Download as PDFIn last nights “Ask a Professional Scrum Trainer” episode I got a question that was not answered during the session. BTW: Here you find all podcasts.
So here are my thoughts:
Question:
What is the best way to address recurrent problems that are identified at retros?
Those ones that you actually spend a lot of time trying to overcome but eventually come up again.
What helps in my experience is to define Acceptance Criteria for your problems.
That means, with some coaching questions you might be able to get a better and clear picture of the problem, and 2nd how do we learn that it is gone.
What you might ask and note down for the problem:
- How do we know the problem has gone?
- What effect do we see if the problem is gone?
- Which metric would show us that the problem is away?
- What would be a better state to be in?
- What is the next target condition?
and then:
- What is the minimal experiment we run to get as closer to a better state?
- What is an action we can take that bring us close to the target condition?
A great thinking model is the Toyota Kata for this:
Please buy the book “Toyota Kata” to support this great thinking tool from Mike Rother.
In the Ask a PST podcast on scrum.org I answer the following 8 questions:
Minute 3:50 – Why is pair programming so hard?
Minute 11:00 – What techniques can you recommend to make Backlog refinements more interactive and effective?
Minute 19:00 – How do you handle errors from Production during a Sprint
Minute 25:00 – How do you measure the team? State/mood/Happiness?
Improve the team’s working?
Minute 31:00 – #NoEstimates what do you think about? Would the project outcome better / same if no estimation?
Minute 41:00 – How do you balance workload between team members to achieve Goals? Is that the job of a Scrum Master?
Minute 46:00 – How do you coach teams to see the Scrum events as valuable sessions of work?
Minute 50:20 – What techniques help if the organization is reluctant to adopt Scrum? How to enable/embrace/change?