Tag Archives: teamwork

The Planning Game – An Estimation Method for Agile Teams

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Purpose: estimate the effort for User Stories (Product Backlog Items, Value Drivers)

Prerequisites: all items have a value estimate, each item is written on a separate note card, full team membership is known and available for planning, each team member has a set of planning game cards

Process:

  1. The team goes through all the items and chooses the one which has the lowest effort. Write the number “2″ on this card (usually in the bottom right corner).
  2. The team looks at the item with the highest value.
  3. Each team member thinks about how much effort the team will expend to fully complete all the work for the item. Comparing this work to the work effort for the smallest item, each team member selects a card that represents this relative effort. For example, if you think that it requires ten times the effort, you would select the “20″ card. It is not permissible to select two cards.
  4. Each team member places their selected card, face down, on the table. Once all team members have done this, turn the cards over.
  5. If all team members show the same value, then write the value on the item and go back to step three for the next item. (Or if there are no more items, then the process is complete.)
  6. The person with the highest and the lowest value cards both briefly explain why they voted the way they did. If there is a Product Owner present, this person can add any clarifications about the item.
  7. For any given item, if a person is highest or lowest more than once, then each explanation must include new information or reasoning.
  8. Once explanations are complete, the team members collect their cards and go back to step three.

Notes:
- it is extremely important that the voting for an item continues until all team members unanimously vote the same way (this way team members and outside stakeholders cannot blame any individual for “wrong” estimates)
- in Scrum, it is normal for the Product Owner to be present during this process, but not to participate in the voting
- in OpenAgile, it is acceptable for people serving as Growth Facilitators for a team to participate in the voting
- voting should not include extensive discussion
- if more than one person has the lowest or highest vote, usually just one person shares their reason in order to help the process move quickly
- the first few items will often take 10 or 15 rounds of voting before the team arrives at a unanimous vote
- later on, items may take just one or two rounds of voting to arrive at a unanimous decision
- some teams, where trust levels are high, will discard with the use of physical cards and just briefly discuss votes

The planning game is used at the start of a project with the full list of user stories. In this case, it is reasonable to expect the team to average two minutes per user story, and an appropriate amount of time needs to be set aside to accommodate going through the whole list.

The Planning Game is also used any time that there is a change in the list of user stories: re-ordering, adding or removing user stories, or changes to a single user story. When such a change happens, the team can re-estimate any user story in the whole list. When starting a Cycle or Sprint or Iteration, all the user stories in the list should have up-to-date estimates so that estimation work is avoided in the Cycle planning meeting.

Finally, the team can decide to re-estimate any user stories at any time for any reason. However, it is important for team members to remember that estimation is non-value-added work and the time spent on it should be minimized.

The BIG Difference Between Agile Teams and Project Teams

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Last week I ran an Agile Coach Training session in-house for a large Canadian organization. It was just myself and five other participants. We were discussing possible things to do if there is a person on an agile team who is not able to work effectively in that sort of environment. One “intervention” we discussed was to “Assign Work”…

Pause

Now hopefully everyone who just read that phrase “Assign Work” had all sorts of alarm bells go off in their head!!!!

As an Agile coach, I would only do this under extreme circumstances. And I would always be fully aware of the consequence of assigning work. I would be removing that person from the team by Assigning Work. A person is not in an Agile (self-organizing) team if they need to be assigned work.

Guess what?!? THAT is the BIG difference between Agile Teams and Project (or Functional) Teams.

On a project, the Project Manager gets someone onto the team by assigning them work!!!!

On an Agile Team, a person is removed from the team by assigning them work.

Have you seen this happen? How did the assignee feel?

Seven Essential Teamwork Skills

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I’ve been researching teamwork lately.  I just finished reading “The Discipline of Teams” by Katzenbach and Smith which is an HBR summary of their much more substantial book “The Wisdom of Teams”.  I decided that it would be good to be able to describe the essential skills an individual needs to acquire in order to work effectively in a team.  First stop, Google and a search of “list of teamwork skills”.

Strangely, not much turned up on the first page.  The best result is found at “7 Essential Skills for Teamwork” which is a page on a public elementary school web site.  So, here’s my adaptation of their list:

Active Listening

Active listening is a skill that allows a person to completely focus on the communication of another person including both verbal and non-verbal aspects.  Active listening requires the ability to not think of your own responses until after a person has finished speaking.  One simple way of doing this is to echo what a person is saying in your silent internal voice.  When someone says “I think we should build a new gimbal on the widget”, you are saying exactly the same thing in your own mind.  Active listening also requires that you request clarification, often by rephrasing what a person has said and asking if you have understood correctly.

Questioning

Being able to frame and express questions effectively helps us understand and integrate knowledge into our own mental model of the world, or even to modify our mental model.  Asking questions is easy.  Asking good questions is much harder.  We need to use an appropriate set of words and tone of voice so that we do not alienate or offend the recipient of the question.  For example, asking “why did you do that?” will often put people on the defensive since they will assume that you mean you disagree with their actions.  Instead, saying “I do not understand the reason you did that.  Could you please explain it to me?” can be a much more gentle way of getting to the same information.

Logical Argument

When presenting an idea or position, being able to logically support it is important to exploring the truth of it.  This includes being able to share your assumptions or axioms, the data you are basing your argument upon, and the logical sequence of reasoning to reach your conclusion.  Being able to avoid fallacious logical methods is also important.

Respecting

Showing respect includes acknowledging the fundamental human value of the existence of your teammates, and being able to step back from your own understanding of the world to acknowledge the legitimate nature of the perspective that other people have.  This does not mean that you have to let teammates get away with inappropriate behavior.  In fact, respect for your teammates will allow you to support them in behaving in ways that are in alignment with their fundamental nobility as human beings.

Helping

Offering help and actually following through with real assistance are aspects of helping.  When you suspect that a team member is struggling with something, you offer to help both verbally and with your actions.  This can take the form of offering information, offering emotional support, offering to assist with problem-solving, or actually taking action to do an activity together.  When we help someone, we share their burden.

Sharing

Sharing our knowledge, time, skills or physical resources are all aspects of sharing.  Sharing among team members is focused on those things which will help a team reach its goals.  This is similar to helping except that it tends to be more of a transaction than an ongoing activity.  The transaction is that you give a gift and then the other person uses that gift to meet their needs.  Sharing does not require reciprocity.  If you share something with another person, you should not expect that that person will return the gift at any time in the future.

Participating

It’s probably obvious, but in order to effectively be on a team, you need to participate!  Participation itself is mostly obvious: do work with the other team members.  However, there are also some less obvious aspects of it.  You are not participating when the team is having a discussion, you find it boring, so you check your email.  You are not participating when the team makes a decision and you abstain from helping to execute the decision because you disagree.  You are not participating in a work team when you are mentally checked out because of a crisis at home.

All of these skills are critical teamwork skills… but there may be others.  Do you think there are other skills missing from this list that are critical for effective teamwork?