In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 1 of 3 1 2 3 Next

\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 1 of 3 1 2 3 Next

\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 1 of 3 1 2 3 Next

\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 1 of 3 1 2 3 Next

\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 1 of 3 1 2 3 Next

\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 1 of 3 1 2 3 Next

\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 1 of 3 1 2 3 Next

\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 1 of 3 1 2 3 Next

\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 1 of 3 1 2 3 Next

\n

In addition to the\nSprint Planning topics of \u201cWhat\u201d and \u201cHow,\u201d the 2020 Scrum Guide places\nemphasis on a third topic, \u201cWhy.\u201d This third topic refers to the Sprint Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 1 of 3 1 2 3 Next

\n

Three\nSprint Planning Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the\nSprint Planning topics of \u201cWhat\u201d and \u201cHow,\u201d the 2020 Scrum Guide places\nemphasis on a third topic, \u201cWhy.\u201d This third topic refers to the Sprint Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 1 of 3 1 2 3 Next

\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides referred to Development Teams (team members who are working on the\nsprint increment) as self-organizing, choosing who and how to do work. With\nmore of a focus on the Scrum Team, the 2020 version emphasizes a self-managing\nScrum Team, that chooses who, how, and what to work on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nSprint Planning Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the\nSprint Planning topics of \u201cWhat\u201d and \u201cHow,\u201d the 2020 Scrum Guide places\nemphasis on a third topic, \u201cWhy.\u201d This third topic refers to the Sprint Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 1 of 3 1 2 3 Next

\n

Self-Managing\nover Self-Organizing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides referred to Development Teams (team members who are working on the\nsprint increment) as self-organizing, choosing who and how to do work. With\nmore of a focus on the Scrum Team, the 2020 version emphasizes a self-managing\nScrum Team, that chooses who, how, and what to work on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nSprint Planning Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the\nSprint Planning topics of \u201cWhat\u201d and \u201cHow,\u201d the 2020 Scrum Guide places\nemphasis on a third topic, \u201cWhy.\u201d This third topic refers to the Sprint Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 1 of 3 1 2 3 Next

\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides described Sprint Goal and Definition of Done without really giving them\nan identity. They were not quite artifacts but were somewhat attached to\nartifacts. With the addition of Product Goal, the 2020 version provides more\nclarity around this. Each of the three artifacts now contains \u2018commitments\u2019 to\nthem. For the Product Backlog, it is the Product Goal, the Sprint Backlog has\nthe Sprint Goal, and the Increment has the Definition of Done (now without the\nquotes). They exist to bring transparency and focus toward the progress of each\nartifact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-Managing\nover Self-Organizing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides referred to Development Teams (team members who are working on the\nsprint increment) as self-organizing, choosing who and how to do work. With\nmore of a focus on the Scrum Team, the 2020 version emphasizes a self-managing\nScrum Team, that chooses who, how, and what to work on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nSprint Planning Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the\nSprint Planning topics of \u201cWhat\u201d and \u201cHow,\u201d the 2020 Scrum Guide places\nemphasis on a third topic, \u201cWhy.\u201d This third topic refers to the Sprint Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 1 of 3 1 2 3 Next

\n

A Home for\nSprint Goal, Definition of Done, and Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides described Sprint Goal and Definition of Done without really giving them\nan identity. They were not quite artifacts but were somewhat attached to\nartifacts. With the addition of Product Goal, the 2020 version provides more\nclarity around this. Each of the three artifacts now contains \u2018commitments\u2019 to\nthem. For the Product Backlog, it is the Product Goal, the Sprint Backlog has\nthe Sprint Goal, and the Increment has the Definition of Done (now without the\nquotes). They exist to bring transparency and focus toward the progress of each\nartifact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-Managing\nover Self-Organizing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides referred to Development Teams (team members who are working on the\nsprint increment) as self-organizing, choosing who and how to do work. With\nmore of a focus on the Scrum Team, the 2020 version emphasizes a self-managing\nScrum Team, that chooses who, how, and what to work on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nSprint Planning Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the\nSprint Planning topics of \u201cWhat\u201d and \u201cHow,\u201d the 2020 Scrum Guide places\nemphasis on a third topic, \u201cWhy.\u201d This third topic refers to the Sprint Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 1 of 3 1 2 3 Next

\n

The 2020 Scrum\nGuide introduces the concept of a Product Goal to provide the focus for the\nScrum Team toward a larger valuable objective. Each Sprint should bring the\nproduct closer to the overall Product Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Home for\nSprint Goal, Definition of Done, and Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides described Sprint Goal and Definition of Done without really giving them\nan identity. They were not quite artifacts but were somewhat attached to\nartifacts. With the addition of Product Goal, the 2020 version provides more\nclarity around this. Each of the three artifacts now contains \u2018commitments\u2019 to\nthem. For the Product Backlog, it is the Product Goal, the Sprint Backlog has\nthe Sprint Goal, and the Increment has the Definition of Done (now without the\nquotes). They exist to bring transparency and focus toward the progress of each\nartifact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-Managing\nover Self-Organizing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides referred to Development Teams (team members who are working on the\nsprint increment) as self-organizing, choosing who and how to do work. With\nmore of a focus on the Scrum Team, the 2020 version emphasizes a self-managing\nScrum Team, that chooses who, how, and what to work on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nSprint Planning Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the\nSprint Planning topics of \u201cWhat\u201d and \u201cHow,\u201d the 2020 Scrum Guide places\nemphasis on a third topic, \u201cWhy.\u201d This third topic refers to the Sprint Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 1 of 3 1 2 3 Next

\n

Introduction\nof Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum\nGuide introduces the concept of a Product Goal to provide the focus for the\nScrum Team toward a larger valuable objective. Each Sprint should bring the\nproduct closer to the overall Product Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Home for\nSprint Goal, Definition of Done, and Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides described Sprint Goal and Definition of Done without really giving them\nan identity. They were not quite artifacts but were somewhat attached to\nartifacts. With the addition of Product Goal, the 2020 version provides more\nclarity around this. Each of the three artifacts now contains \u2018commitments\u2019 to\nthem. For the Product Backlog, it is the Product Goal, the Sprint Backlog has\nthe Sprint Goal, and the Increment has the Definition of Done (now without the\nquotes). They exist to bring transparency and focus toward the progress of each\nartifact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-Managing\nover Self-Organizing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides referred to Development Teams (team members who are working on the\nsprint increment) as self-organizing, choosing who and how to do work. With\nmore of a focus on the Scrum Team, the 2020 version emphasizes a self-managing\nScrum Team, that chooses who, how, and what to work on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nSprint Planning Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the\nSprint Planning topics of \u201cWhat\u201d and \u201cHow,\u201d the 2020 Scrum Guide places\nemphasis on a third topic, \u201cWhy.\u201d This third topic refers to the Sprint Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 1 of 3 1 2 3 Next

\n

The goal was to\neliminate the concept of a separate team within a team that has led to \u201cproxy\u201d\nor \u201cus and them\u201d behavior between the PO and Dev Team. There is now just one\nScrum Team focused on the same objective, with three different sets of accountabilities:\nPO, SM, and Developers (anybody who is working on the sprint increment).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction\nof Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum\nGuide introduces the concept of a Product Goal to provide the focus for the\nScrum Team toward a larger valuable objective. Each Sprint should bring the\nproduct closer to the overall Product Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Home for\nSprint Goal, Definition of Done, and Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides described Sprint Goal and Definition of Done without really giving them\nan identity. They were not quite artifacts but were somewhat attached to\nartifacts. With the addition of Product Goal, the 2020 version provides more\nclarity around this. Each of the three artifacts now contains \u2018commitments\u2019 to\nthem. For the Product Backlog, it is the Product Goal, the Sprint Backlog has\nthe Sprint Goal, and the Increment has the Definition of Done (now without the\nquotes). They exist to bring transparency and focus toward the progress of each\nartifact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-Managing\nover Self-Organizing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides referred to Development Teams (team members who are working on the\nsprint increment) as self-organizing, choosing who and how to do work. With\nmore of a focus on the Scrum Team, the 2020 version emphasizes a self-managing\nScrum Team, that chooses who, how, and what to work on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nSprint Planning Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the\nSprint Planning topics of \u201cWhat\u201d and \u201cHow,\u201d the 2020 Scrum Guide places\nemphasis on a third topic, \u201cWhy.\u201d This third topic refers to the Sprint Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 1 of 3 1 2 3 Next

\n

One Team,\nFocused on One Product<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal was to\neliminate the concept of a separate team within a team that has led to \u201cproxy\u201d\nor \u201cus and them\u201d behavior between the PO and Dev Team. There is now just one\nScrum Team focused on the same objective, with three different sets of accountabilities:\nPO, SM, and Developers (anybody who is working on the sprint increment).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction\nof Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum\nGuide introduces the concept of a Product Goal to provide the focus for the\nScrum Team toward a larger valuable objective. Each Sprint should bring the\nproduct closer to the overall Product Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Home for\nSprint Goal, Definition of Done, and Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides described Sprint Goal and Definition of Done without really giving them\nan identity. They were not quite artifacts but were somewhat attached to\nartifacts. With the addition of Product Goal, the 2020 version provides more\nclarity around this. Each of the three artifacts now contains \u2018commitments\u2019 to\nthem. For the Product Backlog, it is the Product Goal, the Sprint Backlog has\nthe Sprint Goal, and the Increment has the Definition of Done (now without the\nquotes). They exist to bring transparency and focus toward the progress of each\nartifact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-Managing\nover Self-Organizing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides referred to Development Teams (team members who are working on the\nsprint increment) as self-organizing, choosing who and how to do work. With\nmore of a focus on the Scrum Team, the 2020 version emphasizes a self-managing\nScrum Team, that chooses who, how, and what to work on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nSprint Planning Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the\nSprint Planning topics of \u201cWhat\u201d and \u201cHow,\u201d the 2020 Scrum Guide places\nemphasis on a third topic, \u201cWhy.\u201d This third topic refers to the Sprint Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 1 of 3 1 2 3 Next

\n

Over the years,\nthe Scrum Guide started getting a bit more prescriptive. The 2020 version aims\nto bring Scrum back to being a minimally sufficient framework. This was\nachieved by removing the Daily Scrum questions, softening language around PBI\nattributes and retro items in Sprint Backlog, shortening the Sprint\ncancellation section, and much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One Team,\nFocused on One Product<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal was to\neliminate the concept of a separate team within a team that has led to \u201cproxy\u201d\nor \u201cus and them\u201d behavior between the PO and Dev Team. There is now just one\nScrum Team focused on the same objective, with three different sets of accountabilities:\nPO, SM, and Developers (anybody who is working on the sprint increment).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction\nof Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum\nGuide introduces the concept of a Product Goal to provide the focus for the\nScrum Team toward a larger valuable objective. Each Sprint should bring the\nproduct closer to the overall Product Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Home for\nSprint Goal, Definition of Done, and Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides described Sprint Goal and Definition of Done without really giving them\nan identity. They were not quite artifacts but were somewhat attached to\nartifacts. With the addition of Product Goal, the 2020 version provides more\nclarity around this. Each of the three artifacts now contains \u2018commitments\u2019 to\nthem. For the Product Backlog, it is the Product Goal, the Sprint Backlog has\nthe Sprint Goal, and the Increment has the Definition of Done (now without the\nquotes). They exist to bring transparency and focus toward the progress of each\nartifact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-Managing\nover Self-Organizing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides referred to Development Teams (team members who are working on the\nsprint increment) as self-organizing, choosing who and how to do work. With\nmore of a focus on the Scrum Team, the 2020 version emphasizes a self-managing\nScrum Team, that chooses who, how, and what to work on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nSprint Planning Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the\nSprint Planning topics of \u201cWhat\u201d and \u201cHow,\u201d the 2020 Scrum Guide places\nemphasis on a third topic, \u201cWhy.\u201d This third topic refers to the Sprint Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 1 of 3 1 2 3 Next

\n

Even Less\nPrescriptive<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years,\nthe Scrum Guide started getting a bit more prescriptive. The 2020 version aims\nto bring Scrum back to being a minimally sufficient framework. This was\nachieved by removing the Daily Scrum questions, softening language around PBI\nattributes and retro items in Sprint Backlog, shortening the Sprint\ncancellation section, and much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One Team,\nFocused on One Product<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal was to\neliminate the concept of a separate team within a team that has led to \u201cproxy\u201d\nor \u201cus and them\u201d behavior between the PO and Dev Team. There is now just one\nScrum Team focused on the same objective, with three different sets of accountabilities:\nPO, SM, and Developers (anybody who is working on the sprint increment).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction\nof Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum\nGuide introduces the concept of a Product Goal to provide the focus for the\nScrum Team toward a larger valuable objective. Each Sprint should bring the\nproduct closer to the overall Product Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Home for\nSprint Goal, Definition of Done, and Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides described Sprint Goal and Definition of Done without really giving them\nan identity. They were not quite artifacts but were somewhat attached to\nartifacts. With the addition of Product Goal, the 2020 version provides more\nclarity around this. Each of the three artifacts now contains \u2018commitments\u2019 to\nthem. For the Product Backlog, it is the Product Goal, the Sprint Backlog has\nthe Sprint Goal, and the Increment has the Definition of Done (now without the\nquotes). They exist to bring transparency and focus toward the progress of each\nartifact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-Managing\nover Self-Organizing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides referred to Development Teams (team members who are working on the\nsprint increment) as self-organizing, choosing who and how to do work. With\nmore of a focus on the Scrum Team, the 2020 version emphasizes a self-managing\nScrum Team, that chooses who, how, and what to work on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nSprint Planning Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the\nSprint Planning topics of \u201cWhat\u201d and \u201cHow,\u201d the 2020 Scrum Guide places\nemphasis on a third topic, \u201cWhy.\u201d This third topic refers to the Sprint Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 1 of 3 1 2 3 Next

\n

Let us look at the summary of changes ( from scrum.org articles) in the new scrum guide and then talk about the impact for us (agile community). For more details, you can refer to scrum.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even Less\nPrescriptive<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years,\nthe Scrum Guide started getting a bit more prescriptive. The 2020 version aims\nto bring Scrum back to being a minimally sufficient framework. This was\nachieved by removing the Daily Scrum questions, softening language around PBI\nattributes and retro items in Sprint Backlog, shortening the Sprint\ncancellation section, and much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One Team,\nFocused on One Product<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal was to\neliminate the concept of a separate team within a team that has led to \u201cproxy\u201d\nor \u201cus and them\u201d behavior between the PO and Dev Team. There is now just one\nScrum Team focused on the same objective, with three different sets of accountabilities:\nPO, SM, and Developers (anybody who is working on the sprint increment).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction\nof Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum\nGuide introduces the concept of a Product Goal to provide the focus for the\nScrum Team toward a larger valuable objective. Each Sprint should bring the\nproduct closer to the overall Product Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Home for\nSprint Goal, Definition of Done, and Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides described Sprint Goal and Definition of Done without really giving them\nan identity. They were not quite artifacts but were somewhat attached to\nartifacts. With the addition of Product Goal, the 2020 version provides more\nclarity around this. Each of the three artifacts now contains \u2018commitments\u2019 to\nthem. For the Product Backlog, it is the Product Goal, the Sprint Backlog has\nthe Sprint Goal, and the Increment has the Definition of Done (now without the\nquotes). They exist to bring transparency and focus toward the progress of each\nartifact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-Managing\nover Self-Organizing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides referred to Development Teams (team members who are working on the\nsprint increment) as self-organizing, choosing who and how to do work. With\nmore of a focus on the Scrum Team, the 2020 version emphasizes a self-managing\nScrum Team, that chooses who, how, and what to work on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nSprint Planning Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the\nSprint Planning topics of \u201cWhat\u201d and \u201cHow,\u201d the 2020 Scrum Guide places\nemphasis on a third topic, \u201cWhy.\u201d This third topic refers to the Sprint Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 1 of 3 1 2 3 Next

\n

Last week, Scrum celebrated 25 years, and to add to that celebration, a new scrum guide was released. Over the years, Scrum has been implemented across multiple industries and domains and the feedback of its success and failures flowed back into this new Scrum guide. There was a lot of excitement among the agile community for the launch and the agile community was elated with the changes in the Scrum guide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us look at the summary of changes ( from scrum.org articles) in the new scrum guide and then talk about the impact for us (agile community). For more details, you can refer to scrum.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even Less\nPrescriptive<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years,\nthe Scrum Guide started getting a bit more prescriptive. The 2020 version aims\nto bring Scrum back to being a minimally sufficient framework. This was\nachieved by removing the Daily Scrum questions, softening language around PBI\nattributes and retro items in Sprint Backlog, shortening the Sprint\ncancellation section, and much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One Team,\nFocused on One Product<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal was to\neliminate the concept of a separate team within a team that has led to \u201cproxy\u201d\nor \u201cus and them\u201d behavior between the PO and Dev Team. There is now just one\nScrum Team focused on the same objective, with three different sets of accountabilities:\nPO, SM, and Developers (anybody who is working on the sprint increment).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction\nof Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum\nGuide introduces the concept of a Product Goal to provide the focus for the\nScrum Team toward a larger valuable objective. Each Sprint should bring the\nproduct closer to the overall Product Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Home for\nSprint Goal, Definition of Done, and Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides described Sprint Goal and Definition of Done without really giving them\nan identity. They were not quite artifacts but were somewhat attached to\nartifacts. With the addition of Product Goal, the 2020 version provides more\nclarity around this. Each of the three artifacts now contains \u2018commitments\u2019 to\nthem. For the Product Backlog, it is the Product Goal, the Sprint Backlog has\nthe Sprint Goal, and the Increment has the Definition of Done (now without the\nquotes). They exist to bring transparency and focus toward the progress of each\nartifact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-Managing\nover Self-Organizing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides referred to Development Teams (team members who are working on the\nsprint increment) as self-organizing, choosing who and how to do work. With\nmore of a focus on the Scrum Team, the 2020 version emphasizes a self-managing\nScrum Team, that chooses who, how, and what to work on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nSprint Planning Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the\nSprint Planning topics of \u201cWhat\u201d and \u201cHow,\u201d the 2020 Scrum Guide places\nemphasis on a third topic, \u201cWhy.\u201d This third topic refers to the Sprint Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 1 of 3 1 2 3 Next

\n

Scrum master role definition and One product team from the scrum guide is a good starting point. Pravin can use the guide to drive the essence of one team delivering product starting from definition to support, roll out, and also point that it is from the industry best practice. In addition to that, it would be good for him to quantify the problem that he had gathered with the data; for ex the resolution time of the incident (end to end), new requirements from the operation team. Along with that, he can do an End to End process mapping w.r.t product delivery and facilitate a discussion with the relevant stakeholders. Most of the time, the problem would be due to organization design ie. Silos between the operation team, product team, and development team, and this might take a longer discussion to solve. <\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #224 - Scrum Master role in the Operations\/Support world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-224-scrum-master-role-in-the-operations-support-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17712","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17698,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:46:28","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:16:28","post_content":"\n

