Growing in Agile: Lessons from Facilitating a new Team's Journey

By Chantal Jenoure & Nicola Brown 

Photo by Gaelle Marcel on Unsplash

About a month ago, we were asked to work with a team within our IT department to help them to figure out how they can apply Agile to their way of working, by leading them on their Agile Immersion journey. 

At first, imposter syndrome seemed to take front and centre, causing some doubt, raising questions of whether or not we were fully equipped and fit to lead such an activity. But, as we approach everything these days, we decided to take on what we considered a huge experiment. For sure, if we knew nothing else, we knew that our belief in the transformative power of agile was enough to get us started. And so, we set off on our newest adventure as Scrum Masters, this time, as Agile Coaches.

Here's what we've learnt so far:


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ALWAYS START WITH BEING OPEN & TRANSPARENT

Admitting to the team, early on, that we also are learning how to apply Agile to an IT maintenance and support team, and not a customer-facing team gave us a safe space to freely state when we weren't sure about something. From then, we could always use the time to conduct further research and talk through the findings with the team.


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TEAM DYNAMICS MAKES THE DIFFERENCE

It's all-encompassing and can determine how successful a team really is. At the core it involves feeling safe to fully express your individual “truth”; being open to hearing the “truths” of others and being respectful of how you express your “truth" and what it represents. 

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ALL THE ANSWERS TO IMPROVING THE TEAM'S WAY OF WORKING...LIES WITHIN THE TEAM

So far, all we've had to do, as we do with our Scrum teams now, is ask guiding/probing questions. They decide what they want to tackle and how they want to tackle it.

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AGILE IN ACTION...it's better than talking about Agile

1. The activities we use to guide the team, whether it is to show the importance of face to face communication (using telephone pictionary) or to show how multitasking ruins your productivity (https://www.agileconnection.com/article/multitasking-evil) hit home the objectives we had in mind. 

2. We set up a basic kanban board to help them to visualize their work. And even though the board wasn't perfect, after the first week, all the team members appreciated having the board as it helped them to visualize the work to be done, prioritise that work, and see the work being completed day-by-day. 

3. The beauty of experimenting with all things. When you approach things as an experiment, it gives you a safe space to feel as if you have nothing to lose. And if the experiment doesn’t produce expected results, then it’s all about tweaking.

4. Increments and iterations make the difference. Tied with the safe ground of experimentation and that the answers to the team’s problems lies within the team, producing work in increments and iterations helped to drive home the point of not needing to aim for perfection. Instead, start with what seems ‘good enough’ and inspect and adapt.

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WE DON'T HAVE TO GET IT RIGHT THE FIRST TIME

Having an attitude to learn from any mistake you have made and grow from them is enough to set you up for success. 


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IN ALL THINGS, BE OPEN TO FEEDBACK

At our first session with the team, two senior members from our Project Management Office sat in and observed our two-hour session. Afterwards, we got their feedback on where they thought we could have done things differently. It felt a little awkward at first, but we quickly realized the opportunity it birthed for our personal growth and development, in this new sphere of our professional journey.

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How are you challenging yourself to grow where you are today?

What steps have you taken to stretch yourself out of your comfort zone?

The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity.

- Amelia Earhart