend by 30% while we repeat stuff. If we aren't repeating stuff for the late person, then you have to question how engaged that person is in the team.

With that in mind, we started complaining about lateness over 1 or 2 individuals... one of which was the PO. His initial solution was to start without him. We poked at this and it became "meet without me". This turned into our marginalization of his input, which degraded to major problems during sprint review because the customer (PO) wasn't on the same page as the team.

So, we agreed to make this marriage work and the PO said he'd make an effort.

The cycle started over. He always had excuses. This meant that other people started riding his coat-tails and coming late too. Eventually the standup was a mess because it wasn't predictable. People who were on time got punished by those who were late (and didn't respect the team).

How did we solve it? We added a fine. Now, Foo wrote a great blog post about how this will backfire. Once you put a price on something, it's valued a different way. Sure enough, our PO threw $50 in the goldfish bowl and stated "That will cover me for the month and buy pizza for the team" as if he was doing something good.

New rule... $1 / day for being late, fee doubles for consecutive days.
Outcome: PO is present every other day and buys pizza for the team every month or so. This was a compromise everyone could live with.

Walking the Board...

Several weeks ago we changed our standup structure. At first I kept it to myself due to my fear of backlash from the agile police over blogging about it. But, this week's InfoQ post prompted me to bring it up since what we did was mentioned in the article.

Problem:
Our team was starting to drone in the standups. As more people swarmed on a story, there was a lack of self-management when communicating against the story goal. Translation: Person 2 in the circle would discuss Story B, and then person 3, 5, and 7 in the circle would wait for their turn to share their piece of the story work. It was if we had mulched our sprint backlog and put focus on people instead of delivered business value.

Brainstorm:
Ditch the 3 questions! What? Yeah, I said it, ditch the 3 questions. Actually, wait... keep the questions. Ditch the person rotation. Yeah... that's the answer.

Solution:
Our pseudo-Kanban board (I say pseudo since it is not by the book) is already prioritized from top to bottom by the CEO/product owner. Now, instead of going around the room by person, we work from top to bottom. I play the role of scrum master, so I point at each card. The team speaks about what they did yesterday, what they will do today, and what is blocking them.

Outcome:
Suddenly the room is lit up with energy. Instead of having people discuss their slice of the work, the team is speaking about the whole story. They talk towards the goal of delivery and business value. Cross-communication is triggered (and taken offline as needed). I'll admit that this didn't happen at first (at first they talked to the guy pointing at the card on the board), but it has happened over time with my coaching. There's more interest in moving the card since there is immediate clarity on where we stand with it. Nobody later in the circle is going to surprise us on a prior topic.

Now... you could easily argue that this is stupid. A mature team would be smart enough to speak at the right time and not just in turn. I agree. Look at it a different way though... we are talking through our board in order of importance to the business. The most energy and focus is on the right stuff. Our conversation is less about the who, and more about the what.

Turns out, David Anderson calls this "walking the board". I propose that it's a good alternative and we are proving it!

Infusing Some Kanban (follow-up)...

A week ago, I posted about infusing a few Kanban concepts into our team process and making other tweaks to our standing meetings. Here is a follow-up for those of you who are interested in how it turned out.

In parallel to the previous bullets:

• our cards on the wall have not been restricted to 5. BUT, the good news is that every time we go over 5 the team yells penalty at the CEO (the product owner) and requests that we swarm on existing cards before moving to new ones. The intention is there. (improvement!)
• the CEO is doing a better job of throwing things into the queue as we pull instead of having a weekend brainstorm and puking out a whole new set of priorities on Monday morning (improvement!)
  
• Our standups are more efficient and effective. At first I thought we were missing things because less was said and we ended early, but I'm slowly growing confidence that we are simply focusing on the correct things, consolidating topics into single threads, and reducing the noise. (improvement!)

Also:

• We are definitely focused on the "what" now instead of the "who".
• Standups are easier to follow for outsiders (if desired)
• It is easier to see where things are getting delayed

I will also say that it has become easier for me to coach. Instead of focusing on all the things I am trying to understand and piece together, it is easier for me to keep an ear for anti-patterns and push the team a little more.

So far, a success. I guess I am now a heretic for morphing the standing meeting away from the 3 questions per person. I can live with that.

Raise your hand...