Last week, Scrum celebrated 25 years, and to add to that celebration, a new scrum guide was released. Over the years, Scrum has been implemented across multiple industries and domains and the feedback of its success and failures flowed back into this new Scrum guide. There was a lot of excitement among the agile community for the launch and the agile community was elated with the changes in the Scrum guide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us look at the summary of changes ( from scrum.org articles) in the new scrum guide and then talk about the impact for us (agile community). For more details, you can refer to scrum.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even Less\nPrescriptive<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years,\nthe Scrum Guide started getting a bit more prescriptive. The 2020 version aims\nto bring Scrum back to being a minimally sufficient framework. This was\nachieved by removing the Daily Scrum questions, softening language around PBI\nattributes and retro items in Sprint Backlog, shortening the Sprint\ncancellation section, and much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One Team,\nFocused on One Product<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal was to\neliminate the concept of a separate team within a team that has led to \u201cproxy\u201d\nor \u201cus and them\u201d behavior between the PO and Dev Team. There is now just one\nScrum Team focused on the same objective, with three different sets of accountabilities:\nPO, SM, and Developers (anybody who is working on the sprint increment).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction\nof Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum\nGuide introduces the concept of a Product Goal to provide the focus for the\nScrum Team toward a larger valuable objective. Each Sprint should bring the\nproduct closer to the overall Product Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Home for\nSprint Goal, Definition of Done, and Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides described Sprint Goal and Definition of Done without really giving them\nan identity. They were not quite artifacts but were somewhat attached to\nartifacts. With the addition of Product Goal, the 2020 version provides more\nclarity around this. Each of the three artifacts now contains \u2018commitments\u2019 to\nthem. For the Product Backlog, it is the Product Goal, the Sprint Backlog has\nthe Sprint Goal, and the Increment has the Definition of Done (now without the\nquotes). They exist to bring transparency and focus toward the progress of each\nartifact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-Managing\nover Self-Organizing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides referred to Development Teams (team members who are working on the\nsprint increment) as self-organizing, choosing who and how to do work. With\nmore of a focus on the Scrum Team, the 2020 version emphasizes a self-managing\nScrum Team, that chooses who, how, and what to work on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nSprint Planning Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the\nSprint Planning topics of \u201cWhat\u201d and \u201cHow,\u201d the 2020 Scrum Guide places\nemphasis on a third topic, \u201cWhy.\u201d This third topic refers to the Sprint Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 1 of 3 1 2 3 Next

\n

Suggested Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum master role definition and One product team from the scrum guide is a good starting point. Pravin can use the guide to drive the essence of one team delivering product starting from definition to support, roll out, and also point that it is from the industry best practice. In addition to that, it would be good for him to quantify the problem that he had gathered with the data; for ex the resolution time of the incident (end to end), new requirements from the operation team. Along with that, he can do an End to End process mapping w.r.t product delivery and facilitate a discussion with the relevant stakeholders. Most of the time, the problem would be due to organization design ie. Silos between the operation team, product team, and development team, and this might take a longer discussion to solve. <\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #224 - Scrum Master role in the Operations\/Support world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-224-scrum-master-role-in-the-operations-support-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17712","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17698,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:46:28","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:16:28","post_content":"\n

Last week, Scrum celebrated 25 years, and to add to that celebration, a new scrum guide was released. Over the years, Scrum has been implemented across multiple industries and domains and the feedback of its success and failures flowed back into this new Scrum guide. There was a lot of excitement among the agile community for the launch and the agile community was elated with the changes in the Scrum guide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us look at the summary of changes ( from scrum.org articles) in the new scrum guide and then talk about the impact for us (agile community). For more details, you can refer to scrum.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even Less\nPrescriptive<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years,\nthe Scrum Guide started getting a bit more prescriptive. The 2020 version aims\nto bring Scrum back to being a minimally sufficient framework. This was\nachieved by removing the Daily Scrum questions, softening language around PBI\nattributes and retro items in Sprint Backlog, shortening the Sprint\ncancellation section, and much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One Team,\nFocused on One Product<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal was to\neliminate the concept of a separate team within a team that has led to \u201cproxy\u201d\nor \u201cus and them\u201d behavior between the PO and Dev Team. There is now just one\nScrum Team focused on the same objective, with three different sets of accountabilities:\nPO, SM, and Developers (anybody who is working on the sprint increment).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction\nof Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum\nGuide introduces the concept of a Product Goal to provide the focus for the\nScrum Team toward a larger valuable objective. Each Sprint should bring the\nproduct closer to the overall Product Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Home for\nSprint Goal, Definition of Done, and Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides described Sprint Goal and Definition of Done without really giving them\nan identity. They were not quite artifacts but were somewhat attached to\nartifacts. With the addition of Product Goal, the 2020 version provides more\nclarity around this. Each of the three artifacts now contains \u2018commitments\u2019 to\nthem. For the Product Backlog, it is the Product Goal, the Sprint Backlog has\nthe Sprint Goal, and the Increment has the Definition of Done (now without the\nquotes). They exist to bring transparency and focus toward the progress of each\nartifact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-Managing\nover Self-Organizing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides referred to Development Teams (team members who are working on the\nsprint increment) as self-organizing, choosing who and how to do work. With\nmore of a focus on the Scrum Team, the 2020 version emphasizes a self-managing\nScrum Team, that chooses who, how, and what to work on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nSprint Planning Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the\nSprint Planning topics of \u201cWhat\u201d and \u201cHow,\u201d the 2020 Scrum Guide places\nemphasis on a third topic, \u201cWhy.\u201d This third topic refers to the Sprint Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

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\n

Pravin has been coaching the development team for a few months on the implementation of Scrum. There were a lot of improvement ideas and opportunities that he and his team gathered for the Product team, operation teams during the retrospective. When he tried speaking to them to understand their processes and see if he can do something about it, he was told that the scrum master scope is for the IT development team and the operation teams are not part of it.  He was very excited when he read the new scrum guide and understood that the scrum master role is expanded. Will this help him to remove the obstacle of end to end coaching of the team? If not, what else can he do? Are there any suggestions or solutions that you would recommend?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suggested Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum master role definition and One product team from the scrum guide is a good starting point. Pravin can use the guide to drive the essence of one team delivering product starting from definition to support, roll out, and also point that it is from the industry best practice. In addition to that, it would be good for him to quantify the problem that he had gathered with the data; for ex the resolution time of the incident (end to end), new requirements from the operation team. Along with that, he can do an End to End process mapping w.r.t product delivery and facilitate a discussion with the relevant stakeholders. Most of the time, the problem would be due to organization design ie. Silos between the operation team, product team, and development team, and this might take a longer discussion to solve. <\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #224 - Scrum Master role in the Operations\/Support world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-224-scrum-master-role-in-the-operations-support-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17712","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17698,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:46:28","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:16:28","post_content":"\n

Last week, Scrum celebrated 25 years, and to add to that celebration, a new scrum guide was released. Over the years, Scrum has been implemented across multiple industries and domains and the feedback of its success and failures flowed back into this new Scrum guide. There was a lot of excitement among the agile community for the launch and the agile community was elated with the changes in the Scrum guide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us look at the summary of changes ( from scrum.org articles) in the new scrum guide and then talk about the impact for us (agile community). For more details, you can refer to scrum.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even Less\nPrescriptive<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years,\nthe Scrum Guide started getting a bit more prescriptive. The 2020 version aims\nto bring Scrum back to being a minimally sufficient framework. This was\nachieved by removing the Daily Scrum questions, softening language around PBI\nattributes and retro items in Sprint Backlog, shortening the Sprint\ncancellation section, and much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One Team,\nFocused on One Product<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal was to\neliminate the concept of a separate team within a team that has led to \u201cproxy\u201d\nor \u201cus and them\u201d behavior between the PO and Dev Team. There is now just one\nScrum Team focused on the same objective, with three different sets of accountabilities:\nPO, SM, and Developers (anybody who is working on the sprint increment).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction\nof Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum\nGuide introduces the concept of a Product Goal to provide the focus for the\nScrum Team toward a larger valuable objective. Each Sprint should bring the\nproduct closer to the overall Product Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Home for\nSprint Goal, Definition of Done, and Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides described Sprint Goal and Definition of Done without really giving them\nan identity. They were not quite artifacts but were somewhat attached to\nartifacts. With the addition of Product Goal, the 2020 version provides more\nclarity around this. Each of the three artifacts now contains \u2018commitments\u2019 to\nthem. For the Product Backlog, it is the Product Goal, the Sprint Backlog has\nthe Sprint Goal, and the Increment has the Definition of Done (now without the\nquotes). They exist to bring transparency and focus toward the progress of each\nartifact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-Managing\nover Self-Organizing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides referred to Development Teams (team members who are working on the\nsprint increment) as self-organizing, choosing who and how to do work. With\nmore of a focus on the Scrum Team, the 2020 version emphasizes a self-managing\nScrum Team, that chooses who, how, and what to work on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nSprint Planning Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the\nSprint Planning topics of \u201cWhat\u201d and \u201cHow,\u201d the 2020 Scrum Guide places\nemphasis on a third topic, \u201cWhy.\u201d This third topic refers to the Sprint Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 1 of 3 1 2 3 Next

\n

I am sure most coaches, leaders are thinking about this and doing something to help their teams in these trying times. Let me know what are those things that you are doing.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #248 \u2013 Sensitivity during these(covid) times","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-248-sensitivity-during-thesecovid-times","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18715","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17712,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:47:04","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:17:04","post_content":"\n

Pravin has been coaching the development team for a few months on the implementation of Scrum. There were a lot of improvement ideas and opportunities that he and his team gathered for the Product team, operation teams during the retrospective. When he tried speaking to them to understand their processes and see if he can do something about it, he was told that the scrum master scope is for the IT development team and the operation teams are not part of it.  He was very excited when he read the new scrum guide and understood that the scrum master role is expanded. Will this help him to remove the obstacle of end to end coaching of the team? If not, what else can he do? Are there any suggestions or solutions that you would recommend?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suggested Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum master role definition and One product team from the scrum guide is a good starting point. Pravin can use the guide to drive the essence of one team delivering product starting from definition to support, roll out, and also point that it is from the industry best practice. In addition to that, it would be good for him to quantify the problem that he had gathered with the data; for ex the resolution time of the incident (end to end), new requirements from the operation team. Along with that, he can do an End to End process mapping w.r.t product delivery and facilitate a discussion with the relevant stakeholders. Most of the time, the problem would be due to organization design ie. Silos between the operation team, product team, and development team, and this might take a longer discussion to solve. <\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #224 - Scrum Master role in the Operations\/Support world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-224-scrum-master-role-in-the-operations-support-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17712","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17698,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:46:28","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:16:28","post_content":"\n

Last week, Scrum celebrated 25 years, and to add to that celebration, a new scrum guide was released. Over the years, Scrum has been implemented across multiple industries and domains and the feedback of its success and failures flowed back into this new Scrum guide. There was a lot of excitement among the agile community for the launch and the agile community was elated with the changes in the Scrum guide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us look at the summary of changes ( from scrum.org articles) in the new scrum guide and then talk about the impact for us (agile community). For more details, you can refer to scrum.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even Less\nPrescriptive<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years,\nthe Scrum Guide started getting a bit more prescriptive. The 2020 version aims\nto bring Scrum back to being a minimally sufficient framework. This was\nachieved by removing the Daily Scrum questions, softening language around PBI\nattributes and retro items in Sprint Backlog, shortening the Sprint\ncancellation section, and much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One Team,\nFocused on One Product<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal was to\neliminate the concept of a separate team within a team that has led to \u201cproxy\u201d\nor \u201cus and them\u201d behavior between the PO and Dev Team. There is now just one\nScrum Team focused on the same objective, with three different sets of accountabilities:\nPO, SM, and Developers (anybody who is working on the sprint increment).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction\nof Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum\nGuide introduces the concept of a Product Goal to provide the focus for the\nScrum Team toward a larger valuable objective. Each Sprint should bring the\nproduct closer to the overall Product Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Home for\nSprint Goal, Definition of Done, and Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides described Sprint Goal and Definition of Done without really giving them\nan identity. They were not quite artifacts but were somewhat attached to\nartifacts. With the addition of Product Goal, the 2020 version provides more\nclarity around this. Each of the three artifacts now contains \u2018commitments\u2019 to\nthem. For the Product Backlog, it is the Product Goal, the Sprint Backlog has\nthe Sprint Goal, and the Increment has the Definition of Done (now without the\nquotes). They exist to bring transparency and focus toward the progress of each\nartifact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-Managing\nover Self-Organizing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides referred to Development Teams (team members who are working on the\nsprint increment) as self-organizing, choosing who and how to do work. With\nmore of a focus on the Scrum Team, the 2020 version emphasizes a self-managing\nScrum Team, that chooses who, how, and what to work on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nSprint Planning Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the\nSprint Planning topics of \u201cWhat\u201d and \u201cHow,\u201d the 2020 Scrum Guide places\nemphasis on a third topic, \u201cWhy.\u201d This third topic refers to the Sprint Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 1 of 3 1 2 3 Next

\n

Informal group chat\/gathering or 1:1 with each other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am sure most coaches, leaders are thinking about this and doing something to help their teams in these trying times. Let me know what are those things that you are doing.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #248 \u2013 Sensitivity during these(covid) times","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-248-sensitivity-during-thesecovid-times","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18715","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17712,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:47:04","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:17:04","post_content":"\n

Pravin has been coaching the development team for a few months on the implementation of Scrum. There were a lot of improvement ideas and opportunities that he and his team gathered for the Product team, operation teams during the retrospective. When he tried speaking to them to understand their processes and see if he can do something about it, he was told that the scrum master scope is for the IT development team and the operation teams are not part of it.  He was very excited when he read the new scrum guide and understood that the scrum master role is expanded. Will this help him to remove the obstacle of end to end coaching of the team? If not, what else can he do? Are there any suggestions or solutions that you would recommend?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suggested Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum master role definition and One product team from the scrum guide is a good starting point. Pravin can use the guide to drive the essence of one team delivering product starting from definition to support, roll out, and also point that it is from the industry best practice. In addition to that, it would be good for him to quantify the problem that he had gathered with the data; for ex the resolution time of the incident (end to end), new requirements from the operation team. Along with that, he can do an End to End process mapping w.r.t product delivery and facilitate a discussion with the relevant stakeholders. Most of the time, the problem would be due to organization design ie. Silos between the operation team, product team, and development team, and this might take a longer discussion to solve. <\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #224 - Scrum Master role in the Operations\/Support world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-224-scrum-master-role-in-the-operations-support-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17712","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17698,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:46:28","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:16:28","post_content":"\n

Last week, Scrum celebrated 25 years, and to add to that celebration, a new scrum guide was released. Over the years, Scrum has been implemented across multiple industries and domains and the feedback of its success and failures flowed back into this new Scrum guide. There was a lot of excitement among the agile community for the launch and the agile community was elated with the changes in the Scrum guide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us look at the summary of changes ( from scrum.org articles) in the new scrum guide and then talk about the impact for us (agile community). For more details, you can refer to scrum.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even Less\nPrescriptive<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years,\nthe Scrum Guide started getting a bit more prescriptive. The 2020 version aims\nto bring Scrum back to being a minimally sufficient framework. This was\nachieved by removing the Daily Scrum questions, softening language around PBI\nattributes and retro items in Sprint Backlog, shortening the Sprint\ncancellation section, and much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One Team,\nFocused on One Product<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal was to\neliminate the concept of a separate team within a team that has led to \u201cproxy\u201d\nor \u201cus and them\u201d behavior between the PO and Dev Team. There is now just one\nScrum Team focused on the same objective, with three different sets of accountabilities:\nPO, SM, and Developers (anybody who is working on the sprint increment).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction\nof Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum\nGuide introduces the concept of a Product Goal to provide the focus for the\nScrum Team toward a larger valuable objective. Each Sprint should bring the\nproduct closer to the overall Product Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Home for\nSprint Goal, Definition of Done, and Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides described Sprint Goal and Definition of Done without really giving them\nan identity. They were not quite artifacts but were somewhat attached to\nartifacts. With the addition of Product Goal, the 2020 version provides more\nclarity around this. Each of the three artifacts now contains \u2018commitments\u2019 to\nthem. For the Product Backlog, it is the Product Goal, the Sprint Backlog has\nthe Sprint Goal, and the Increment has the Definition of Done (now without the\nquotes). They exist to bring transparency and focus toward the progress of each\nartifact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-Managing\nover Self-Organizing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides referred to Development Teams (team members who are working on the\nsprint increment) as self-organizing, choosing who and how to do work. With\nmore of a focus on the Scrum Team, the 2020 version emphasizes a self-managing\nScrum Team, that chooses who, how, and what to work on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nSprint Planning Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the\nSprint Planning topics of \u201cWhat\u201d and \u201cHow,\u201d the 2020 Scrum Guide places\nemphasis on a third topic, \u201cWhy.\u201d This third topic refers to the Sprint Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

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\n

Standup meetings or team meetings \u2013 First 5 min or 10 min is used for check-in and free-flow conversation. This helped team members to know what\u2019s happening, vent out some of their feelings and help each other as need. If it\u2019s a large team, use some of the survey tools to do check-in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Informal group chat\/gathering or 1:1 with each other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am sure most coaches, leaders are thinking about this and doing something to help their teams in these trying times. Let me know what are those things that you are doing.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #248 \u2013 Sensitivity during these(covid) times","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-248-sensitivity-during-thesecovid-times","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18715","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17712,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:47:04","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:17:04","post_content":"\n

Pravin has been coaching the development team for a few months on the implementation of Scrum. There were a lot of improvement ideas and opportunities that he and his team gathered for the Product team, operation teams during the retrospective. When he tried speaking to them to understand their processes and see if he can do something about it, he was told that the scrum master scope is for the IT development team and the operation teams are not part of it.  He was very excited when he read the new scrum guide and understood that the scrum master role is expanded. Will this help him to remove the obstacle of end to end coaching of the team? If not, what else can he do? Are there any suggestions or solutions that you would recommend?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suggested Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum master role definition and One product team from the scrum guide is a good starting point. Pravin can use the guide to drive the essence of one team delivering product starting from definition to support, roll out, and also point that it is from the industry best practice. In addition to that, it would be good for him to quantify the problem that he had gathered with the data; for ex the resolution time of the incident (end to end), new requirements from the operation team. Along with that, he can do an End to End process mapping w.r.t product delivery and facilitate a discussion with the relevant stakeholders. Most of the time, the problem would be due to organization design ie. Silos between the operation team, product team, and development team, and this might take a longer discussion to solve. <\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #224 - Scrum Master role in the Operations\/Support world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-224-scrum-master-role-in-the-operations-support-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17712","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17698,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:46:28","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:16:28","post_content":"\n

Last week, Scrum celebrated 25 years, and to add to that celebration, a new scrum guide was released. Over the years, Scrum has been implemented across multiple industries and domains and the feedback of its success and failures flowed back into this new Scrum guide. There was a lot of excitement among the agile community for the launch and the agile community was elated with the changes in the Scrum guide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us look at the summary of changes ( from scrum.org articles) in the new scrum guide and then talk about the impact for us (agile community). For more details, you can refer to scrum.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even Less\nPrescriptive<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years,\nthe Scrum Guide started getting a bit more prescriptive. The 2020 version aims\nto bring Scrum back to being a minimally sufficient framework. This was\nachieved by removing the Daily Scrum questions, softening language around PBI\nattributes and retro items in Sprint Backlog, shortening the Sprint\ncancellation section, and much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One Team,\nFocused on One Product<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal was to\neliminate the concept of a separate team within a team that has led to \u201cproxy\u201d\nor \u201cus and them\u201d behavior between the PO and Dev Team. There is now just one\nScrum Team focused on the same objective, with three different sets of accountabilities:\nPO, SM, and Developers (anybody who is working on the sprint increment).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction\nof Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum\nGuide introduces the concept of a Product Goal to provide the focus for the\nScrum Team toward a larger valuable objective. Each Sprint should bring the\nproduct closer to the overall Product Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Home for\nSprint Goal, Definition of Done, and Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides described Sprint Goal and Definition of Done without really giving them\nan identity. They were not quite artifacts but were somewhat attached to\nartifacts. With the addition of Product Goal, the 2020 version provides more\nclarity around this. Each of the three artifacts now contains \u2018commitments\u2019 to\nthem. For the Product Backlog, it is the Product Goal, the Sprint Backlog has\nthe Sprint Goal, and the Increment has the Definition of Done (now without the\nquotes). They exist to bring transparency and focus toward the progress of each\nartifact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-Managing\nover Self-Organizing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides referred to Development Teams (team members who are working on the\nsprint increment) as self-organizing, choosing who and how to do work. With\nmore of a focus on the Scrum Team, the 2020 version emphasizes a self-managing\nScrum Team, that chooses who, how, and what to work on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nSprint Planning Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the\nSprint Planning topics of \u201cWhat\u201d and \u201cHow,\u201d the 2020 Scrum Guide places\nemphasis on a third topic, \u201cWhy.\u201d This third topic refers to the Sprint Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 1 of 3 1 2 3 Next

