Hi,
This week I’d like to write upon perception. According to Cambridge dictionary:
“a belief or opinion, often held by many people and based on how things seem”
From time to time, individuals have a personal believe regard some issue although the truth could be a different one objectively or has many faces for a specific issue.
Theoretically, we could take 2 scrum teams as followed:
· Scrum masters with same knowledge base.
· Members with same R&D qualification.
And yet, some members will tell you that the other team is doing a much better job. As such you will probably ask those members to elaborate or give some examples. But, you will be notice soon that those become a stories rather than stick into facts… once again the perception is involved.
How could we avoid this situation? – Well, we could use objective KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) rather than subjective (perception) ones. This means we will use an agreed KPIs, such as:
· Stories amount during single sprint –If stories are small enough,
· Velocity,
· Burn down chart slope.
Just, to make a subjective & non-realistic KPIs back into “reality”.
Alternately, we could take a close look on ourselves rather than others.Followed some examples:
As scrum master may ask – what is not working on my scrum? What can be improved? -And take action to adjust the process accordingly.
As a members you can always think of: Did I givea realistic time estimation for a task/story? Did I take too many items on myself? Did I share info with my team or raise issue on time?
Another approach for “breaking” perception is being involved. Sometimes, members will do only what he/she has been told to do. Why? –Since, no one has told them where they doing above or lower than expected or even upon theirs impacts upon theirs jobs. So, to get over this you simply need to:
· Take coffee time or lunch with others for sync & share info.
· Share knowledge – don’t be afraid to share (Confluence, JIRA, Emails & etc)
· Extra-mile – always think: what is the “extra” that I can deliver or test just to make the difference.
As you can understand the neighbour grass is not always a green.
Enjoy,
Gilad
What is not working on Scrum? 