Have you ever wondered what a great kick-off for a new Scrum Team looks like? This article is part of the series on “How to kick-off an amazing Scrum Team“. The complete Practical Guide includes the following steps:
- Invite for a Kick-Off Meeting
- Socialize
- Explain the theory behind “Agile”
- Clarify roles
- Find slots for regular Meetings
- Discuss Tooling requirements
- Agree on Estimation processes & Metrics
- Create your Definition of Done
- Conduct a Refinement Session
Explain the theory behind “Agile”
Purpose
It is obvious, that you should explain “Agile” to people who have never heard of it if you are planning to work agile with them. But should you train people, even if they already know about “Agile” or even have profound knowledge about “Agile”? Yes indeed, you should! Have you ever heard people saying, that 10 people have 20 opinions? Well, the same goes for the understanding of “Agile”. Clearly, nowadays almost everyone has heard about “Agile”. But everyone has a slightly different understanding of it. And that makes total sense!
Of course, there is only one “Agile Manifesto“. But there are so many courses around “Agile” and even more trainers. In addition to that, each participant brings in his/her own worldview and filters. So, it seems to be pretty naive to believe, that every person on earth has the same understanding of such a complex topic as “Agile”. Quite the contrary, it seems to be more likely that 10 persons have 20 interpretations of the word “Agile”. And now imagine those people discussing their collaboration mode. Your team will likely face many misunderstandings and will have a hard time agreeing on a team contract. You might want to avoid that. So, even out those differences and try to create a common understanding of “Agile”. If you succeed, your team will use a common language when reflecting on their working model, which is a profound success factor for effective retrospectives.
Actions
In this part of your kick-off, you will take the stance of a “Teacher”. And most important of all, you should constantly remind yourself, that you explain “Agility” in the context of a team kick-off. So, your task is not to educate every team member to highly qualified Agile Coaches. Instead, you want to teach them just enough to enable them to perform at their best. Everything above that includes the risk of distracting them from their actual role in the team and producing an unnecessary cognitive load.
Consequently, it is crucial for you to have a rough idea of the working model you want to start with. Are you doing Scrum? Are you using a scaled framework? Collect only the most important frameworks and tools that you are planning to start with and create a course around those specific topics. Define learning goals, which directly address the needs of your team. The current skill level of your team members doesn’t play a role in your selection of topics! Because remember: It is all about creating a common understanding and language.
When you have selected your topics, your next step is to think about your didactic method to teach your team. It is not always the best way to tell people what you already know. Sometimes you might want to include an exercise and create experiences. Your learning goals should lead you the way to reasonable methods. With those methods in mind, you need to create the required learning materials to execute your training. It will all ultimately lead to a robust foundation for your team’s collaboration.
Key Takeaways
- Explain “Agility” even to experienced team members to create a common understanding and language
- Only teach required topics to minimize the cognitive load on your team
- Take your time to create helpful learning materials and come up with a reasonable didactic method to teach your team
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