\n

Status \/ Smiley images in the communication and collaboration tool.  We have asked team members to add this and this helps others in the team to understand the emotional state of each and every one.  It was quite beneficial and set the stage for everyone in the meetings and interaction.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Standup meetings or team meetings \u2013 First 5 min or 10 min is used for check-in and free-flow conversation. This helped team members to know what\u2019s happening, vent out some of their feelings and help each other as need. If it\u2019s a large team, use some of the survey tools to do check-in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Informal group chat\/gathering or 1:1 with each other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am sure most coaches, leaders are thinking about this and doing something to help their teams in these trying times. Let me know what are those things that you are doing.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #248 \u2013 Sensitivity during these(covid) times","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-248-sensitivity-during-thesecovid-times","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18715","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17712,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:47:04","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:17:04","post_content":"\n

Pravin has been coaching the development team for a few months on the implementation of Scrum. There were a lot of improvement ideas and opportunities that he and his team gathered for the Product team, operation teams during the retrospective. When he tried speaking to them to understand their processes and see if he can do something about it, he was told that the scrum master scope is for the IT development team and the operation teams are not part of it.  He was very excited when he read the new scrum guide and understood that the scrum master role is expanded. Will this help him to remove the obstacle of end to end coaching of the team? If not, what else can he do? Are there any suggestions or solutions that you would recommend?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suggested Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum master role definition and One product team from the scrum guide is a good starting point. Pravin can use the guide to drive the essence of one team delivering product starting from definition to support, roll out, and also point that it is from the industry best practice. In addition to that, it would be good for him to quantify the problem that he had gathered with the data; for ex the resolution time of the incident (end to end), new requirements from the operation team. Along with that, he can do an End to End process mapping w.r.t product delivery and facilitate a discussion with the relevant stakeholders. Most of the time, the problem would be due to organization design ie. Silos between the operation team, product team, and development team, and this might take a longer discussion to solve. <\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #224 - Scrum Master role in the Operations\/Support world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-224-scrum-master-role-in-the-operations-support-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17712","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17698,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:46:28","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:16:28","post_content":"\n

Last week, Scrum celebrated 25 years, and to add to that celebration, a new scrum guide was released. Over the years, Scrum has been implemented across multiple industries and domains and the feedback of its success and failures flowed back into this new Scrum guide. There was a lot of excitement among the agile community for the launch and the agile community was elated with the changes in the Scrum guide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us look at the summary of changes ( from scrum.org articles) in the new scrum guide and then talk about the impact for us (agile community). For more details, you can refer to scrum.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even Less\nPrescriptive<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years,\nthe Scrum Guide started getting a bit more prescriptive. The 2020 version aims\nto bring Scrum back to being a minimally sufficient framework. This was\nachieved by removing the Daily Scrum questions, softening language around PBI\nattributes and retro items in Sprint Backlog, shortening the Sprint\ncancellation section, and much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One Team,\nFocused on One Product<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal was to\neliminate the concept of a separate team within a team that has led to \u201cproxy\u201d\nor \u201cus and them\u201d behavior between the PO and Dev Team. There is now just one\nScrum Team focused on the same objective, with three different sets of accountabilities:\nPO, SM, and Developers (anybody who is working on the sprint increment).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction\nof Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum\nGuide introduces the concept of a Product Goal to provide the focus for the\nScrum Team toward a larger valuable objective. Each Sprint should bring the\nproduct closer to the overall Product Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Home for\nSprint Goal, Definition of Done, and Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides described Sprint Goal and Definition of Done without really giving them\nan identity. They were not quite artifacts but were somewhat attached to\nartifacts. With the addition of Product Goal, the 2020 version provides more\nclarity around this. Each of the three artifacts now contains \u2018commitments\u2019 to\nthem. For the Product Backlog, it is the Product Goal, the Sprint Backlog has\nthe Sprint Goal, and the Increment has the Definition of Done (now without the\nquotes). They exist to bring transparency and focus toward the progress of each\nartifact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-Managing\nover Self-Organizing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides referred to Development Teams (team members who are working on the\nsprint increment) as self-organizing, choosing who and how to do work. With\nmore of a focus on the Scrum Team, the 2020 version emphasizes a self-managing\nScrum Team, that chooses who, how, and what to work on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nSprint Planning Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the\nSprint Planning topics of \u201cWhat\u201d and \u201cHow,\u201d the 2020 Scrum Guide places\nemphasis on a third topic, \u201cWhy.\u201d This third topic refers to the Sprint Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 1 of 3 1 2 3 Next

\n

Solution:<\/strong> Here are few things that I would recommend she start with <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Status \/ Smiley images in the communication and collaboration tool.  We have asked team members to add this and this helps others in the team to understand the emotional state of each and every one.  It was quite beneficial and set the stage for everyone in the meetings and interaction.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Standup meetings or team meetings \u2013 First 5 min or 10 min is used for check-in and free-flow conversation. This helped team members to know what\u2019s happening, vent out some of their feelings and help each other as need. If it\u2019s a large team, use some of the survey tools to do check-in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Informal group chat\/gathering or 1:1 with each other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am sure most coaches, leaders are thinking about this and doing something to help their teams in these trying times. Let me know what are those things that you are doing.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #248 \u2013 Sensitivity during these(covid) times","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-248-sensitivity-during-thesecovid-times","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18715","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17712,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:47:04","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:17:04","post_content":"\n

Pravin has been coaching the development team for a few months on the implementation of Scrum. There were a lot of improvement ideas and opportunities that he and his team gathered for the Product team, operation teams during the retrospective. When he tried speaking to them to understand their processes and see if he can do something about it, he was told that the scrum master scope is for the IT development team and the operation teams are not part of it.  He was very excited when he read the new scrum guide and understood that the scrum master role is expanded. Will this help him to remove the obstacle of end to end coaching of the team? If not, what else can he do? Are there any suggestions or solutions that you would recommend?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suggested Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum master role definition and One product team from the scrum guide is a good starting point. Pravin can use the guide to drive the essence of one team delivering product starting from definition to support, roll out, and also point that it is from the industry best practice. In addition to that, it would be good for him to quantify the problem that he had gathered with the data; for ex the resolution time of the incident (end to end), new requirements from the operation team. Along with that, he can do an End to End process mapping w.r.t product delivery and facilitate a discussion with the relevant stakeholders. Most of the time, the problem would be due to organization design ie. Silos between the operation team, product team, and development team, and this might take a longer discussion to solve. <\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #224 - Scrum Master role in the Operations\/Support world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-224-scrum-master-role-in-the-operations-support-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17712","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17698,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:46:28","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:16:28","post_content":"\n

Last week, Scrum celebrated 25 years, and to add to that celebration, a new scrum guide was released. Over the years, Scrum has been implemented across multiple industries and domains and the feedback of its success and failures flowed back into this new Scrum guide. There was a lot of excitement among the agile community for the launch and the agile community was elated with the changes in the Scrum guide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us look at the summary of changes ( from scrum.org articles) in the new scrum guide and then talk about the impact for us (agile community). For more details, you can refer to scrum.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even Less\nPrescriptive<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years,\nthe Scrum Guide started getting a bit more prescriptive. The 2020 version aims\nto bring Scrum back to being a minimally sufficient framework. This was\nachieved by removing the Daily Scrum questions, softening language around PBI\nattributes and retro items in Sprint Backlog, shortening the Sprint\ncancellation section, and much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One Team,\nFocused on One Product<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal was to\neliminate the concept of a separate team within a team that has led to \u201cproxy\u201d\nor \u201cus and them\u201d behavior between the PO and Dev Team. There is now just one\nScrum Team focused on the same objective, with three different sets of accountabilities:\nPO, SM, and Developers (anybody who is working on the sprint increment).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction\nof Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum\nGuide introduces the concept of a Product Goal to provide the focus for the\nScrum Team toward a larger valuable objective. Each Sprint should bring the\nproduct closer to the overall Product Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Home for\nSprint Goal, Definition of Done, and Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides described Sprint Goal and Definition of Done without really giving them\nan identity. They were not quite artifacts but were somewhat attached to\nartifacts. With the addition of Product Goal, the 2020 version provides more\nclarity around this. Each of the three artifacts now contains \u2018commitments\u2019 to\nthem. For the Product Backlog, it is the Product Goal, the Sprint Backlog has\nthe Sprint Goal, and the Increment has the Definition of Done (now without the\nquotes). They exist to bring transparency and focus toward the progress of each\nartifact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-Managing\nover Self-Organizing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides referred to Development Teams (team members who are working on the\nsprint increment) as self-organizing, choosing who and how to do work. With\nmore of a focus on the Scrum Team, the 2020 version emphasizes a self-managing\nScrum Team, that chooses who, how, and what to work on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nSprint Planning Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the\nSprint Planning topics of \u201cWhat\u201d and \u201cHow,\u201d the 2020 Scrum Guide places\nemphasis on a third topic, \u201cWhy.\u201d This third topic refers to the Sprint Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 1 of 3 1 2 3 Next

\n

Harshita is a scrum master for a team. With the Covid situation across India, the team has been dull and in a very somber state. As a scrum master, she could understand and relate to the situation that the team has been going through. At an organization level, there has been a lot of Employee assistance programs. But she is confused about whether it is ok to have the team be like this or does she need to do something?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution:<\/strong> Here are few things that I would recommend she start with <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Status \/ Smiley images in the communication and collaboration tool.  We have asked team members to add this and this helps others in the team to understand the emotional state of each and every one.  It was quite beneficial and set the stage for everyone in the meetings and interaction.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Standup meetings or team meetings \u2013 First 5 min or 10 min is used for check-in and free-flow conversation. This helped team members to know what\u2019s happening, vent out some of their feelings and help each other as need. If it\u2019s a large team, use some of the survey tools to do check-in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Informal group chat\/gathering or 1:1 with each other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am sure most coaches, leaders are thinking about this and doing something to help their teams in these trying times. Let me know what are those things that you are doing.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #248 \u2013 Sensitivity during these(covid) times","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-248-sensitivity-during-thesecovid-times","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18715","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17712,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:47:04","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:17:04","post_content":"\n

Pravin has been coaching the development team for a few months on the implementation of Scrum. There were a lot of improvement ideas and opportunities that he and his team gathered for the Product team, operation teams during the retrospective. When he tried speaking to them to understand their processes and see if he can do something about it, he was told that the scrum master scope is for the IT development team and the operation teams are not part of it.  He was very excited when he read the new scrum guide and understood that the scrum master role is expanded. Will this help him to remove the obstacle of end to end coaching of the team? If not, what else can he do? Are there any suggestions or solutions that you would recommend?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suggested Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum master role definition and One product team from the scrum guide is a good starting point. Pravin can use the guide to drive the essence of one team delivering product starting from definition to support, roll out, and also point that it is from the industry best practice. In addition to that, it would be good for him to quantify the problem that he had gathered with the data; for ex the resolution time of the incident (end to end), new requirements from the operation team. Along with that, he can do an End to End process mapping w.r.t product delivery and facilitate a discussion with the relevant stakeholders. Most of the time, the problem would be due to organization design ie. Silos between the operation team, product team, and development team, and this might take a longer discussion to solve. <\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #224 - Scrum Master role in the Operations\/Support world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-224-scrum-master-role-in-the-operations-support-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17712","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17698,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:46:28","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:16:28","post_content":"\n

Last week, Scrum celebrated 25 years, and to add to that celebration, a new scrum guide was released. Over the years, Scrum has been implemented across multiple industries and domains and the feedback of its success and failures flowed back into this new Scrum guide. There was a lot of excitement among the agile community for the launch and the agile community was elated with the changes in the Scrum guide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us look at the summary of changes ( from scrum.org articles) in the new scrum guide and then talk about the impact for us (agile community). For more details, you can refer to scrum.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even Less\nPrescriptive<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years,\nthe Scrum Guide started getting a bit more prescriptive. The 2020 version aims\nto bring Scrum back to being a minimally sufficient framework. This was\nachieved by removing the Daily Scrum questions, softening language around PBI\nattributes and retro items in Sprint Backlog, shortening the Sprint\ncancellation section, and much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One Team,\nFocused on One Product<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal was to\neliminate the concept of a separate team within a team that has led to \u201cproxy\u201d\nor \u201cus and them\u201d behavior between the PO and Dev Team. There is now just one\nScrum Team focused on the same objective, with three different sets of accountabilities:\nPO, SM, and Developers (anybody who is working on the sprint increment).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction\nof Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum\nGuide introduces the concept of a Product Goal to provide the focus for the\nScrum Team toward a larger valuable objective. Each Sprint should bring the\nproduct closer to the overall Product Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Home for\nSprint Goal, Definition of Done, and Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides described Sprint Goal and Definition of Done without really giving them\nan identity. They were not quite artifacts but were somewhat attached to\nartifacts. With the addition of Product Goal, the 2020 version provides more\nclarity around this. Each of the three artifacts now contains \u2018commitments\u2019 to\nthem. For the Product Backlog, it is the Product Goal, the Sprint Backlog has\nthe Sprint Goal, and the Increment has the Definition of Done (now without the\nquotes). They exist to bring transparency and focus toward the progress of each\nartifact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-Managing\nover Self-Organizing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides referred to Development Teams (team members who are working on the\nsprint increment) as self-organizing, choosing who and how to do work. With\nmore of a focus on the Scrum Team, the 2020 version emphasizes a self-managing\nScrum Team, that chooses who, how, and what to work on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nSprint Planning Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the\nSprint Planning topics of \u201cWhat\u201d and \u201cHow,\u201d the 2020 Scrum Guide places\nemphasis on a third topic, \u201cWhy.\u201d This third topic refers to the Sprint Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 1 of 3 1 2 3 Next

\n

One of the major learning in this experimentation is that Shift left does not mean moving all the cybersecurity-related processes, practices, ways of working, and tools from the tail end to the initial stage of development. There had to be a balanced approach and what is required differs from application to application. But bringing this security mindset to all the team members helped a lot in bringing the balanced approach of security and frequent release cycles that was much needed for our application.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Agile and Cybersecurity - How to get started","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-and-cybersecurity-how-to-get-started","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18707","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18715,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:41","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:41","post_content":"\n

Harshita is a scrum master for a team. With the Covid situation across India, the team has been dull and in a very somber state. As a scrum master, she could understand and relate to the situation that the team has been going through. At an organization level, there has been a lot of Employee assistance programs. But she is confused about whether it is ok to have the team be like this or does she need to do something?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution:<\/strong> Here are few things that I would recommend she start with <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Status \/ Smiley images in the communication and collaboration tool.  We have asked team members to add this and this helps others in the team to understand the emotional state of each and every one.  It was quite beneficial and set the stage for everyone in the meetings and interaction.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Standup meetings or team meetings \u2013 First 5 min or 10 min is used for check-in and free-flow conversation. This helped team members to know what\u2019s happening, vent out some of their feelings and help each other as need. If it\u2019s a large team, use some of the survey tools to do check-in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Informal group chat\/gathering or 1:1 with each other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am sure most coaches, leaders are thinking about this and doing something to help their teams in these trying times. Let me know what are those things that you are doing.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #248 \u2013 Sensitivity during these(covid) times","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-248-sensitivity-during-thesecovid-times","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18715","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17712,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:47:04","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:17:04","post_content":"\n

Pravin has been coaching the development team for a few months on the implementation of Scrum. There were a lot of improvement ideas and opportunities that he and his team gathered for the Product team, operation teams during the retrospective. When he tried speaking to them to understand their processes and see if he can do something about it, he was told that the scrum master scope is for the IT development team and the operation teams are not part of it.  He was very excited when he read the new scrum guide and understood that the scrum master role is expanded. Will this help him to remove the obstacle of end to end coaching of the team? If not, what else can he do? Are there any suggestions or solutions that you would recommend?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suggested Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum master role definition and One product team from the scrum guide is a good starting point. Pravin can use the guide to drive the essence of one team delivering product starting from definition to support, roll out, and also point that it is from the industry best practice. In addition to that, it would be good for him to quantify the problem that he had gathered with the data; for ex the resolution time of the incident (end to end), new requirements from the operation team. Along with that, he can do an End to End process mapping w.r.t product delivery and facilitate a discussion with the relevant stakeholders. Most of the time, the problem would be due to organization design ie. Silos between the operation team, product team, and development team, and this might take a longer discussion to solve. <\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #224 - Scrum Master role in the Operations\/Support world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-224-scrum-master-role-in-the-operations-support-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17712","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17698,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:46:28","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:16:28","post_content":"\n

Last week, Scrum celebrated 25 years, and to add to that celebration, a new scrum guide was released. Over the years, Scrum has been implemented across multiple industries and domains and the feedback of its success and failures flowed back into this new Scrum guide. There was a lot of excitement among the agile community for the launch and the agile community was elated with the changes in the Scrum guide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us look at the summary of changes ( from scrum.org articles) in the new scrum guide and then talk about the impact for us (agile community). For more details, you can refer to scrum.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even Less\nPrescriptive<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years,\nthe Scrum Guide started getting a bit more prescriptive. The 2020 version aims\nto bring Scrum back to being a minimally sufficient framework. This was\nachieved by removing the Daily Scrum questions, softening language around PBI\nattributes and retro items in Sprint Backlog, shortening the Sprint\ncancellation section, and much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One Team,\nFocused on One Product<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal was to\neliminate the concept of a separate team within a team that has led to \u201cproxy\u201d\nor \u201cus and them\u201d behavior between the PO and Dev Team. There is now just one\nScrum Team focused on the same objective, with three different sets of accountabilities:\nPO, SM, and Developers (anybody who is working on the sprint increment).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction\nof Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum\nGuide introduces the concept of a Product Goal to provide the focus for the\nScrum Team toward a larger valuable objective. Each Sprint should bring the\nproduct closer to the overall Product Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Home for\nSprint Goal, Definition of Done, and Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides described Sprint Goal and Definition of Done without really giving them\nan identity. They were not quite artifacts but were somewhat attached to\nartifacts. With the addition of Product Goal, the 2020 version provides more\nclarity around this. Each of the three artifacts now contains \u2018commitments\u2019 to\nthem. For the Product Backlog, it is the Product Goal, the Sprint Backlog has\nthe Sprint Goal, and the Increment has the Definition of Done (now without the\nquotes). They exist to bring transparency and focus toward the progress of each\nartifact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-Managing\nover Self-Organizing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides referred to Development Teams (team members who are working on the\nsprint increment) as self-organizing, choosing who and how to do work. With\nmore of a focus on the Scrum Team, the 2020 version emphasizes a self-managing\nScrum Team, that chooses who, how, and what to work on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nSprint Planning Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the\nSprint Planning topics of \u201cWhat\u201d and \u201cHow,\u201d the 2020 Scrum Guide places\nemphasis on a third topic, \u201cWhy.\u201d This third topic refers to the Sprint Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 1 of 3 1 2 3 Next

\n

Conclusion: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the major learning in this experimentation is that Shift left does not mean moving all the cybersecurity-related processes, practices, ways of working, and tools from the tail end to the initial stage of development. There had to be a balanced approach and what is required differs from application to application. But bringing this security mindset to all the team members helped a lot in bringing the balanced approach of security and frequent release cycles that was much needed for our application.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Agile and Cybersecurity - How to get started","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-and-cybersecurity-how-to-get-started","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18707","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18715,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:41","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:41","post_content":"\n

Harshita is a scrum master for a team. With the Covid situation across India, the team has been dull and in a very somber state. As a scrum master, she could understand and relate to the situation that the team has been going through. At an organization level, there has been a lot of Employee assistance programs. But she is confused about whether it is ok to have the team be like this or does she need to do something?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution:<\/strong> Here are few things that I would recommend she start with <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Status \/ Smiley images in the communication and collaboration tool.  We have asked team members to add this and this helps others in the team to understand the emotional state of each and every one.  It was quite beneficial and set the stage for everyone in the meetings and interaction.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Standup meetings or team meetings \u2013 First 5 min or 10 min is used for check-in and free-flow conversation. This helped team members to know what\u2019s happening, vent out some of their feelings and help each other as need. If it\u2019s a large team, use some of the survey tools to do check-in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Informal group chat\/gathering or 1:1 with each other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am sure most coaches, leaders are thinking about this and doing something to help their teams in these trying times. Let me know what are those things that you are doing.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #248 \u2013 Sensitivity during these(covid) times","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-248-sensitivity-during-thesecovid-times","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18715","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17712,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:47:04","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:17:04","post_content":"\n

