Random Agile Thoughts – Weekly Commitment Meetings

At the start of every week, our team comes together to have what we call, “Monday Commitment Meetings“. We look at our Kanban board and have a discussion on what we think we can get done for the week. From this discussion we come up with a list of cards that we commit to finishing by the end of the week. We have the understanding that the commitment we make is that we will do our best to get these cards done. At the end of the week, we review what we have accomplished.

It’s quite natural for individuals to have hesitations and concerns in making commitments, especially at work, where not being able to fulfill commitments can get you in trouble. Here are two concerns I often hear from team members:

1. There are two many variables and unknowns, how can we confidently commit to getting things done? We don’t want to make commitments if we don’t know what will happen during the week.
2. I don’t like this pressure of having a list to get done, even if I know I’m the only one putting pressure on myself.

The following insights are what I usually share to respond to these concerns:

• The goal for discussing about commitments is to have a target which the team will try to achieve. A unifying goal guiding the team’s activities during the week.
• A basketball team still aims to win every game even though there are many variables at play and many uncertainties.
• It is natural to feel pressure. The pressure is good if it motivates you to do your best.
• It is ok to fail, to make a mistake. In fact, we learn more when we make a mistake.

I hope this random thought helps you to be more Agile. 😊

Working with Agile Teams Remotely: Planning and Backlog Grooming

The team I am currently coaching follows Lean Software Development and uses Kanban. For us the weekly planning meeting involves discussing the Product Backlog Items (PBIs) we have ready for implementation, and agreeing on what we think we can get done for the week. We hold backlog grooming meetings as needed, when there are PBIs to be estimated by the team. At the least we have a grooming meeting once per week. On this second blog for the “Working with Agile Teams Remotely” series I am writing, I will share what it is like for us to do planning and grooming meetings.

The Tools

We use Zoom for our online meeting. Sharing your video is encouraged but not required. Screen sharing is done as needed, usually it is the Product Owner who is sharing his screen as he explains details of PBIs. As I said in my previous post, we do not experience any issues in audio quality while we are doing screen sharing so it really helps in having a good understanding of what is being discussed in the meeting. Sometimes we would record the meeting so that team members can review it when they need to refresh their memory on what has been discussed. Zoom has a nice feature which allows you to record the meeting on the cloud. This way it is readily available to the team to view it and you don’t have to bother with uploading / downloading a video file.

Our Kanban board is on our instance of LeanKit. It is expected that everyone in the planning meeting is looking at the board on LeanKit as needed. Information about the PBI is stored on the card representing it on our Kanban board. This substitutes for being able to stand in front of a physical board, discussing the plan for the week.

For estimating PBIs we play Planning Poker.  We do this on planningpoker.com which is easy to use and easy to customize according to your needs. You only need an account for the moderator of the game and the rest of the players just have to click on a link to join a game. The tool has all the features you need to play a proper Planning Poker game with a team.

Challenges

One of the main challenges in doing planning and grooming meetings with a remote team is maintaining the focus of the members. It is easy to get distracted and get disengaged from the meeting, especially if you are not sharing video. Ideally when you meet in person, the attendees of the meeting would not bring their laptops to the meeting and you can easily see if they are paying attention to what is being discussed. If you are in an online meeting, the attendees may be viewing something else on their own screens or maybe getting distracted and spacing out because of other distractions in their home offices.

You may also get challenged by looping discussions. Sometimes expressing ideas in online meetings can be more difficult compared to in-person meetings. You lack the visual cues which can help you in explaining. There is also no easy way of breaking up a conversation. When you are in the same room, a simple gesture like raising your hand can signal the need to break the discussion. In an online meeting you have no choice but to speak up and break up the conversation as politely and as nicely as you can.

These challenges do get easier as you gain more experience in holding this kind of meetings with remote teams. It’s part of the growth of the team, the more meetings you do with them, the better the next ones will be.