There is an interesting discussion in a LinkedIn group about how much side discussion should be allowed in a stand-up. Many of the answers revolve around the famous three questions and why they are important... unfortunately, this may be missing the point of the original question. The question didn't preclude the "3 questions", but instead is focusing on how long tangents should be tolerated as a result of the answers to the 3 questions and the pursuing discussion.

I'm a believer that the stand-up is about saving time and creating a feedback loop. If someone has something to share that most people should hear, then the stand-up is potentially the most efficient time to have this discussion. Telling people to stop talking after answering the 3 questions is going to turn the meeting into a status meeting. In my group, people use this time to also talk about lessons learned in their prior day (I screwed up and here's how you can keep from repeating my mistake...).

I have two possible solutions for this question:

• parking lot: In my last group we went around the group once and answered the 3 questions. Any tangents or questions that lasted more than a few seconds were halted by the scrum master and written down into a "parking lot" list. After everyone had taken their turn in the stand-up, the parking lot was quickly prioritized based on urgency and overlapping resources and quickly knocked out post-stand-up (or scheduled later).
• hand raising: My current group is still learning what it means to be agile and is shifting from a command and control culture towards a self-managed one. Our rule is simple... people say what needs to be said at the stand-up. If anyone in the stand-up feels that they are gaining nothing from the current thread of conversation, they slowly start to raise their hand. When the majority of people have their hand up, the minority of people still interested simply state that they will take the conversation offline and we go back to the 3 questions and working through the stand-up. If I'm the only one with my hand up, then I quickly drop it with the realization that the team finds importance in the topic and that the most efficient time to have this conversation is right now. Maybe we aren't doing a stand-up for that brief moment, but we are being adaptable (agile) in our needs.
  

That being said, our average stand-up runs between 10 and 15 minutes every day. The hand raising approach creates a sort of peer pressure system where people are conscious of the potential that hands will go up.

Don't use a germ ball...

I know about the pattern where scrum groups use a talking token during their standing meeting. It's some random object that is used to signify who is in control of the conversation. If I'm holding it, it's my turn to answer the three questions. If what I say leads to a short conversation, I am responsible for reeling it in and getting the meeting going back around the circle.

Some groups keep it interesting with random rules around the token. Last one in gets it and starts off. We go in different directions each day which is decided by the first person. We can refactor our standing sequence to change order of turn mid-meeting. Some groups pass it to someone in random order to keep everyone on their toes.

This is all good stuff, but do me a favor. Don't make it a germ ball. I've had this happen in two groups now. The token is something everyone touches. The first flu season comes around and suddenly it's the germ ball. It's the reason that everyone is sick at the same time. No amount of anti-bacterial spray can clean that stupid thing, and the talking token doesn't work if everyone is scared to touch it.

In my group, we have a squishy rubber ball. We kick it around. The downside is that it gets disgustingly dirty on the floor. We call it the dirt ball, sometimes the snot bugger ball. BUT, nobody touches it with anything other than their shoes. Nobody gets sick from it.

We even built a house for it out of a shoe box. I'm sure the cleaning crew is confused by the dirtball house with the dirtball at rest at night... but we don't get sick, so it works for us.

Pit Bull for a moment...

To understand the pit bull reference, read my post about pit bulls vs. puppies that focuses on extreme personality types in the work environment.

Many of us have had a work day where we are facing a major problem. We stayed up all night trying to fix the problem and we are tired, grumpy, or even downright nasty. We go into a standing meeting and vent. We might even talk about how we should have seen the problem coming months ago and shouldn't find ourselves in this situation. Grumble, grumble, GRUMBLE.

STOP!!!

You are asking for help. You are attempting to point out a problem. You are calling attention to a cause that should rally the troops. Is your current attitude the best way to achieve this goal?

We all do it. Take a breath. Point out that you were venting and apologize. Start over on the topic.

If you want to solve a problem, it is important that you communicate things in a way that empower people to help you. Don't create a situation where they leave you alone for the day.

If you are the leader in the group, speak up. Don't let the temporary pit bull deflate the team's energy for the day. Protect the team, and provide the disgruntled support. They aren't grumbling for nothing. Remember, it is a frustrated cry for help.

Comment: Stand-ups

Agile Revolution comments that people didn't show up for his stand-up today because the scrum master wasn't there. What does this mean? Read this, my comments, and add your own.

One of my main thoughts is that if a person values something, they will leverage it. How do you help someone see value in the standup?