Pravin has been coaching the development team for a few months on the implementation of Scrum. There were a lot of improvement ideas and opportunities that he and his team gathered for the Product team, operation teams during the retrospective. When he tried speaking to them to understand their processes and see if he can do something about it, he was told that the scrum master scope is for the IT development team and the operation teams are not part of it.  He was very excited when he read the new scrum guide and understood that the scrum master role is expanded. Will this help him to remove the obstacle of end to end coaching of the team? If not, what else can he do? Are there any suggestions or solutions that you would recommend?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suggested Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum master role definition and One product team from the scrum guide is a good starting point. Pravin can use the guide to drive the essence of one team delivering product starting from definition to support, roll out, and also point that it is from the industry best practice. In addition to that, it would be good for him to quantify the problem that he had gathered with the data; for ex the resolution time of the incident (end to end), new requirements from the operation team. Along with that, he can do an End to End process mapping w.r.t product delivery and facilitate a discussion with the relevant stakeholders. Most of the time, the problem would be due to organization design ie. Silos between the operation team, product team, and development team, and this might take a longer discussion to solve. <\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #224 - Scrum Master role in the Operations\/Support world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-224-scrum-master-role-in-the-operations-support-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17712","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17698,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:46:28","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:16:28","post_content":"\n

Last week, Scrum celebrated 25 years, and to add to that celebration, a new scrum guide was released. Over the years, Scrum has been implemented across multiple industries and domains and the feedback of its success and failures flowed back into this new Scrum guide. There was a lot of excitement among the agile community for the launch and the agile community was elated with the changes in the Scrum guide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us look at the summary of changes ( from scrum.org articles) in the new scrum guide and then talk about the impact for us (agile community). For more details, you can refer to scrum.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even Less\nPrescriptive<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years,\nthe Scrum Guide started getting a bit more prescriptive. The 2020 version aims\nto bring Scrum back to being a minimally sufficient framework. This was\nachieved by removing the Daily Scrum questions, softening language around PBI\nattributes and retro items in Sprint Backlog, shortening the Sprint\ncancellation section, and much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One Team,\nFocused on One Product<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal was to\neliminate the concept of a separate team within a team that has led to \u201cproxy\u201d\nor \u201cus and them\u201d behavior between the PO and Dev Team. There is now just one\nScrum Team focused on the same objective, with three different sets of accountabilities:\nPO, SM, and Developers (anybody who is working on the sprint increment).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction\nof Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum\nGuide introduces the concept of a Product Goal to provide the focus for the\nScrum Team toward a larger valuable objective. Each Sprint should bring the\nproduct closer to the overall Product Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Home for\nSprint Goal, Definition of Done, and Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides described Sprint Goal and Definition of Done without really giving them\nan identity. They were not quite artifacts but were somewhat attached to\nartifacts. With the addition of Product Goal, the 2020 version provides more\nclarity around this. Each of the three artifacts now contains \u2018commitments\u2019 to\nthem. For the Product Backlog, it is the Product Goal, the Sprint Backlog has\nthe Sprint Goal, and the Increment has the Definition of Done (now without the\nquotes). They exist to bring transparency and focus toward the progress of each\nartifact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-Managing\nover Self-Organizing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides referred to Development Teams (team members who are working on the\nsprint increment) as self-organizing, choosing who and how to do work. With\nmore of a focus on the Scrum Team, the 2020 version emphasizes a self-managing\nScrum Team, that chooses who, how, and what to work on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nSprint Planning Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the\nSprint Planning topics of \u201cWhat\u201d and \u201cHow,\u201d the 2020 Scrum Guide places\nemphasis on a third topic, \u201cWhy.\u201d This third topic refers to the Sprint Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

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\n

3. Tools and Automation<\/strong>: There are quite a several tools available now in the cybersecurity domain. Once the cybersecurity process\/tests are identified, we find that most of our tasks were repetitive and manual. We started looking for ways to automate as Automating repeated tasks is key to DevSecOps since running manual security checks in the pipeline can be time-intensive. Some of these tasks can be automated, such as monitoring intrusion detection systems to search for threats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the major learning in this experimentation is that Shift left does not mean moving all the cybersecurity-related processes, practices, ways of working, and tools from the tail end to the initial stage of development. There had to be a balanced approach and what is required differs from application to application. But bringing this security mindset to all the team members helped a lot in bringing the balanced approach of security and frequent release cycles that was much needed for our application.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Agile and Cybersecurity - How to get started","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-and-cybersecurity-how-to-get-started","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18707","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18715,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:41","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:41","post_content":"\n

Harshita is a scrum master for a team. With the Covid situation across India, the team has been dull and in a very somber state. As a scrum master, she could understand and relate to the situation that the team has been going through. At an organization level, there has been a lot of Employee assistance programs. But she is confused about whether it is ok to have the team be like this or does she need to do something?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution:<\/strong> Here are few things that I would recommend she start with <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Status \/ Smiley images in the communication and collaboration tool.  We have asked team members to add this and this helps others in the team to understand the emotional state of each and every one.  It was quite beneficial and set the stage for everyone in the meetings and interaction.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Standup meetings or team meetings \u2013 First 5 min or 10 min is used for check-in and free-flow conversation. This helped team members to know what\u2019s happening, vent out some of their feelings and help each other as need. If it\u2019s a large team, use some of the survey tools to do check-in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Informal group chat\/gathering or 1:1 with each other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am sure most coaches, leaders are thinking about this and doing something to help their teams in these trying times. Let me know what are those things that you are doing.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #248 \u2013 Sensitivity during these(covid) times","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-248-sensitivity-during-thesecovid-times","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18715","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17712,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:47:04","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:17:04","post_content":"\n

Pravin has been coaching the development team for a few months on the implementation of Scrum. There were a lot of improvement ideas and opportunities that he and his team gathered for the Product team, operation teams during the retrospective. When he tried speaking to them to understand their processes and see if he can do something about it, he was told that the scrum master scope is for the IT development team and the operation teams are not part of it.  He was very excited when he read the new scrum guide and understood that the scrum master role is expanded. Will this help him to remove the obstacle of end to end coaching of the team? If not, what else can he do? Are there any suggestions or solutions that you would recommend?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suggested Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum master role definition and One product team from the scrum guide is a good starting point. Pravin can use the guide to drive the essence of one team delivering product starting from definition to support, roll out, and also point that it is from the industry best practice. In addition to that, it would be good for him to quantify the problem that he had gathered with the data; for ex the resolution time of the incident (end to end), new requirements from the operation team. Along with that, he can do an End to End process mapping w.r.t product delivery and facilitate a discussion with the relevant stakeholders. Most of the time, the problem would be due to organization design ie. Silos between the operation team, product team, and development team, and this might take a longer discussion to solve. <\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #224 - Scrum Master role in the Operations\/Support world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-224-scrum-master-role-in-the-operations-support-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17712","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17698,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:46:28","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:16:28","post_content":"\n

Last week, Scrum celebrated 25 years, and to add to that celebration, a new scrum guide was released. Over the years, Scrum has been implemented across multiple industries and domains and the feedback of its success and failures flowed back into this new Scrum guide. There was a lot of excitement among the agile community for the launch and the agile community was elated with the changes in the Scrum guide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us look at the summary of changes ( from scrum.org articles) in the new scrum guide and then talk about the impact for us (agile community). For more details, you can refer to scrum.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even Less\nPrescriptive<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years,\nthe Scrum Guide started getting a bit more prescriptive. The 2020 version aims\nto bring Scrum back to being a minimally sufficient framework. This was\nachieved by removing the Daily Scrum questions, softening language around PBI\nattributes and retro items in Sprint Backlog, shortening the Sprint\ncancellation section, and much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One Team,\nFocused on One Product<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal was to\neliminate the concept of a separate team within a team that has led to \u201cproxy\u201d\nor \u201cus and them\u201d behavior between the PO and Dev Team. There is now just one\nScrum Team focused on the same objective, with three different sets of accountabilities:\nPO, SM, and Developers (anybody who is working on the sprint increment).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction\nof Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum\nGuide introduces the concept of a Product Goal to provide the focus for the\nScrum Team toward a larger valuable objective. Each Sprint should bring the\nproduct closer to the overall Product Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Home for\nSprint Goal, Definition of Done, and Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides described Sprint Goal and Definition of Done without really giving them\nan identity. They were not quite artifacts but were somewhat attached to\nartifacts. With the addition of Product Goal, the 2020 version provides more\nclarity around this. Each of the three artifacts now contains \u2018commitments\u2019 to\nthem. For the Product Backlog, it is the Product Goal, the Sprint Backlog has\nthe Sprint Goal, and the Increment has the Definition of Done (now without the\nquotes). They exist to bring transparency and focus toward the progress of each\nartifact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-Managing\nover Self-Organizing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides referred to Development Teams (team members who are working on the\nsprint increment) as self-organizing, choosing who and how to do work. With\nmore of a focus on the Scrum Team, the 2020 version emphasizes a self-managing\nScrum Team, that chooses who, how, and what to work on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nSprint Planning Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the\nSprint Planning topics of \u201cWhat\u201d and \u201cHow,\u201d the 2020 Scrum Guide places\nemphasis on a third topic, \u201cWhy.\u201d This third topic refers to the Sprint Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

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\n

2. Hacker as persona:<\/strong> We introduced Hacker as a persona for the application as a next step. By building these personas<\/strong>, we worked out the best defense against certain types of attacks and predict when they might next occur. It helps us to understand the motivation and plan for countermeasures, prioritize defense. This persona was included as one of the users in the identified features of the application and which then was elaborated during the requirements and backlog grooming session. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Tools and Automation<\/strong>: There are quite a several tools available now in the cybersecurity domain. Once the cybersecurity process\/tests are identified, we find that most of our tasks were repetitive and manual. We started looking for ways to automate as Automating repeated tasks is key to DevSecOps since running manual security checks in the pipeline can be time-intensive. Some of these tasks can be automated, such as monitoring intrusion detection systems to search for threats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the major learning in this experimentation is that Shift left does not mean moving all the cybersecurity-related processes, practices, ways of working, and tools from the tail end to the initial stage of development. There had to be a balanced approach and what is required differs from application to application. But bringing this security mindset to all the team members helped a lot in bringing the balanced approach of security and frequent release cycles that was much needed for our application.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Agile and Cybersecurity - How to get started","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-and-cybersecurity-how-to-get-started","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18707","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18715,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:41","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:41","post_content":"\n

Harshita is a scrum master for a team. With the Covid situation across India, the team has been dull and in a very somber state. As a scrum master, she could understand and relate to the situation that the team has been going through. At an organization level, there has been a lot of Employee assistance programs. But she is confused about whether it is ok to have the team be like this or does she need to do something?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution:<\/strong> Here are few things that I would recommend she start with <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Status \/ Smiley images in the communication and collaboration tool.  We have asked team members to add this and this helps others in the team to understand the emotional state of each and every one.  It was quite beneficial and set the stage for everyone in the meetings and interaction.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Standup meetings or team meetings \u2013 First 5 min or 10 min is used for check-in and free-flow conversation. This helped team members to know what\u2019s happening, vent out some of their feelings and help each other as need. If it\u2019s a large team, use some of the survey tools to do check-in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Informal group chat\/gathering or 1:1 with each other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am sure most coaches, leaders are thinking about this and doing something to help their teams in these trying times. Let me know what are those things that you are doing.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #248 \u2013 Sensitivity during these(covid) times","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-248-sensitivity-during-thesecovid-times","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18715","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17712,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:47:04","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:17:04","post_content":"\n

Pravin has been coaching the development team for a few months on the implementation of Scrum. There were a lot of improvement ideas and opportunities that he and his team gathered for the Product team, operation teams during the retrospective. When he tried speaking to them to understand their processes and see if he can do something about it, he was told that the scrum master scope is for the IT development team and the operation teams are not part of it.  He was very excited when he read the new scrum guide and understood that the scrum master role is expanded. Will this help him to remove the obstacle of end to end coaching of the team? If not, what else can he do? Are there any suggestions or solutions that you would recommend?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suggested Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum master role definition and One product team from the scrum guide is a good starting point. Pravin can use the guide to drive the essence of one team delivering product starting from definition to support, roll out, and also point that it is from the industry best practice. In addition to that, it would be good for him to quantify the problem that he had gathered with the data; for ex the resolution time of the incident (end to end), new requirements from the operation team. Along with that, he can do an End to End process mapping w.r.t product delivery and facilitate a discussion with the relevant stakeholders. Most of the time, the problem would be due to organization design ie. Silos between the operation team, product team, and development team, and this might take a longer discussion to solve. <\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #224 - Scrum Master role in the Operations\/Support world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-224-scrum-master-role-in-the-operations-support-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17712","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17698,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:46:28","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:16:28","post_content":"\n

Last week, Scrum celebrated 25 years, and to add to that celebration, a new scrum guide was released. Over the years, Scrum has been implemented across multiple industries and domains and the feedback of its success and failures flowed back into this new Scrum guide. There was a lot of excitement among the agile community for the launch and the agile community was elated with the changes in the Scrum guide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us look at the summary of changes ( from scrum.org articles) in the new scrum guide and then talk about the impact for us (agile community). For more details, you can refer to scrum.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even Less\nPrescriptive<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years,\nthe Scrum Guide started getting a bit more prescriptive. The 2020 version aims\nto bring Scrum back to being a minimally sufficient framework. This was\nachieved by removing the Daily Scrum questions, softening language around PBI\nattributes and retro items in Sprint Backlog, shortening the Sprint\ncancellation section, and much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One Team,\nFocused on One Product<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal was to\neliminate the concept of a separate team within a team that has led to \u201cproxy\u201d\nor \u201cus and them\u201d behavior between the PO and Dev Team. There is now just one\nScrum Team focused on the same objective, with three different sets of accountabilities:\nPO, SM, and Developers (anybody who is working on the sprint increment).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction\nof Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum\nGuide introduces the concept of a Product Goal to provide the focus for the\nScrum Team toward a larger valuable objective. Each Sprint should bring the\nproduct closer to the overall Product Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Home for\nSprint Goal, Definition of Done, and Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides described Sprint Goal and Definition of Done without really giving them\nan identity. They were not quite artifacts but were somewhat attached to\nartifacts. With the addition of Product Goal, the 2020 version provides more\nclarity around this. Each of the three artifacts now contains \u2018commitments\u2019 to\nthem. For the Product Backlog, it is the Product Goal, the Sprint Backlog has\nthe Sprint Goal, and the Increment has the Definition of Done (now without the\nquotes). They exist to bring transparency and focus toward the progress of each\nartifact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-Managing\nover Self-Organizing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides referred to Development Teams (team members who are working on the\nsprint increment) as self-organizing, choosing who and how to do work. With\nmore of a focus on the Scrum Team, the 2020 version emphasizes a self-managing\nScrum Team, that chooses who, how, and what to work on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nSprint Planning Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the\nSprint Planning topics of \u201cWhat\u201d and \u201cHow,\u201d the 2020 Scrum Guide places\nemphasis on a third topic, \u201cWhy.\u201d This third topic refers to the Sprint Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

Page 1 of 3 1 2 3 Next

\n

1.     Shift- Left:<\/strong>  Having\nexperts \/Cybersecurity personnel at the initial stage not at the end state; not\nto build systems of today. They were able to determine the risk tolerance of\nthe application and conduct risk\/benefit analysis. What amount of security\ncontrols are required for this application and threat modeling exercises? What\nkind of testing required during the sprints and have them integrated with the\ntesting and DevOps plan? It also underscores the need to help developers code\nwith security in mind, a process that involves security teams sharing\nvisibility, feedback, and insights on known threats. Based on the analysis and\nplan, all our developers were trained on the security protocols, processes and\ntools required. One of the important factors to keep in mind is the balance of\ncybersecurity activities with other activities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Hacker as persona:<\/strong> We introduced Hacker as a persona for the application as a next step. By building these personas<\/strong>, we worked out the best defense against certain types of attacks and predict when they might next occur. It helps us to understand the motivation and plan for countermeasures, prioritize defense. This persona was included as one of the users in the identified features of the application and which then was elaborated during the requirements and backlog grooming session. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Tools and Automation<\/strong>: There are quite a several tools available now in the cybersecurity domain. Once the cybersecurity process\/tests are identified, we find that most of our tasks were repetitive and manual. We started looking for ways to automate as Automating repeated tasks is key to DevSecOps since running manual security checks in the pipeline can be time-intensive. Some of these tasks can be automated, such as monitoring intrusion detection systems to search for threats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the major learning in this experimentation is that Shift left does not mean moving all the cybersecurity-related processes, practices, ways of working, and tools from the tail end to the initial stage of development. There had to be a balanced approach and what is required differs from application to application. But bringing this security mindset to all the team members helped a lot in bringing the balanced approach of security and frequent release cycles that was much needed for our application.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Agile and Cybersecurity - How to get started","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-and-cybersecurity-how-to-get-started","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18707","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18715,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:41","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:41","post_content":"\n

Harshita is a scrum master for a team. With the Covid situation across India, the team has been dull and in a very somber state. As a scrum master, she could understand and relate to the situation that the team has been going through. At an organization level, there has been a lot of Employee assistance programs. But she is confused about whether it is ok to have the team be like this or does she need to do something?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution:<\/strong> Here are few things that I would recommend she start with <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Status \/ Smiley images in the communication and collaboration tool.  We have asked team members to add this and this helps others in the team to understand the emotional state of each and every one.  It was quite beneficial and set the stage for everyone in the meetings and interaction.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Standup meetings or team meetings \u2013 First 5 min or 10 min is used for check-in and free-flow conversation. This helped team members to know what\u2019s happening, vent out some of their feelings and help each other as need. If it\u2019s a large team, use some of the survey tools to do check-in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Informal group chat\/gathering or 1:1 with each other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am sure most coaches, leaders are thinking about this and doing something to help their teams in these trying times. Let me know what are those things that you are doing.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #248 \u2013 Sensitivity during these(covid) times","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-248-sensitivity-during-thesecovid-times","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18715","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17712,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:47:04","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:17:04","post_content":"\n

Pravin has been coaching the development team for a few months on the implementation of Scrum. There were a lot of improvement ideas and opportunities that he and his team gathered for the Product team, operation teams during the retrospective. When he tried speaking to them to understand their processes and see if he can do something about it, he was told that the scrum master scope is for the IT development team and the operation teams are not part of it.  He was very excited when he read the new scrum guide and understood that the scrum master role is expanded. Will this help him to remove the obstacle of end to end coaching of the team? If not, what else can he do? Are there any suggestions or solutions that you would recommend?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suggested Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum master role definition and One product team from the scrum guide is a good starting point. Pravin can use the guide to drive the essence of one team delivering product starting from definition to support, roll out, and also point that it is from the industry best practice. In addition to that, it would be good for him to quantify the problem that he had gathered with the data; for ex the resolution time of the incident (end to end), new requirements from the operation team. Along with that, he can do an End to End process mapping w.r.t product delivery and facilitate a discussion with the relevant stakeholders. Most of the time, the problem would be due to organization design ie. Silos between the operation team, product team, and development team, and this might take a longer discussion to solve. <\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #224 - Scrum Master role in the Operations\/Support world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-224-scrum-master-role-in-the-operations-support-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17712","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17698,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:46:28","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:16:28","post_content":"\n

