What's your prototype for leading teams in this remote set up?
How did you make your Scrum team deliver and stay focused?
What tools that comes into your mind when engaging people in the virtual world?
Today the world is running on 2 words, “success” and “money”. They proliferated to such an extent that, in order to sustain in the market place, and to address this new challenge of remote working, organizations started using “IoT”, "NLP", "ML" to gather data, process and derive meaningful and structured data patterns. These are the data points that holds the key to make an effective decision and drive meaningful conversations, planning, setting up vision and goals.
One such approach is the hot topic in the cosmopolitan world-“leading teams towards hyper productive in remote set up” environment. The facilitator/ servant-leader/ manager/ leader who is in people managing role is on a constant run to learn, practice, implement and virtually “lead” teams:
In this article, I’m unfolding my approach (prototype) as a servant-leader, facilitator in one of my ex-projects during this pandemic.
I started with the below note:
I made my notes that reflected: Understanding the problem>> experimenting the solutions/ ideas >> Observe the result(s)>> again experiment/try new solutions. In a nutshell, design thinking approach can also come to the forte.
Outcome of the initial survey:
I conducted a survey with my Scrum team members to understand the best and worst scenario’s that’s effecting their work. Listed are the points observed:
Now that, I understood their real time views and situation, my job became easy to explore the drivers in keeping them motivated, agreeable and enabled. Remember, we are a Scrum team with every person having accountability, shared vision, trust, commitment (basically I’m referring to Scrum values).
My decisions are always based on the “purpose”. My purpose, “how to lead the team and make them hyper productive” lead me to unfold some tools to meet the shared goal.
1. Establishing working agreements: Since we are exploring and getting used to remote working, the working agreements are a definite must before the active Sprint starts. Listed few are captured in confluence and agreed upon:
2. Virtual collaboration tools: Zoom, Go-to meetings, Google meet as per the management decision and ease of use by team members voting. These platforms enabled members see, greet, send thumbs up for the good job done.
3. Transparency and visibility: We initially tried “Trello”, “Google Jam board” and a friend recommended tool "Sococo". But these tools took time for the team to explore which slightly delayed our Sprint goal. So, we completely relied on “Atlassian Confluence” for product roadmap, requirements drafting, Sprint planning with estimations (story points), draw the wireframes/ mock up’s through market place plugins, using spaces for team and management activities, blogs for team development activities, releases, code views, preparing client personas etc.
4. Managing work through Jira tickets: Basically, all the projects these days are running on Atlassian Jira tool which enables teams to track their work progress (Kanban board), log their efforts, develop and maintain the product backlogs, prioritization and automation with few clicks and JQL/ filters, market place plugins, Sprint reports that are shared to the relevant stakeholders.
5. Confining the meeting hours:
6. 30-60-90: Planning your work in progress (WIP), feature development using the Kanban’s 30-60-90 roadmap.
7. Team rewards, engagement and dial your helping shoulder:
While, the above seems more normal and obvious across projects, programs and organizations, we are constantly on trial-and-error mode. End of the day, what matters is the Scrum team members comfortable working environment, tools, health and well-being. The market place apps are getting redesigned and constantly evolving to cater to business needs, sustain from competitor's, prove their uniqueness etc.
So, what’s the ultimate end result?
Experimented retrospectives using Google Jam board, sococo and sticky notes. Employee took snap of their sticky notes written on his/her wall and share the picture to me, so I can fit all employee pics into a single frame (Canvas free tool) and store the meeting outcomes in confluence tool.
Snapshot of this prototype explained:
Do comment on this blog post with your Innovative thoughts, suggestions, best practices, approaches and key drivers that championed the work.
G subramanyam
Author| Rookie of the year-22| Atlympics-21 Medals winner
Author
Visakhapatnam (India)
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