Last week, Scrum celebrated 25 years, and to add to that celebration, a new scrum guide was released. Over the years, Scrum has been implemented across multiple industries and domains and the feedback of its success and failures flowed back into this new Scrum guide. There was a lot of excitement among the agile community for the launch and the agile community was elated with the changes in the Scrum guide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us look at the summary of changes ( from scrum.org articles) in the new scrum guide and then talk about the impact for us (agile community). For more details, you can refer to scrum.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even Less\nPrescriptive<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years,\nthe Scrum Guide started getting a bit more prescriptive. The 2020 version aims\nto bring Scrum back to being a minimally sufficient framework. This was\nachieved by removing the Daily Scrum questions, softening language around PBI\nattributes and retro items in Sprint Backlog, shortening the Sprint\ncancellation section, and much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One Team,\nFocused on One Product<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal was to\neliminate the concept of a separate team within a team that has led to \u201cproxy\u201d\nor \u201cus and them\u201d behavior between the PO and Dev Team. There is now just one\nScrum Team focused on the same objective, with three different sets of accountabilities:\nPO, SM, and Developers (anybody who is working on the sprint increment).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction\nof Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum\nGuide introduces the concept of a Product Goal to provide the focus for the\nScrum Team toward a larger valuable objective. Each Sprint should bring the\nproduct closer to the overall Product Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Home for\nSprint Goal, Definition of Done, and Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides described Sprint Goal and Definition of Done without really giving them\nan identity. They were not quite artifacts but were somewhat attached to\nartifacts. With the addition of Product Goal, the 2020 version provides more\nclarity around this. Each of the three artifacts now contains \u2018commitments\u2019 to\nthem. For the Product Backlog, it is the Product Goal, the Sprint Backlog has\nthe Sprint Goal, and the Increment has the Definition of Done (now without the\nquotes). They exist to bring transparency and focus toward the progress of each\nartifact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-Managing\nover Self-Organizing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides referred to Development Teams (team members who are working on the\nsprint increment) as self-organizing, choosing who and how to do work. With\nmore of a focus on the Scrum Team, the 2020 version emphasizes a self-managing\nScrum Team, that chooses who, how, and what to work on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nSprint Planning Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the\nSprint Planning topics of \u201cWhat\u201d and \u201cHow,\u201d the 2020 Scrum Guide places\nemphasis on a third topic, \u201cWhy.\u201d This third topic refers to the Sprint Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

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\n

Here is how we got started with the process, and practices to integrate cybersecurity practices in agile development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.     Shift- Left:<\/strong>  Having\nexperts \/Cybersecurity personnel at the initial stage not at the end state; not\nto build systems of today. They were able to determine the risk tolerance of\nthe application and conduct risk\/benefit analysis. What amount of security\ncontrols are required for this application and threat modeling exercises? What\nkind of testing required during the sprints and have them integrated with the\ntesting and DevOps plan? It also underscores the need to help developers code\nwith security in mind, a process that involves security teams sharing\nvisibility, feedback, and insights on known threats. Based on the analysis and\nplan, all our developers were trained on the security protocols, processes and\ntools required. One of the important factors to keep in mind is the balance of\ncybersecurity activities with other activities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Hacker as persona:<\/strong> We introduced Hacker as a persona for the application as a next step. By building these personas<\/strong>, we worked out the best defense against certain types of attacks and predict when they might next occur. It helps us to understand the motivation and plan for countermeasures, prioritize defense. This persona was included as one of the users in the identified features of the application and which then was elaborated during the requirements and backlog grooming session. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Tools and Automation<\/strong>: There are quite a several tools available now in the cybersecurity domain. Once the cybersecurity process\/tests are identified, we find that most of our tasks were repetitive and manual. We started looking for ways to automate as Automating repeated tasks is key to DevSecOps since running manual security checks in the pipeline can be time-intensive. Some of these tasks can be automated, such as monitoring intrusion detection systems to search for threats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the major learning in this experimentation is that Shift left does not mean moving all the cybersecurity-related processes, practices, ways of working, and tools from the tail end to the initial stage of development. There had to be a balanced approach and what is required differs from application to application. But bringing this security mindset to all the team members helped a lot in bringing the balanced approach of security and frequent release cycles that was much needed for our application.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Agile and Cybersecurity - How to get started","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-and-cybersecurity-how-to-get-started","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18707","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18715,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:41","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:41","post_content":"\n

Harshita is a scrum master for a team. With the Covid situation across India, the team has been dull and in a very somber state. As a scrum master, she could understand and relate to the situation that the team has been going through. At an organization level, there has been a lot of Employee assistance programs. But she is confused about whether it is ok to have the team be like this or does she need to do something?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution:<\/strong> Here are few things that I would recommend she start with <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Status \/ Smiley images in the communication and collaboration tool.  We have asked team members to add this and this helps others in the team to understand the emotional state of each and every one.  It was quite beneficial and set the stage for everyone in the meetings and interaction.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Standup meetings or team meetings \u2013 First 5 min or 10 min is used for check-in and free-flow conversation. This helped team members to know what\u2019s happening, vent out some of their feelings and help each other as need. If it\u2019s a large team, use some of the survey tools to do check-in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Informal group chat\/gathering or 1:1 with each other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am sure most coaches, leaders are thinking about this and doing something to help their teams in these trying times. Let me know what are those things that you are doing.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #248 \u2013 Sensitivity during these(covid) times","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-248-sensitivity-during-thesecovid-times","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18715","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17712,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:47:04","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:17:04","post_content":"\n

Pravin has been coaching the development team for a few months on the implementation of Scrum. There were a lot of improvement ideas and opportunities that he and his team gathered for the Product team, operation teams during the retrospective. When he tried speaking to them to understand their processes and see if he can do something about it, he was told that the scrum master scope is for the IT development team and the operation teams are not part of it.  He was very excited when he read the new scrum guide and understood that the scrum master role is expanded. Will this help him to remove the obstacle of end to end coaching of the team? If not, what else can he do? Are there any suggestions or solutions that you would recommend?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suggested Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum master role definition and One product team from the scrum guide is a good starting point. Pravin can use the guide to drive the essence of one team delivering product starting from definition to support, roll out, and also point that it is from the industry best practice. In addition to that, it would be good for him to quantify the problem that he had gathered with the data; for ex the resolution time of the incident (end to end), new requirements from the operation team. Along with that, he can do an End to End process mapping w.r.t product delivery and facilitate a discussion with the relevant stakeholders. Most of the time, the problem would be due to organization design ie. Silos between the operation team, product team, and development team, and this might take a longer discussion to solve. <\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #224 - Scrum Master role in the Operations\/Support world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-224-scrum-master-role-in-the-operations-support-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17712","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17698,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:46:28","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:16:28","post_content":"\n

Last week, Scrum celebrated 25 years, and to add to that celebration, a new scrum guide was released. Over the years, Scrum has been implemented across multiple industries and domains and the feedback of its success and failures flowed back into this new Scrum guide. There was a lot of excitement among the agile community for the launch and the agile community was elated with the changes in the Scrum guide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us look at the summary of changes ( from scrum.org articles) in the new scrum guide and then talk about the impact for us (agile community). For more details, you can refer to scrum.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even Less\nPrescriptive<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years,\nthe Scrum Guide started getting a bit more prescriptive. The 2020 version aims\nto bring Scrum back to being a minimally sufficient framework. This was\nachieved by removing the Daily Scrum questions, softening language around PBI\nattributes and retro items in Sprint Backlog, shortening the Sprint\ncancellation section, and much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One Team,\nFocused on One Product<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal was to\neliminate the concept of a separate team within a team that has led to \u201cproxy\u201d\nor \u201cus and them\u201d behavior between the PO and Dev Team. There is now just one\nScrum Team focused on the same objective, with three different sets of accountabilities:\nPO, SM, and Developers (anybody who is working on the sprint increment).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction\nof Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum\nGuide introduces the concept of a Product Goal to provide the focus for the\nScrum Team toward a larger valuable objective. Each Sprint should bring the\nproduct closer to the overall Product Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Home for\nSprint Goal, Definition of Done, and Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides described Sprint Goal and Definition of Done without really giving them\nan identity. They were not quite artifacts but were somewhat attached to\nartifacts. With the addition of Product Goal, the 2020 version provides more\nclarity around this. Each of the three artifacts now contains \u2018commitments\u2019 to\nthem. For the Product Backlog, it is the Product Goal, the Sprint Backlog has\nthe Sprint Goal, and the Increment has the Definition of Done (now without the\nquotes). They exist to bring transparency and focus toward the progress of each\nartifact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-Managing\nover Self-Organizing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides referred to Development Teams (team members who are working on the\nsprint increment) as self-organizing, choosing who and how to do work. With\nmore of a focus on the Scrum Team, the 2020 version emphasizes a self-managing\nScrum Team, that chooses who, how, and what to work on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nSprint Planning Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the\nSprint Planning topics of \u201cWhat\u201d and \u201cHow,\u201d the 2020 Scrum Guide places\nemphasis on a third topic, \u201cWhy.\u201d This third topic refers to the Sprint Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

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\n

      There have been some doubts about Agile development methodologies and how it lends to Cybersecurity practices. But with self-organizing and cross-functional teams, agile enables different skill sets to work as a team to deliver good quality and secure software.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is how we got started with the process, and practices to integrate cybersecurity practices in agile development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.     Shift- Left:<\/strong>  Having\nexperts \/Cybersecurity personnel at the initial stage not at the end state; not\nto build systems of today. They were able to determine the risk tolerance of\nthe application and conduct risk\/benefit analysis. What amount of security\ncontrols are required for this application and threat modeling exercises? What\nkind of testing required during the sprints and have them integrated with the\ntesting and DevOps plan? It also underscores the need to help developers code\nwith security in mind, a process that involves security teams sharing\nvisibility, feedback, and insights on known threats. Based on the analysis and\nplan, all our developers were trained on the security protocols, processes and\ntools required. One of the important factors to keep in mind is the balance of\ncybersecurity activities with other activities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Hacker as persona:<\/strong> We introduced Hacker as a persona for the application as a next step. By building these personas<\/strong>, we worked out the best defense against certain types of attacks and predict when they might next occur. It helps us to understand the motivation and plan for countermeasures, prioritize defense. This persona was included as one of the users in the identified features of the application and which then was elaborated during the requirements and backlog grooming session. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Tools and Automation<\/strong>: There are quite a several tools available now in the cybersecurity domain. Once the cybersecurity process\/tests are identified, we find that most of our tasks were repetitive and manual. We started looking for ways to automate as Automating repeated tasks is key to DevSecOps since running manual security checks in the pipeline can be time-intensive. Some of these tasks can be automated, such as monitoring intrusion detection systems to search for threats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the major learning in this experimentation is that Shift left does not mean moving all the cybersecurity-related processes, practices, ways of working, and tools from the tail end to the initial stage of development. There had to be a balanced approach and what is required differs from application to application. But bringing this security mindset to all the team members helped a lot in bringing the balanced approach of security and frequent release cycles that was much needed for our application.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Agile and Cybersecurity - How to get started","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-and-cybersecurity-how-to-get-started","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18707","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18715,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:41","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:41","post_content":"\n

Harshita is a scrum master for a team. With the Covid situation across India, the team has been dull and in a very somber state. As a scrum master, she could understand and relate to the situation that the team has been going through. At an organization level, there has been a lot of Employee assistance programs. But she is confused about whether it is ok to have the team be like this or does she need to do something?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution:<\/strong> Here are few things that I would recommend she start with <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Status \/ Smiley images in the communication and collaboration tool.  We have asked team members to add this and this helps others in the team to understand the emotional state of each and every one.  It was quite beneficial and set the stage for everyone in the meetings and interaction.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Standup meetings or team meetings \u2013 First 5 min or 10 min is used for check-in and free-flow conversation. This helped team members to know what\u2019s happening, vent out some of their feelings and help each other as need. If it\u2019s a large team, use some of the survey tools to do check-in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Informal group chat\/gathering or 1:1 with each other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am sure most coaches, leaders are thinking about this and doing something to help their teams in these trying times. Let me know what are those things that you are doing.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #248 \u2013 Sensitivity during these(covid) times","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-248-sensitivity-during-thesecovid-times","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18715","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17712,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:47:04","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:17:04","post_content":"\n

Pravin has been coaching the development team for a few months on the implementation of Scrum. There were a lot of improvement ideas and opportunities that he and his team gathered for the Product team, operation teams during the retrospective. When he tried speaking to them to understand their processes and see if he can do something about it, he was told that the scrum master scope is for the IT development team and the operation teams are not part of it.  He was very excited when he read the new scrum guide and understood that the scrum master role is expanded. Will this help him to remove the obstacle of end to end coaching of the team? If not, what else can he do? Are there any suggestions or solutions that you would recommend?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suggested Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum master role definition and One product team from the scrum guide is a good starting point. Pravin can use the guide to drive the essence of one team delivering product starting from definition to support, roll out, and also point that it is from the industry best practice. In addition to that, it would be good for him to quantify the problem that he had gathered with the data; for ex the resolution time of the incident (end to end), new requirements from the operation team. Along with that, he can do an End to End process mapping w.r.t product delivery and facilitate a discussion with the relevant stakeholders. Most of the time, the problem would be due to organization design ie. Silos between the operation team, product team, and development team, and this might take a longer discussion to solve. <\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #224 - Scrum Master role in the Operations\/Support world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-224-scrum-master-role-in-the-operations-support-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17712","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17698,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:46:28","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:16:28","post_content":"\n

Last week, Scrum celebrated 25 years, and to add to that celebration, a new scrum guide was released. Over the years, Scrum has been implemented across multiple industries and domains and the feedback of its success and failures flowed back into this new Scrum guide. There was a lot of excitement among the agile community for the launch and the agile community was elated with the changes in the Scrum guide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us look at the summary of changes ( from scrum.org articles) in the new scrum guide and then talk about the impact for us (agile community). For more details, you can refer to scrum.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even Less\nPrescriptive<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years,\nthe Scrum Guide started getting a bit more prescriptive. The 2020 version aims\nto bring Scrum back to being a minimally sufficient framework. This was\nachieved by removing the Daily Scrum questions, softening language around PBI\nattributes and retro items in Sprint Backlog, shortening the Sprint\ncancellation section, and much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One Team,\nFocused on One Product<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal was to\neliminate the concept of a separate team within a team that has led to \u201cproxy\u201d\nor \u201cus and them\u201d behavior between the PO and Dev Team. There is now just one\nScrum Team focused on the same objective, with three different sets of accountabilities:\nPO, SM, and Developers (anybody who is working on the sprint increment).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction\nof Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum\nGuide introduces the concept of a Product Goal to provide the focus for the\nScrum Team toward a larger valuable objective. Each Sprint should bring the\nproduct closer to the overall Product Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Home for\nSprint Goal, Definition of Done, and Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides described Sprint Goal and Definition of Done without really giving them\nan identity. They were not quite artifacts but were somewhat attached to\nartifacts. With the addition of Product Goal, the 2020 version provides more\nclarity around this. Each of the three artifacts now contains \u2018commitments\u2019 to\nthem. For the Product Backlog, it is the Product Goal, the Sprint Backlog has\nthe Sprint Goal, and the Increment has the Definition of Done (now without the\nquotes). They exist to bring transparency and focus toward the progress of each\nartifact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-Managing\nover Self-Organizing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides referred to Development Teams (team members who are working on the\nsprint increment) as self-organizing, choosing who and how to do work. With\nmore of a focus on the Scrum Team, the 2020 version emphasizes a self-managing\nScrum Team, that chooses who, how, and what to work on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nSprint Planning Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the\nSprint Planning topics of \u201cWhat\u201d and \u201cHow,\u201d the 2020 Scrum Guide places\nemphasis on a third topic, \u201cWhy.\u201d This third topic refers to the Sprint Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

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\n

Cybersecurity by definition is Computer\nsecurity, cybersecurity or information technology security (IT security) is the\nprotection of computer systems<\/a> and networks<\/a> from information disclosure, theft of or damage to\ntheir hardware<\/a>, software<\/a>, or electronic data<\/a>,\nas well as from the disruption<\/a> or misdirection<\/a> of the services they provide. In the past, the role\nof security was isolated to a specific team in the final stage of development.\nThat wasn\u2019t as problematic when development cycles lasted months or even years,\nbut those days are over. Effective agile development ensures rapid and frequent\ndevelopment cycles (sometimes weeks or days), but outdated security practices\ncan make the application more vulnerable to attacks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      There have been some doubts about Agile development methodologies and how it lends to Cybersecurity practices. But with self-organizing and cross-functional teams, agile enables different skill sets to work as a team to deliver good quality and secure software.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is how we got started with the process, and practices to integrate cybersecurity practices in agile development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.     Shift- Left:<\/strong>  Having\nexperts \/Cybersecurity personnel at the initial stage not at the end state; not\nto build systems of today. They were able to determine the risk tolerance of\nthe application and conduct risk\/benefit analysis. What amount of security\ncontrols are required for this application and threat modeling exercises? What\nkind of testing required during the sprints and have them integrated with the\ntesting and DevOps plan? It also underscores the need to help developers code\nwith security in mind, a process that involves security teams sharing\nvisibility, feedback, and insights on known threats. Based on the analysis and\nplan, all our developers were trained on the security protocols, processes and\ntools required. One of the important factors to keep in mind is the balance of\ncybersecurity activities with other activities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Hacker as persona:<\/strong> We introduced Hacker as a persona for the application as a next step. By building these personas<\/strong>, we worked out the best defense against certain types of attacks and predict when they might next occur. It helps us to understand the motivation and plan for countermeasures, prioritize defense. This persona was included as one of the users in the identified features of the application and which then was elaborated during the requirements and backlog grooming session. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Tools and Automation<\/strong>: There are quite a several tools available now in the cybersecurity domain. Once the cybersecurity process\/tests are identified, we find that most of our tasks were repetitive and manual. We started looking for ways to automate as Automating repeated tasks is key to DevSecOps since running manual security checks in the pipeline can be time-intensive. Some of these tasks can be automated, such as monitoring intrusion detection systems to search for threats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the major learning in this experimentation is that Shift left does not mean moving all the cybersecurity-related processes, practices, ways of working, and tools from the tail end to the initial stage of development. There had to be a balanced approach and what is required differs from application to application. But bringing this security mindset to all the team members helped a lot in bringing the balanced approach of security and frequent release cycles that was much needed for our application.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Agile and Cybersecurity - How to get started","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-and-cybersecurity-how-to-get-started","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18707","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18715,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:41","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:41","post_content":"\n

Harshita is a scrum master for a team. With the Covid situation across India, the team has been dull and in a very somber state. As a scrum master, she could understand and relate to the situation that the team has been going through. At an organization level, there has been a lot of Employee assistance programs. But she is confused about whether it is ok to have the team be like this or does she need to do something?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution:<\/strong> Here are few things that I would recommend she start with <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Status \/ Smiley images in the communication and collaboration tool.  We have asked team members to add this and this helps others in the team to understand the emotional state of each and every one.  It was quite beneficial and set the stage for everyone in the meetings and interaction.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Standup meetings or team meetings \u2013 First 5 min or 10 min is used for check-in and free-flow conversation. This helped team members to know what\u2019s happening, vent out some of their feelings and help each other as need. If it\u2019s a large team, use some of the survey tools to do check-in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Informal group chat\/gathering or 1:1 with each other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am sure most coaches, leaders are thinking about this and doing something to help their teams in these trying times. Let me know what are those things that you are doing.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #248 \u2013 Sensitivity during these(covid) times","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-248-sensitivity-during-thesecovid-times","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18715","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17712,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:47:04","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:17:04","post_content":"\n

Pravin has been coaching the development team for a few months on the implementation of Scrum. There were a lot of improvement ideas and opportunities that he and his team gathered for the Product team, operation teams during the retrospective. When he tried speaking to them to understand their processes and see if he can do something about it, he was told that the scrum master scope is for the IT development team and the operation teams are not part of it.  He was very excited when he read the new scrum guide and understood that the scrum master role is expanded. Will this help him to remove the obstacle of end to end coaching of the team? If not, what else can he do? Are there any suggestions or solutions that you would recommend?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suggested Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum master role definition and One product team from the scrum guide is a good starting point. Pravin can use the guide to drive the essence of one team delivering product starting from definition to support, roll out, and also point that it is from the industry best practice. In addition to that, it would be good for him to quantify the problem that he had gathered with the data; for ex the resolution time of the incident (end to end), new requirements from the operation team. Along with that, he can do an End to End process mapping w.r.t product delivery and facilitate a discussion with the relevant stakeholders. Most of the time, the problem would be due to organization design ie. Silos between the operation team, product team, and development team, and this might take a longer discussion to solve. <\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #224 - Scrum Master role in the Operations\/Support world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-224-scrum-master-role-in-the-operations-support-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17712","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17698,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:46:28","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:16:28","post_content":"\n

Last week, Scrum celebrated 25 years, and to add to that celebration, a new scrum guide was released. Over the years, Scrum has been implemented across multiple industries and domains and the feedback of its success and failures flowed back into this new Scrum guide. There was a lot of excitement among the agile community for the launch and the agile community was elated with the changes in the Scrum guide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us look at the summary of changes ( from scrum.org articles) in the new scrum guide and then talk about the impact for us (agile community). For more details, you can refer to scrum.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even Less\nPrescriptive<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years,\nthe Scrum Guide started getting a bit more prescriptive. The 2020 version aims\nto bring Scrum back to being a minimally sufficient framework. This was\nachieved by removing the Daily Scrum questions, softening language around PBI\nattributes and retro items in Sprint Backlog, shortening the Sprint\ncancellation section, and much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One Team,\nFocused on One Product<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal was to\neliminate the concept of a separate team within a team that has led to \u201cproxy\u201d\nor \u201cus and them\u201d behavior between the PO and Dev Team. There is now just one\nScrum Team focused on the same objective, with three different sets of accountabilities:\nPO, SM, and Developers (anybody who is working on the sprint increment).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction\nof Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum\nGuide introduces the concept of a Product Goal to provide the focus for the\nScrum Team toward a larger valuable objective. Each Sprint should bring the\nproduct closer to the overall Product Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Home for\nSprint Goal, Definition of Done, and Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides described Sprint Goal and Definition of Done without really giving them\nan identity. They were not quite artifacts but were somewhat attached to\nartifacts. With the addition of Product Goal, the 2020 version provides more\nclarity around this. Each of the three artifacts now contains \u2018commitments\u2019 to\nthem. For the Product Backlog, it is the Product Goal, the Sprint Backlog has\nthe Sprint Goal, and the Increment has the Definition of Done (now without the\nquotes). They exist to bring transparency and focus toward the progress of each\nartifact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-Managing\nover Self-Organizing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides referred to Development Teams (team members who are working on the\nsprint increment) as self-organizing, choosing who and how to do work. With\nmore of a focus on the Scrum Team, the 2020 version emphasizes a self-managing\nScrum Team, that chooses who, how, and what to work on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nSprint Planning Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the\nSprint Planning topics of \u201cWhat\u201d and \u201cHow,\u201d the 2020 Scrum Guide places\nemphasis on a third topic, \u201cWhy.\u201d This third topic refers to the Sprint Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

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\n

 In the past, Cybersecurity teams usually get involved in the tail end and now with frequent releases, ways of working and processes need to be tailored. There were few practices that we got started which I will be sharing in this blog. Would love to hear from you; your stories and experiments in this area.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cybersecurity by definition is Computer\nsecurity, cybersecurity or information technology security (IT security) is the\nprotection of computer systems<\/a> and networks<\/a> from information disclosure, theft of or damage to\ntheir hardware<\/a>, software<\/a>, or electronic data<\/a>,\nas well as from the disruption<\/a> or misdirection<\/a> of the services they provide. In the past, the role\nof security was isolated to a specific team in the final stage of development.\nThat wasn\u2019t as problematic when development cycles lasted months or even years,\nbut those days are over. Effective agile development ensures rapid and frequent\ndevelopment cycles (sometimes weeks or days), but outdated security practices\ncan make the application more vulnerable to attacks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      There have been some doubts about Agile development methodologies and how it lends to Cybersecurity practices. But with self-organizing and cross-functional teams, agile enables different skill sets to work as a team to deliver good quality and secure software.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is how we got started with the process, and practices to integrate cybersecurity practices in agile development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.     Shift- Left:<\/strong>  Having\nexperts \/Cybersecurity personnel at the initial stage not at the end state; not\nto build systems of today. They were able to determine the risk tolerance of\nthe application and conduct risk\/benefit analysis. What amount of security\ncontrols are required for this application and threat modeling exercises? What\nkind of testing required during the sprints and have them integrated with the\ntesting and DevOps plan? It also underscores the need to help developers code\nwith security in mind, a process that involves security teams sharing\nvisibility, feedback, and insights on known threats. Based on the analysis and\nplan, all our developers were trained on the security protocols, processes and\ntools required. One of the important factors to keep in mind is the balance of\ncybersecurity activities with other activities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Hacker as persona:<\/strong> We introduced Hacker as a persona for the application as a next step. By building these personas<\/strong>, we worked out the best defense against certain types of attacks and predict when they might next occur. It helps us to understand the motivation and plan for countermeasures, prioritize defense. This persona was included as one of the users in the identified features of the application and which then was elaborated during the requirements and backlog grooming session. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Tools and Automation<\/strong>: There are quite a several tools available now in the cybersecurity domain. Once the cybersecurity process\/tests are identified, we find that most of our tasks were repetitive and manual. We started looking for ways to automate as Automating repeated tasks is key to DevSecOps since running manual security checks in the pipeline can be time-intensive. Some of these tasks can be automated, such as monitoring intrusion detection systems to search for threats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the major learning in this experimentation is that Shift left does not mean moving all the cybersecurity-related processes, practices, ways of working, and tools from the tail end to the initial stage of development. There had to be a balanced approach and what is required differs from application to application. But bringing this security mindset to all the team members helped a lot in bringing the balanced approach of security and frequent release cycles that was much needed for our application.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Agile and Cybersecurity - How to get started","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-and-cybersecurity-how-to-get-started","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18707","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18715,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:41","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:41","post_content":"\n

Harshita is a scrum master for a team. With the Covid situation across India, the team has been dull and in a very somber state. As a scrum master, she could understand and relate to the situation that the team has been going through. At an organization level, there has been a lot of Employee assistance programs. But she is confused about whether it is ok to have the team be like this or does she need to do something?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution:<\/strong> Here are few things that I would recommend she start with <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Status \/ Smiley images in the communication and collaboration tool.  We have asked team members to add this and this helps others in the team to understand the emotional state of each and every one.  It was quite beneficial and set the stage for everyone in the meetings and interaction.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Standup meetings or team meetings \u2013 First 5 min or 10 min is used for check-in and free-flow conversation. This helped team members to know what\u2019s happening, vent out some of their feelings and help each other as need. If it\u2019s a large team, use some of the survey tools to do check-in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Informal group chat\/gathering or 1:1 with each other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am sure most coaches, leaders are thinking about this and doing something to help their teams in these trying times. Let me know what are those things that you are doing.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #248 \u2013 Sensitivity during these(covid) times","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-248-sensitivity-during-thesecovid-times","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18715","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17712,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:47:04","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:17:04","post_content":"\n

Pravin has been coaching the development team for a few months on the implementation of Scrum. There were a lot of improvement ideas and opportunities that he and his team gathered for the Product team, operation teams during the retrospective. When he tried speaking to them to understand their processes and see if he can do something about it, he was told that the scrum master scope is for the IT development team and the operation teams are not part of it.  He was very excited when he read the new scrum guide and understood that the scrum master role is expanded. Will this help him to remove the obstacle of end to end coaching of the team? If not, what else can he do? Are there any suggestions or solutions that you would recommend?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suggested Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum master role definition and One product team from the scrum guide is a good starting point. Pravin can use the guide to drive the essence of one team delivering product starting from definition to support, roll out, and also point that it is from the industry best practice. In addition to that, it would be good for him to quantify the problem that he had gathered with the data; for ex the resolution time of the incident (end to end), new requirements from the operation team. Along with that, he can do an End to End process mapping w.r.t product delivery and facilitate a discussion with the relevant stakeholders. Most of the time, the problem would be due to organization design ie. Silos between the operation team, product team, and development team, and this might take a longer discussion to solve. <\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #224 - Scrum Master role in the Operations\/Support world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-224-scrum-master-role-in-the-operations-support-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17712","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17698,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:46:28","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:16:28","post_content":"\n

Last week, Scrum celebrated 25 years, and to add to that celebration, a new scrum guide was released. Over the years, Scrum has been implemented across multiple industries and domains and the feedback of its success and failures flowed back into this new Scrum guide. There was a lot of excitement among the agile community for the launch and the agile community was elated with the changes in the Scrum guide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us look at the summary of changes ( from scrum.org articles) in the new scrum guide and then talk about the impact for us (agile community). For more details, you can refer to scrum.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even Less\nPrescriptive<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years,\nthe Scrum Guide started getting a bit more prescriptive. The 2020 version aims\nto bring Scrum back to being a minimally sufficient framework. This was\nachieved by removing the Daily Scrum questions, softening language around PBI\nattributes and retro items in Sprint Backlog, shortening the Sprint\ncancellation section, and much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One Team,\nFocused on One Product<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal was to\neliminate the concept of a separate team within a team that has led to \u201cproxy\u201d\nor \u201cus and them\u201d behavior between the PO and Dev Team. There is now just one\nScrum Team focused on the same objective, with three different sets of accountabilities:\nPO, SM, and Developers (anybody who is working on the sprint increment).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction\nof Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum\nGuide introduces the concept of a Product Goal to provide the focus for the\nScrum Team toward a larger valuable objective. Each Sprint should bring the\nproduct closer to the overall Product Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Home for\nSprint Goal, Definition of Done, and Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides described Sprint Goal and Definition of Done without really giving them\nan identity. They were not quite artifacts but were somewhat attached to\nartifacts. With the addition of Product Goal, the 2020 version provides more\nclarity around this. Each of the three artifacts now contains \u2018commitments\u2019 to\nthem. For the Product Backlog, it is the Product Goal, the Sprint Backlog has\nthe Sprint Goal, and the Increment has the Definition of Done (now without the\nquotes). They exist to bring transparency and focus toward the progress of each\nartifact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-Managing\nover Self-Organizing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides referred to Development Teams (team members who are working on the\nsprint increment) as self-organizing, choosing who and how to do work. With\nmore of a focus on the Scrum Team, the 2020 version emphasizes a self-managing\nScrum Team, that chooses who, how, and what to work on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nSprint Planning Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the\nSprint Planning topics of \u201cWhat\u201d and \u201cHow,\u201d the 2020 Scrum Guide places\nemphasis on a third topic, \u201cWhy.\u201d This third topic refers to the Sprint Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

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For the past 3 months, as an agile coach, I am involved in coaching a team that is developing a highly critical application that is also the backbone of the business deals. This application had to be super secure and if this application gets hit, it can have a huge impact on the organization in terms of finance, brand, and assets, data, etc. Hence, we had to explore how to integrate agile development practices and Cybersecurity practices. There have been some thoughts that agile, with its frequent releases, introduces vulnerability in the system and sometimes not recommended as a development approach for high critical application.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In the past, Cybersecurity teams usually get involved in the tail end and now with frequent releases, ways of working and processes need to be tailored. There were few practices that we got started which I will be sharing in this blog. Would love to hear from you; your stories and experiments in this area.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cybersecurity by definition is Computer\nsecurity, cybersecurity or information technology security (IT security) is the\nprotection of computer systems<\/a> and networks<\/a> from information disclosure, theft of or damage to\ntheir hardware<\/a>, software<\/a>, or electronic data<\/a>,\nas well as from the disruption<\/a> or misdirection<\/a> of the services they provide. In the past, the role\nof security was isolated to a specific team in the final stage of development.\nThat wasn\u2019t as problematic when development cycles lasted months or even years,\nbut those days are over. Effective agile development ensures rapid and frequent\ndevelopment cycles (sometimes weeks or days), but outdated security practices\ncan make the application more vulnerable to attacks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      There have been some doubts about Agile development methodologies and how it lends to Cybersecurity practices. But with self-organizing and cross-functional teams, agile enables different skill sets to work as a team to deliver good quality and secure software.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is how we got started with the process, and practices to integrate cybersecurity practices in agile development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.     Shift- Left:<\/strong>  Having\nexperts \/Cybersecurity personnel at the initial stage not at the end state; not\nto build systems of today. They were able to determine the risk tolerance of\nthe application and conduct risk\/benefit analysis. What amount of security\ncontrols are required for this application and threat modeling exercises? What\nkind of testing required during the sprints and have them integrated with the\ntesting and DevOps plan? It also underscores the need to help developers code\nwith security in mind, a process that involves security teams sharing\nvisibility, feedback, and insights on known threats. Based on the analysis and\nplan, all our developers were trained on the security protocols, processes and\ntools required. One of the important factors to keep in mind is the balance of\ncybersecurity activities with other activities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Hacker as persona:<\/strong> We introduced Hacker as a persona for the application as a next step. By building these personas<\/strong>, we worked out the best defense against certain types of attacks and predict when they might next occur. It helps us to understand the motivation and plan for countermeasures, prioritize defense. This persona was included as one of the users in the identified features of the application and which then was elaborated during the requirements and backlog grooming session. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Tools and Automation<\/strong>: There are quite a several tools available now in the cybersecurity domain. Once the cybersecurity process\/tests are identified, we find that most of our tasks were repetitive and manual. We started looking for ways to automate as Automating repeated tasks is key to DevSecOps since running manual security checks in the pipeline can be time-intensive. Some of these tasks can be automated, such as monitoring intrusion detection systems to search for threats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the major learning in this experimentation is that Shift left does not mean moving all the cybersecurity-related processes, practices, ways of working, and tools from the tail end to the initial stage of development. There had to be a balanced approach and what is required differs from application to application. But bringing this security mindset to all the team members helped a lot in bringing the balanced approach of security and frequent release cycles that was much needed for our application.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Agile and Cybersecurity - How to get started","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-and-cybersecurity-how-to-get-started","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18707","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18715,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:41","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:41","post_content":"\n

Harshita is a scrum master for a team. With the Covid situation across India, the team has been dull and in a very somber state. As a scrum master, she could understand and relate to the situation that the team has been going through. At an organization level, there has been a lot of Employee assistance programs. But she is confused about whether it is ok to have the team be like this or does she need to do something?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution:<\/strong> Here are few things that I would recommend she start with <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Status \/ Smiley images in the communication and collaboration tool.  We have asked team members to add this and this helps others in the team to understand the emotional state of each and every one.  It was quite beneficial and set the stage for everyone in the meetings and interaction.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Standup meetings or team meetings \u2013 First 5 min or 10 min is used for check-in and free-flow conversation. This helped team members to know what\u2019s happening, vent out some of their feelings and help each other as need. If it\u2019s a large team, use some of the survey tools to do check-in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Informal group chat\/gathering or 1:1 with each other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am sure most coaches, leaders are thinking about this and doing something to help their teams in these trying times. Let me know what are those things that you are doing.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #248 \u2013 Sensitivity during these(covid) times","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-248-sensitivity-during-thesecovid-times","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18715","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17712,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:47:04","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:17:04","post_content":"\n

Pravin has been coaching the development team for a few months on the implementation of Scrum. There were a lot of improvement ideas and opportunities that he and his team gathered for the Product team, operation teams during the retrospective. When he tried speaking to them to understand their processes and see if he can do something about it, he was told that the scrum master scope is for the IT development team and the operation teams are not part of it.  He was very excited when he read the new scrum guide and understood that the scrum master role is expanded. Will this help him to remove the obstacle of end to end coaching of the team? If not, what else can he do? Are there any suggestions or solutions that you would recommend?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suggested Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum master role definition and One product team from the scrum guide is a good starting point. Pravin can use the guide to drive the essence of one team delivering product starting from definition to support, roll out, and also point that it is from the industry best practice. In addition to that, it would be good for him to quantify the problem that he had gathered with the data; for ex the resolution time of the incident (end to end), new requirements from the operation team. Along with that, he can do an End to End process mapping w.r.t product delivery and facilitate a discussion with the relevant stakeholders. Most of the time, the problem would be due to organization design ie. Silos between the operation team, product team, and development team, and this might take a longer discussion to solve. <\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #224 - Scrum Master role in the Operations\/Support world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-224-scrum-master-role-in-the-operations-support-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17712","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17698,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:46:28","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:16:28","post_content":"\n

Last week, Scrum celebrated 25 years, and to add to that celebration, a new scrum guide was released. Over the years, Scrum has been implemented across multiple industries and domains and the feedback of its success and failures flowed back into this new Scrum guide. There was a lot of excitement among the agile community for the launch and the agile community was elated with the changes in the Scrum guide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us look at the summary of changes ( from scrum.org articles) in the new scrum guide and then talk about the impact for us (agile community). For more details, you can refer to scrum.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even Less\nPrescriptive<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years,\nthe Scrum Guide started getting a bit more prescriptive. The 2020 version aims\nto bring Scrum back to being a minimally sufficient framework. This was\nachieved by removing the Daily Scrum questions, softening language around PBI\nattributes and retro items in Sprint Backlog, shortening the Sprint\ncancellation section, and much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One Team,\nFocused on One Product<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal was to\neliminate the concept of a separate team within a team that has led to \u201cproxy\u201d\nor \u201cus and them\u201d behavior between the PO and Dev Team. There is now just one\nScrum Team focused on the same objective, with three different sets of accountabilities:\nPO, SM, and Developers (anybody who is working on the sprint increment).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction\nof Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum\nGuide introduces the concept of a Product Goal to provide the focus for the\nScrum Team toward a larger valuable objective. Each Sprint should bring the\nproduct closer to the overall Product Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Home for\nSprint Goal, Definition of Done, and Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides described Sprint Goal and Definition of Done without really giving them\nan identity. They were not quite artifacts but were somewhat attached to\nartifacts. With the addition of Product Goal, the 2020 version provides more\nclarity around this. Each of the three artifacts now contains \u2018commitments\u2019 to\nthem. For the Product Backlog, it is the Product Goal, the Sprint Backlog has\nthe Sprint Goal, and the Increment has the Definition of Done (now without the\nquotes). They exist to bring transparency and focus toward the progress of each\nartifact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-Managing\nover Self-Organizing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides referred to Development Teams (team members who are working on the\nsprint increment) as self-organizing, choosing who and how to do work. With\nmore of a focus on the Scrum Team, the 2020 version emphasizes a self-managing\nScrum Team, that chooses who, how, and what to work on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nSprint Planning Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the\nSprint Planning topics of \u201cWhat\u201d and \u201cHow,\u201d the 2020 Scrum Guide places\nemphasis on a third topic, \u201cWhy.\u201d This third topic refers to the Sprint Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

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\n

Most of us would have read about the recent\nransomware hit on Colonial pipeline, one of the largest oil pipelines in the\nUS. They had to temporarily halt all the operations, it impacted some of the\ncompany\u2019s IT system and suffered a huge loss. It took almost a week to bring\nback the services and back to normal. During this unprecedented time, as we\nwere all working from home, Organization was worried about securing the\napplications, Infrastructure, etc. Cybersecurity has been slowly gaining focus\nand these kinds of attacks make serious attention.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the past 3 months, as an agile coach, I am involved in coaching a team that is developing a highly critical application that is also the backbone of the business deals. This application had to be super secure and if this application gets hit, it can have a huge impact on the organization in terms of finance, brand, and assets, data, etc. Hence, we had to explore how to integrate agile development practices and Cybersecurity practices. There have been some thoughts that agile, with its frequent releases, introduces vulnerability in the system and sometimes not recommended as a development approach for high critical application.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In the past, Cybersecurity teams usually get involved in the tail end and now with frequent releases, ways of working and processes need to be tailored. There were few practices that we got started which I will be sharing in this blog. Would love to hear from you; your stories and experiments in this area.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cybersecurity by definition is Computer\nsecurity, cybersecurity or information technology security (IT security) is the\nprotection of computer systems<\/a> and networks<\/a> from information disclosure, theft of or damage to\ntheir hardware<\/a>, software<\/a>, or electronic data<\/a>,\nas well as from the disruption<\/a> or misdirection<\/a> of the services they provide. In the past, the role\nof security was isolated to a specific team in the final stage of development.\nThat wasn\u2019t as problematic when development cycles lasted months or even years,\nbut those days are over. Effective agile development ensures rapid and frequent\ndevelopment cycles (sometimes weeks or days), but outdated security practices\ncan make the application more vulnerable to attacks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      There have been some doubts about Agile development methodologies and how it lends to Cybersecurity practices. But with self-organizing and cross-functional teams, agile enables different skill sets to work as a team to deliver good quality and secure software.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is how we got started with the process, and practices to integrate cybersecurity practices in agile development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.     Shift- Left:<\/strong>  Having\nexperts \/Cybersecurity personnel at the initial stage not at the end state; not\nto build systems of today. They were able to determine the risk tolerance of\nthe application and conduct risk\/benefit analysis. What amount of security\ncontrols are required for this application and threat modeling exercises? What\nkind of testing required during the sprints and have them integrated with the\ntesting and DevOps plan? It also underscores the need to help developers code\nwith security in mind, a process that involves security teams sharing\nvisibility, feedback, and insights on known threats. Based on the analysis and\nplan, all our developers were trained on the security protocols, processes and\ntools required. One of the important factors to keep in mind is the balance of\ncybersecurity activities with other activities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Hacker as persona:<\/strong> We introduced Hacker as a persona for the application as a next step. By building these personas<\/strong>, we worked out the best defense against certain types of attacks and predict when they might next occur. It helps us to understand the motivation and plan for countermeasures, prioritize defense. This persona was included as one of the users in the identified features of the application and which then was elaborated during the requirements and backlog grooming session. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Tools and Automation<\/strong>: There are quite a several tools available now in the cybersecurity domain. Once the cybersecurity process\/tests are identified, we find that most of our tasks were repetitive and manual. We started looking for ways to automate as Automating repeated tasks is key to DevSecOps since running manual security checks in the pipeline can be time-intensive. Some of these tasks can be automated, such as monitoring intrusion detection systems to search for threats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the major learning in this experimentation is that Shift left does not mean moving all the cybersecurity-related processes, practices, ways of working, and tools from the tail end to the initial stage of development. There had to be a balanced approach and what is required differs from application to application. But bringing this security mindset to all the team members helped a lot in bringing the balanced approach of security and frequent release cycles that was much needed for our application.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Agile and Cybersecurity - How to get started","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-and-cybersecurity-how-to-get-started","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18707","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18715,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:41","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:41","post_content":"\n

Harshita is a scrum master for a team. With the Covid situation across India, the team has been dull and in a very somber state. As a scrum master, she could understand and relate to the situation that the team has been going through. At an organization level, there has been a lot of Employee assistance programs. But she is confused about whether it is ok to have the team be like this or does she need to do something?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution:<\/strong> Here are few things that I would recommend she start with <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Status \/ Smiley images in the communication and collaboration tool.  We have asked team members to add this and this helps others in the team to understand the emotional state of each and every one.  It was quite beneficial and set the stage for everyone in the meetings and interaction.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Standup meetings or team meetings \u2013 First 5 min or 10 min is used for check-in and free-flow conversation. This helped team members to know what\u2019s happening, vent out some of their feelings and help each other as need. If it\u2019s a large team, use some of the survey tools to do check-in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Informal group chat\/gathering or 1:1 with each other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am sure most coaches, leaders are thinking about this and doing something to help their teams in these trying times. Let me know what are those things that you are doing.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #248 \u2013 Sensitivity during these(covid) times","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-248-sensitivity-during-thesecovid-times","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18715","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17712,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:47:04","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:17:04","post_content":"\n

Pravin has been coaching the development team for a few months on the implementation of Scrum. There were a lot of improvement ideas and opportunities that he and his team gathered for the Product team, operation teams during the retrospective. When he tried speaking to them to understand their processes and see if he can do something about it, he was told that the scrum master scope is for the IT development team and the operation teams are not part of it.  He was very excited when he read the new scrum guide and understood that the scrum master role is expanded. Will this help him to remove the obstacle of end to end coaching of the team? If not, what else can he do? Are there any suggestions or solutions that you would recommend?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suggested Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum master role definition and One product team from the scrum guide is a good starting point. Pravin can use the guide to drive the essence of one team delivering product starting from definition to support, roll out, and also point that it is from the industry best practice. In addition to that, it would be good for him to quantify the problem that he had gathered with the data; for ex the resolution time of the incident (end to end), new requirements from the operation team. Along with that, he can do an End to End process mapping w.r.t product delivery and facilitate a discussion with the relevant stakeholders. Most of the time, the problem would be due to organization design ie. Silos between the operation team, product team, and development team, and this might take a longer discussion to solve. <\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #224 - Scrum Master role in the Operations\/Support world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-224-scrum-master-role-in-the-operations-support-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17712","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17698,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:46:28","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:16:28","post_content":"\n

Last week, Scrum celebrated 25 years, and to add to that celebration, a new scrum guide was released. Over the years, Scrum has been implemented across multiple industries and domains and the feedback of its success and failures flowed back into this new Scrum guide. There was a lot of excitement among the agile community for the launch and the agile community was elated with the changes in the Scrum guide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us look at the summary of changes ( from scrum.org articles) in the new scrum guide and then talk about the impact for us (agile community). For more details, you can refer to scrum.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even Less\nPrescriptive<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years,\nthe Scrum Guide started getting a bit more prescriptive. The 2020 version aims\nto bring Scrum back to being a minimally sufficient framework. This was\nachieved by removing the Daily Scrum questions, softening language around PBI\nattributes and retro items in Sprint Backlog, shortening the Sprint\ncancellation section, and much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One Team,\nFocused on One Product<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal was to\neliminate the concept of a separate team within a team that has led to \u201cproxy\u201d\nor \u201cus and them\u201d behavior between the PO and Dev Team. There is now just one\nScrum Team focused on the same objective, with three different sets of accountabilities:\nPO, SM, and Developers (anybody who is working on the sprint increment).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction\nof Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum\nGuide introduces the concept of a Product Goal to provide the focus for the\nScrum Team toward a larger valuable objective. Each Sprint should bring the\nproduct closer to the overall Product Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Home for\nSprint Goal, Definition of Done, and Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides described Sprint Goal and Definition of Done without really giving them\nan identity. They were not quite artifacts but were somewhat attached to\nartifacts. With the addition of Product Goal, the 2020 version provides more\nclarity around this. Each of the three artifacts now contains \u2018commitments\u2019 to\nthem. For the Product Backlog, it is the Product Goal, the Sprint Backlog has\nthe Sprint Goal, and the Increment has the Definition of Done (now without the\nquotes). They exist to bring transparency and focus toward the progress of each\nartifact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-Managing\nover Self-Organizing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides referred to Development Teams (team members who are working on the\nsprint increment) as self-organizing, choosing who and how to do work. With\nmore of a focus on the Scrum Team, the 2020 version emphasizes a self-managing\nScrum Team, that chooses who, how, and what to work on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nSprint Planning Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the\nSprint Planning topics of \u201cWhat\u201d and \u201cHow,\u201d the 2020 Scrum Guide places\nemphasis on a third topic, \u201cWhy.\u201d This third topic refers to the Sprint Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

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\u00b7Try out the exercises or case study and submit it \n\nI\nam sure most of you have been using the virtual learning platforms, either in\nyour organization or some preferred platforms to learn and grow in your\ncareers. Hope the above tips shared from my experience are useful. Please share\nyour best practices or tips or any recommendation from your learning journey on\nhow we can get the best out of the virtual learning model.\n\n<\/p>\n","post_title":"Tips to get the best of the virtual learning world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"tips-to-get-the-best-of-the-virtual-learning-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19014","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18707,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:58","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:58","post_content":"\n

Most of us would have read about the recent\nransomware hit on Colonial pipeline, one of the largest oil pipelines in the\nUS. They had to temporarily halt all the operations, it impacted some of the\ncompany\u2019s IT system and suffered a huge loss. It took almost a week to bring\nback the services and back to normal. During this unprecedented time, as we\nwere all working from home, Organization was worried about securing the\napplications, Infrastructure, etc. Cybersecurity has been slowly gaining focus\nand these kinds of attacks make serious attention.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the past 3 months, as an agile coach, I am involved in coaching a team that is developing a highly critical application that is also the backbone of the business deals. This application had to be super secure and if this application gets hit, it can have a huge impact on the organization in terms of finance, brand, and assets, data, etc. Hence, we had to explore how to integrate agile development practices and Cybersecurity practices. There have been some thoughts that agile, with its frequent releases, introduces vulnerability in the system and sometimes not recommended as a development approach for high critical application.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In the past, Cybersecurity teams usually get involved in the tail end and now with frequent releases, ways of working and processes need to be tailored. There were few practices that we got started which I will be sharing in this blog. Would love to hear from you; your stories and experiments in this area.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cybersecurity by definition is Computer\nsecurity, cybersecurity or information technology security (IT security) is the\nprotection of computer systems<\/a> and networks<\/a> from information disclosure, theft of or damage to\ntheir hardware<\/a>, software<\/a>, or electronic data<\/a>,\nas well as from the disruption<\/a> or misdirection<\/a> of the services they provide. In the past, the role\nof security was isolated to a specific team in the final stage of development.\nThat wasn\u2019t as problematic when development cycles lasted months or even years,\nbut those days are over. Effective agile development ensures rapid and frequent\ndevelopment cycles (sometimes weeks or days), but outdated security practices\ncan make the application more vulnerable to attacks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      There have been some doubts about Agile development methodologies and how it lends to Cybersecurity practices. But with self-organizing and cross-functional teams, agile enables different skill sets to work as a team to deliver good quality and secure software.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is how we got started with the process, and practices to integrate cybersecurity practices in agile development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.     Shift- Left:<\/strong>  Having\nexperts \/Cybersecurity personnel at the initial stage not at the end state; not\nto build systems of today. They were able to determine the risk tolerance of\nthe application and conduct risk\/benefit analysis. What amount of security\ncontrols are required for this application and threat modeling exercises? What\nkind of testing required during the sprints and have them integrated with the\ntesting and DevOps plan? It also underscores the need to help developers code\nwith security in mind, a process that involves security teams sharing\nvisibility, feedback, and insights on known threats. Based on the analysis and\nplan, all our developers were trained on the security protocols, processes and\ntools required. One of the important factors to keep in mind is the balance of\ncybersecurity activities with other activities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Hacker as persona:<\/strong> We introduced Hacker as a persona for the application as a next step. By building these personas<\/strong>, we worked out the best defense against certain types of attacks and predict when they might next occur. It helps us to understand the motivation and plan for countermeasures, prioritize defense. This persona was included as one of the users in the identified features of the application and which then was elaborated during the requirements and backlog grooming session. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Tools and Automation<\/strong>: There are quite a several tools available now in the cybersecurity domain. Once the cybersecurity process\/tests are identified, we find that most of our tasks were repetitive and manual. We started looking for ways to automate as Automating repeated tasks is key to DevSecOps since running manual security checks in the pipeline can be time-intensive. Some of these tasks can be automated, such as monitoring intrusion detection systems to search for threats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the major learning in this experimentation is that Shift left does not mean moving all the cybersecurity-related processes, practices, ways of working, and tools from the tail end to the initial stage of development. There had to be a balanced approach and what is required differs from application to application. But bringing this security mindset to all the team members helped a lot in bringing the balanced approach of security and frequent release cycles that was much needed for our application.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Agile and Cybersecurity - How to get started","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-and-cybersecurity-how-to-get-started","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18707","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18715,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:41","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:41","post_content":"\n

Harshita is a scrum master for a team. With the Covid situation across India, the team has been dull and in a very somber state. As a scrum master, she could understand and relate to the situation that the team has been going through. At an organization level, there has been a lot of Employee assistance programs. But she is confused about whether it is ok to have the team be like this or does she need to do something?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution:<\/strong> Here are few things that I would recommend she start with <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Status \/ Smiley images in the communication and collaboration tool.  We have asked team members to add this and this helps others in the team to understand the emotional state of each and every one.  It was quite beneficial and set the stage for everyone in the meetings and interaction.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Standup meetings or team meetings \u2013 First 5 min or 10 min is used for check-in and free-flow conversation. This helped team members to know what\u2019s happening, vent out some of their feelings and help each other as need. If it\u2019s a large team, use some of the survey tools to do check-in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Informal group chat\/gathering or 1:1 with each other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am sure most coaches, leaders are thinking about this and doing something to help their teams in these trying times. Let me know what are those things that you are doing.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #248 \u2013 Sensitivity during these(covid) times","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-248-sensitivity-during-thesecovid-times","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18715","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17712,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:47:04","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:17:04","post_content":"\n

Pravin has been coaching the development team for a few months on the implementation of Scrum. There were a lot of improvement ideas and opportunities that he and his team gathered for the Product team, operation teams during the retrospective. When he tried speaking to them to understand their processes and see if he can do something about it, he was told that the scrum master scope is for the IT development team and the operation teams are not part of it.  He was very excited when he read the new scrum guide and understood that the scrum master role is expanded. Will this help him to remove the obstacle of end to end coaching of the team? If not, what else can he do? Are there any suggestions or solutions that you would recommend?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suggested Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum master role definition and One product team from the scrum guide is a good starting point. Pravin can use the guide to drive the essence of one team delivering product starting from definition to support, roll out, and also point that it is from the industry best practice. In addition to that, it would be good for him to quantify the problem that he had gathered with the data; for ex the resolution time of the incident (end to end), new requirements from the operation team. Along with that, he can do an End to End process mapping w.r.t product delivery and facilitate a discussion with the relevant stakeholders. Most of the time, the problem would be due to organization design ie. Silos between the operation team, product team, and development team, and this might take a longer discussion to solve. <\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #224 - Scrum Master role in the Operations\/Support world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-224-scrum-master-role-in-the-operations-support-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17712","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17698,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:46:28","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:16:28","post_content":"\n

Last week, Scrum celebrated 25 years, and to add to that celebration, a new scrum guide was released. Over the years, Scrum has been implemented across multiple industries and domains and the feedback of its success and failures flowed back into this new Scrum guide. There was a lot of excitement among the agile community for the launch and the agile community was elated with the changes in the Scrum guide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us look at the summary of changes ( from scrum.org articles) in the new scrum guide and then talk about the impact for us (agile community). For more details, you can refer to scrum.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even Less\nPrescriptive<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years,\nthe Scrum Guide started getting a bit more prescriptive. The 2020 version aims\nto bring Scrum back to being a minimally sufficient framework. This was\nachieved by removing the Daily Scrum questions, softening language around PBI\nattributes and retro items in Sprint Backlog, shortening the Sprint\ncancellation section, and much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One Team,\nFocused on One Product<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal was to\neliminate the concept of a separate team within a team that has led to \u201cproxy\u201d\nor \u201cus and them\u201d behavior between the PO and Dev Team. There is now just one\nScrum Team focused on the same objective, with three different sets of accountabilities:\nPO, SM, and Developers (anybody who is working on the sprint increment).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction\nof Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum\nGuide introduces the concept of a Product Goal to provide the focus for the\nScrum Team toward a larger valuable objective. Each Sprint should bring the\nproduct closer to the overall Product Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Home for\nSprint Goal, Definition of Done, and Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides described Sprint Goal and Definition of Done without really giving them\nan identity. They were not quite artifacts but were somewhat attached to\nartifacts. With the addition of Product Goal, the 2020 version provides more\nclarity around this. Each of the three artifacts now contains \u2018commitments\u2019 to\nthem. For the Product Backlog, it is the Product Goal, the Sprint Backlog has\nthe Sprint Goal, and the Increment has the Definition of Done (now without the\nquotes). They exist to bring transparency and focus toward the progress of each\nartifact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-Managing\nover Self-Organizing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides referred to Development Teams (team members who are working on the\nsprint increment) as self-organizing, choosing who and how to do work. With\nmore of a focus on the Scrum Team, the 2020 version emphasizes a self-managing\nScrum Team, that chooses who, how, and what to work on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nSprint Planning Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the\nSprint Planning topics of \u201cWhat\u201d and \u201cHow,\u201d the 2020 Scrum Guide places\nemphasis on a third topic, \u201cWhy.\u201d This third topic refers to the Sprint Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

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\u00b7 2 min mindful breathing before the class starts (ref\n-https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/mindful-leadership\/resources\/) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7Try out the exercises or case study and submit it \n\nI\nam sure most of you have been using the virtual learning platforms, either in\nyour organization or some preferred platforms to learn and grow in your\ncareers. Hope the above tips shared from my experience are useful. Please share\nyour best practices or tips or any recommendation from your learning journey on\nhow we can get the best out of the virtual learning model.\n\n<\/p>\n","post_title":"Tips to get the best of the virtual learning world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"tips-to-get-the-best-of-the-virtual-learning-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19014","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18707,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:58","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:58","post_content":"\n

Most of us would have read about the recent\nransomware hit on Colonial pipeline, one of the largest oil pipelines in the\nUS. They had to temporarily halt all the operations, it impacted some of the\ncompany\u2019s IT system and suffered a huge loss. It took almost a week to bring\nback the services and back to normal. During this unprecedented time, as we\nwere all working from home, Organization was worried about securing the\napplications, Infrastructure, etc. Cybersecurity has been slowly gaining focus\nand these kinds of attacks make serious attention.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the past 3 months, as an agile coach, I am involved in coaching a team that is developing a highly critical application that is also the backbone of the business deals. This application had to be super secure and if this application gets hit, it can have a huge impact on the organization in terms of finance, brand, and assets, data, etc. Hence, we had to explore how to integrate agile development practices and Cybersecurity practices. There have been some thoughts that agile, with its frequent releases, introduces vulnerability in the system and sometimes not recommended as a development approach for high critical application.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In the past, Cybersecurity teams usually get involved in the tail end and now with frequent releases, ways of working and processes need to be tailored. There were few practices that we got started which I will be sharing in this blog. Would love to hear from you; your stories and experiments in this area.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cybersecurity by definition is Computer\nsecurity, cybersecurity or information technology security (IT security) is the\nprotection of computer systems<\/a> and networks<\/a> from information disclosure, theft of or damage to\ntheir hardware<\/a>, software<\/a>, or electronic data<\/a>,\nas well as from the disruption<\/a> or misdirection<\/a> of the services they provide. In the past, the role\nof security was isolated to a specific team in the final stage of development.\nThat wasn\u2019t as problematic when development cycles lasted months or even years,\nbut those days are over. Effective agile development ensures rapid and frequent\ndevelopment cycles (sometimes weeks or days), but outdated security practices\ncan make the application more vulnerable to attacks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      There have been some doubts about Agile development methodologies and how it lends to Cybersecurity practices. But with self-organizing and cross-functional teams, agile enables different skill sets to work as a team to deliver good quality and secure software.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is how we got started with the process, and practices to integrate cybersecurity practices in agile development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.     Shift- Left:<\/strong>  Having\nexperts \/Cybersecurity personnel at the initial stage not at the end state; not\nto build systems of today. They were able to determine the risk tolerance of\nthe application and conduct risk\/benefit analysis. What amount of security\ncontrols are required for this application and threat modeling exercises? What\nkind of testing required during the sprints and have them integrated with the\ntesting and DevOps plan? It also underscores the need to help developers code\nwith security in mind, a process that involves security teams sharing\nvisibility, feedback, and insights on known threats. Based on the analysis and\nplan, all our developers were trained on the security protocols, processes and\ntools required. One of the important factors to keep in mind is the balance of\ncybersecurity activities with other activities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Hacker as persona:<\/strong> We introduced Hacker as a persona for the application as a next step. By building these personas<\/strong>, we worked out the best defense against certain types of attacks and predict when they might next occur. It helps us to understand the motivation and plan for countermeasures, prioritize defense. This persona was included as one of the users in the identified features of the application and which then was elaborated during the requirements and backlog grooming session. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Tools and Automation<\/strong>: There are quite a several tools available now in the cybersecurity domain. Once the cybersecurity process\/tests are identified, we find that most of our tasks were repetitive and manual. We started looking for ways to automate as Automating repeated tasks is key to DevSecOps since running manual security checks in the pipeline can be time-intensive. Some of these tasks can be automated, such as monitoring intrusion detection systems to search for threats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the major learning in this experimentation is that Shift left does not mean moving all the cybersecurity-related processes, practices, ways of working, and tools from the tail end to the initial stage of development. There had to be a balanced approach and what is required differs from application to application. But bringing this security mindset to all the team members helped a lot in bringing the balanced approach of security and frequent release cycles that was much needed for our application.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Agile and Cybersecurity - How to get started","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-and-cybersecurity-how-to-get-started","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18707","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18715,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:41","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:41","post_content":"\n

Harshita is a scrum master for a team. With the Covid situation across India, the team has been dull and in a very somber state. As a scrum master, she could understand and relate to the situation that the team has been going through. At an organization level, there has been a lot of Employee assistance programs. But she is confused about whether it is ok to have the team be like this or does she need to do something?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution:<\/strong> Here are few things that I would recommend she start with <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Status \/ Smiley images in the communication and collaboration tool.  We have asked team members to add this and this helps others in the team to understand the emotional state of each and every one.  It was quite beneficial and set the stage for everyone in the meetings and interaction.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Standup meetings or team meetings \u2013 First 5 min or 10 min is used for check-in and free-flow conversation. This helped team members to know what\u2019s happening, vent out some of their feelings and help each other as need. If it\u2019s a large team, use some of the survey tools to do check-in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Informal group chat\/gathering or 1:1 with each other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am sure most coaches, leaders are thinking about this and doing something to help their teams in these trying times. Let me know what are those things that you are doing.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #248 \u2013 Sensitivity during these(covid) times","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-248-sensitivity-during-thesecovid-times","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18715","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17712,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:47:04","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:17:04","post_content":"\n

Pravin has been coaching the development team for a few months on the implementation of Scrum. There were a lot of improvement ideas and opportunities that he and his team gathered for the Product team, operation teams during the retrospective. When he tried speaking to them to understand their processes and see if he can do something about it, he was told that the scrum master scope is for the IT development team and the operation teams are not part of it.  He was very excited when he read the new scrum guide and understood that the scrum master role is expanded. Will this help him to remove the obstacle of end to end coaching of the team? If not, what else can he do? Are there any suggestions or solutions that you would recommend?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suggested Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum master role definition and One product team from the scrum guide is a good starting point. Pravin can use the guide to drive the essence of one team delivering product starting from definition to support, roll out, and also point that it is from the industry best practice. In addition to that, it would be good for him to quantify the problem that he had gathered with the data; for ex the resolution time of the incident (end to end), new requirements from the operation team. Along with that, he can do an End to End process mapping w.r.t product delivery and facilitate a discussion with the relevant stakeholders. Most of the time, the problem would be due to organization design ie. Silos between the operation team, product team, and development team, and this might take a longer discussion to solve. <\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #224 - Scrum Master role in the Operations\/Support world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-224-scrum-master-role-in-the-operations-support-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17712","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17698,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:46:28","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:16:28","post_content":"\n

Last week, Scrum celebrated 25 years, and to add to that celebration, a new scrum guide was released. Over the years, Scrum has been implemented across multiple industries and domains and the feedback of its success and failures flowed back into this new Scrum guide. There was a lot of excitement among the agile community for the launch and the agile community was elated with the changes in the Scrum guide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us look at the summary of changes ( from scrum.org articles) in the new scrum guide and then talk about the impact for us (agile community). For more details, you can refer to scrum.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even Less\nPrescriptive<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years,\nthe Scrum Guide started getting a bit more prescriptive. The 2020 version aims\nto bring Scrum back to being a minimally sufficient framework. This was\nachieved by removing the Daily Scrum questions, softening language around PBI\nattributes and retro items in Sprint Backlog, shortening the Sprint\ncancellation section, and much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One Team,\nFocused on One Product<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal was to\neliminate the concept of a separate team within a team that has led to \u201cproxy\u201d\nor \u201cus and them\u201d behavior between the PO and Dev Team. There is now just one\nScrum Team focused on the same objective, with three different sets of accountabilities:\nPO, SM, and Developers (anybody who is working on the sprint increment).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction\nof Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum\nGuide introduces the concept of a Product Goal to provide the focus for the\nScrum Team toward a larger valuable objective. Each Sprint should bring the\nproduct closer to the overall Product Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Home for\nSprint Goal, Definition of Done, and Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides described Sprint Goal and Definition of Done without really giving them\nan identity. They were not quite artifacts but were somewhat attached to\nartifacts. With the addition of Product Goal, the 2020 version provides more\nclarity around this. Each of the three artifacts now contains \u2018commitments\u2019 to\nthem. For the Product Backlog, it is the Product Goal, the Sprint Backlog has\nthe Sprint Goal, and the Increment has the Definition of Done (now without the\nquotes). They exist to bring transparency and focus toward the progress of each\nartifact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-Managing\nover Self-Organizing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides referred to Development Teams (team members who are working on the\nsprint increment) as self-organizing, choosing who and how to do work. With\nmore of a focus on the Scrum Team, the 2020 version emphasizes a self-managing\nScrum Team, that chooses who, how, and what to work on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nSprint Planning Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the\nSprint Planning topics of \u201cWhat\u201d and \u201cHow,\u201d the 2020 Scrum Guide places\nemphasis on a third topic, \u201cWhy.\u201d This third topic refers to the Sprint Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

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\u00b7 Join a few minutes early and connect with the trainer\n\/facilitator. This also helps you to take on the next steps, such as\ncertification or becoming an expert in that area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 2 min mindful breathing before the class starts (ref\n-https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/mindful-leadership\/resources\/) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7Try out the exercises or case study and submit it \n\nI\nam sure most of you have been using the virtual learning platforms, either in\nyour organization or some preferred platforms to learn and grow in your\ncareers. Hope the above tips shared from my experience are useful. Please share\nyour best practices or tips or any recommendation from your learning journey on\nhow we can get the best out of the virtual learning model.\n\n<\/p>\n","post_title":"Tips to get the best of the virtual learning world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"tips-to-get-the-best-of-the-virtual-learning-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19014","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18707,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:58","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:58","post_content":"\n

Most of us would have read about the recent\nransomware hit on Colonial pipeline, one of the largest oil pipelines in the\nUS. They had to temporarily halt all the operations, it impacted some of the\ncompany\u2019s IT system and suffered a huge loss. It took almost a week to bring\nback the services and back to normal. During this unprecedented time, as we\nwere all working from home, Organization was worried about securing the\napplications, Infrastructure, etc. Cybersecurity has been slowly gaining focus\nand these kinds of attacks make serious attention.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the past 3 months, as an agile coach, I am involved in coaching a team that is developing a highly critical application that is also the backbone of the business deals. This application had to be super secure and if this application gets hit, it can have a huge impact on the organization in terms of finance, brand, and assets, data, etc. Hence, we had to explore how to integrate agile development practices and Cybersecurity practices. There have been some thoughts that agile, with its frequent releases, introduces vulnerability in the system and sometimes not recommended as a development approach for high critical application.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In the past, Cybersecurity teams usually get involved in the tail end and now with frequent releases, ways of working and processes need to be tailored. There were few practices that we got started which I will be sharing in this blog. Would love to hear from you; your stories and experiments in this area.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cybersecurity by definition is Computer\nsecurity, cybersecurity or information technology security (IT security) is the\nprotection of computer systems<\/a> and networks<\/a> from information disclosure, theft of or damage to\ntheir hardware<\/a>, software<\/a>, or electronic data<\/a>,\nas well as from the disruption<\/a> or misdirection<\/a> of the services they provide. In the past, the role\nof security was isolated to a specific team in the final stage of development.\nThat wasn\u2019t as problematic when development cycles lasted months or even years,\nbut those days are over. Effective agile development ensures rapid and frequent\ndevelopment cycles (sometimes weeks or days), but outdated security practices\ncan make the application more vulnerable to attacks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      There have been some doubts about Agile development methodologies and how it lends to Cybersecurity practices. But with self-organizing and cross-functional teams, agile enables different skill sets to work as a team to deliver good quality and secure software.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is how we got started with the process, and practices to integrate cybersecurity practices in agile development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.     Shift- Left:<\/strong>  Having\nexperts \/Cybersecurity personnel at the initial stage not at the end state; not\nto build systems of today. They were able to determine the risk tolerance of\nthe application and conduct risk\/benefit analysis. What amount of security\ncontrols are required for this application and threat modeling exercises? What\nkind of testing required during the sprints and have them integrated with the\ntesting and DevOps plan? It also underscores the need to help developers code\nwith security in mind, a process that involves security teams sharing\nvisibility, feedback, and insights on known threats. Based on the analysis and\nplan, all our developers were trained on the security protocols, processes and\ntools required. One of the important factors to keep in mind is the balance of\ncybersecurity activities with other activities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Hacker as persona:<\/strong> We introduced Hacker as a persona for the application as a next step. By building these personas<\/strong>, we worked out the best defense against certain types of attacks and predict when they might next occur. It helps us to understand the motivation and plan for countermeasures, prioritize defense. This persona was included as one of the users in the identified features of the application and which then was elaborated during the requirements and backlog grooming session. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Tools and Automation<\/strong>: There are quite a several tools available now in the cybersecurity domain. Once the cybersecurity process\/tests are identified, we find that most of our tasks were repetitive and manual. We started looking for ways to automate as Automating repeated tasks is key to DevSecOps since running manual security checks in the pipeline can be time-intensive. Some of these tasks can be automated, such as monitoring intrusion detection systems to search for threats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the major learning in this experimentation is that Shift left does not mean moving all the cybersecurity-related processes, practices, ways of working, and tools from the tail end to the initial stage of development. There had to be a balanced approach and what is required differs from application to application. But bringing this security mindset to all the team members helped a lot in bringing the balanced approach of security and frequent release cycles that was much needed for our application.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Agile and Cybersecurity - How to get started","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-and-cybersecurity-how-to-get-started","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18707","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18715,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:41","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:41","post_content":"\n

Harshita is a scrum master for a team. With the Covid situation across India, the team has been dull and in a very somber state. As a scrum master, she could understand and relate to the situation that the team has been going through. At an organization level, there has been a lot of Employee assistance programs. But she is confused about whether it is ok to have the team be like this or does she need to do something?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution:<\/strong> Here are few things that I would recommend she start with <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Status \/ Smiley images in the communication and collaboration tool.  We have asked team members to add this and this helps others in the team to understand the emotional state of each and every one.  It was quite beneficial and set the stage for everyone in the meetings and interaction.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Standup meetings or team meetings \u2013 First 5 min or 10 min is used for check-in and free-flow conversation. This helped team members to know what\u2019s happening, vent out some of their feelings and help each other as need. If it\u2019s a large team, use some of the survey tools to do check-in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Informal group chat\/gathering or 1:1 with each other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am sure most coaches, leaders are thinking about this and doing something to help their teams in these trying times. Let me know what are those things that you are doing.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #248 \u2013 Sensitivity during these(covid) times","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-248-sensitivity-during-thesecovid-times","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18715","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17712,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:47:04","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:17:04","post_content":"\n

Pravin has been coaching the development team for a few months on the implementation of Scrum. There were a lot of improvement ideas and opportunities that he and his team gathered for the Product team, operation teams during the retrospective. When he tried speaking to them to understand their processes and see if he can do something about it, he was told that the scrum master scope is for the IT development team and the operation teams are not part of it.  He was very excited when he read the new scrum guide and understood that the scrum master role is expanded. Will this help him to remove the obstacle of end to end coaching of the team? If not, what else can he do? Are there any suggestions or solutions that you would recommend?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suggested Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum master role definition and One product team from the scrum guide is a good starting point. Pravin can use the guide to drive the essence of one team delivering product starting from definition to support, roll out, and also point that it is from the industry best practice. In addition to that, it would be good for him to quantify the problem that he had gathered with the data; for ex the resolution time of the incident (end to end), new requirements from the operation team. Along with that, he can do an End to End process mapping w.r.t product delivery and facilitate a discussion with the relevant stakeholders. Most of the time, the problem would be due to organization design ie. Silos between the operation team, product team, and development team, and this might take a longer discussion to solve. <\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #224 - Scrum Master role in the Operations\/Support world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-224-scrum-master-role-in-the-operations-support-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17712","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17698,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:46:28","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:16:28","post_content":"\n

Last week, Scrum celebrated 25 years, and to add to that celebration, a new scrum guide was released. Over the years, Scrum has been implemented across multiple industries and domains and the feedback of its success and failures flowed back into this new Scrum guide. There was a lot of excitement among the agile community for the launch and the agile community was elated with the changes in the Scrum guide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us look at the summary of changes ( from scrum.org articles) in the new scrum guide and then talk about the impact for us (agile community). For more details, you can refer to scrum.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even Less\nPrescriptive<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years,\nthe Scrum Guide started getting a bit more prescriptive. The 2020 version aims\nto bring Scrum back to being a minimally sufficient framework. This was\nachieved by removing the Daily Scrum questions, softening language around PBI\nattributes and retro items in Sprint Backlog, shortening the Sprint\ncancellation section, and much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One Team,\nFocused on One Product<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal was to\neliminate the concept of a separate team within a team that has led to \u201cproxy\u201d\nor \u201cus and them\u201d behavior between the PO and Dev Team. There is now just one\nScrum Team focused on the same objective, with three different sets of accountabilities:\nPO, SM, and Developers (anybody who is working on the sprint increment).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction\nof Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum\nGuide introduces the concept of a Product Goal to provide the focus for the\nScrum Team toward a larger valuable objective. Each Sprint should bring the\nproduct closer to the overall Product Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Home for\nSprint Goal, Definition of Done, and Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides described Sprint Goal and Definition of Done without really giving them\nan identity. They were not quite artifacts but were somewhat attached to\nartifacts. With the addition of Product Goal, the 2020 version provides more\nclarity around this. Each of the three artifacts now contains \u2018commitments\u2019 to\nthem. For the Product Backlog, it is the Product Goal, the Sprint Backlog has\nthe Sprint Goal, and the Increment has the Definition of Done (now without the\nquotes). They exist to bring transparency and focus toward the progress of each\nartifact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-Managing\nover Self-Organizing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides referred to Development Teams (team members who are working on the\nsprint increment) as self-organizing, choosing who and how to do work. With\nmore of a focus on the Scrum Team, the 2020 version emphasizes a self-managing\nScrum Team, that chooses who, how, and what to work on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nSprint Planning Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the\nSprint Planning topics of \u201cWhat\u201d and \u201cHow,\u201d the 2020 Scrum Guide places\nemphasis on a third topic, \u201cWhy.\u201d This third topic refers to the Sprint Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

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\n

\u00b7 Have video on <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Join a few minutes early and connect with the trainer\n\/facilitator. This also helps you to take on the next steps, such as\ncertification or becoming an expert in that area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 2 min mindful breathing before the class starts (ref\n-https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/mindful-leadership\/resources\/) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7Try out the exercises or case study and submit it \n\nI\nam sure most of you have been using the virtual learning platforms, either in\nyour organization or some preferred platforms to learn and grow in your\ncareers. Hope the above tips shared from my experience are useful. Please share\nyour best practices or tips or any recommendation from your learning journey on\nhow we can get the best out of the virtual learning model.\n\n<\/p>\n","post_title":"Tips to get the best of the virtual learning world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"tips-to-get-the-best-of-the-virtual-learning-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19014","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18707,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:58","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:58","post_content":"\n

Most of us would have read about the recent\nransomware hit on Colonial pipeline, one of the largest oil pipelines in the\nUS. They had to temporarily halt all the operations, it impacted some of the\ncompany\u2019s IT system and suffered a huge loss. It took almost a week to bring\nback the services and back to normal. During this unprecedented time, as we\nwere all working from home, Organization was worried about securing the\napplications, Infrastructure, etc. Cybersecurity has been slowly gaining focus\nand these kinds of attacks make serious attention.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the past 3 months, as an agile coach, I am involved in coaching a team that is developing a highly critical application that is also the backbone of the business deals. This application had to be super secure and if this application gets hit, it can have a huge impact on the organization in terms of finance, brand, and assets, data, etc. Hence, we had to explore how to integrate agile development practices and Cybersecurity practices. There have been some thoughts that agile, with its frequent releases, introduces vulnerability in the system and sometimes not recommended as a development approach for high critical application.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In the past, Cybersecurity teams usually get involved in the tail end and now with frequent releases, ways of working and processes need to be tailored. There were few practices that we got started which I will be sharing in this blog. Would love to hear from you; your stories and experiments in this area.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cybersecurity by definition is Computer\nsecurity, cybersecurity or information technology security (IT security) is the\nprotection of computer systems<\/a> and networks<\/a> from information disclosure, theft of or damage to\ntheir hardware<\/a>, software<\/a>, or electronic data<\/a>,\nas well as from the disruption<\/a> or misdirection<\/a> of the services they provide. In the past, the role\nof security was isolated to a specific team in the final stage of development.\nThat wasn\u2019t as problematic when development cycles lasted months or even years,\nbut those days are over. Effective agile development ensures rapid and frequent\ndevelopment cycles (sometimes weeks or days), but outdated security practices\ncan make the application more vulnerable to attacks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      There have been some doubts about Agile development methodologies and how it lends to Cybersecurity practices. But with self-organizing and cross-functional teams, agile enables different skill sets to work as a team to deliver good quality and secure software.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is how we got started with the process, and practices to integrate cybersecurity practices in agile development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.     Shift- Left:<\/strong>  Having\nexperts \/Cybersecurity personnel at the initial stage not at the end state; not\nto build systems of today. They were able to determine the risk tolerance of\nthe application and conduct risk\/benefit analysis. What amount of security\ncontrols are required for this application and threat modeling exercises? What\nkind of testing required during the sprints and have them integrated with the\ntesting and DevOps plan? It also underscores the need to help developers code\nwith security in mind, a process that involves security teams sharing\nvisibility, feedback, and insights on known threats. Based on the analysis and\nplan, all our developers were trained on the security protocols, processes and\ntools required. One of the important factors to keep in mind is the balance of\ncybersecurity activities with other activities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Hacker as persona:<\/strong> We introduced Hacker as a persona for the application as a next step. By building these personas<\/strong>, we worked out the best defense against certain types of attacks and predict when they might next occur. It helps us to understand the motivation and plan for countermeasures, prioritize defense. This persona was included as one of the users in the identified features of the application and which then was elaborated during the requirements and backlog grooming session. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Tools and Automation<\/strong>: There are quite a several tools available now in the cybersecurity domain. Once the cybersecurity process\/tests are identified, we find that most of our tasks were repetitive and manual. We started looking for ways to automate as Automating repeated tasks is key to DevSecOps since running manual security checks in the pipeline can be time-intensive. Some of these tasks can be automated, such as monitoring intrusion detection systems to search for threats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the major learning in this experimentation is that Shift left does not mean moving all the cybersecurity-related processes, practices, ways of working, and tools from the tail end to the initial stage of development. There had to be a balanced approach and what is required differs from application to application. But bringing this security mindset to all the team members helped a lot in bringing the balanced approach of security and frequent release cycles that was much needed for our application.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Agile and Cybersecurity - How to get started","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-and-cybersecurity-how-to-get-started","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18707","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18715,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:41","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:41","post_content":"\n

Harshita is a scrum master for a team. With the Covid situation across India, the team has been dull and in a very somber state. As a scrum master, she could understand and relate to the situation that the team has been going through. At an organization level, there has been a lot of Employee assistance programs. But she is confused about whether it is ok to have the team be like this or does she need to do something?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution:<\/strong> Here are few things that I would recommend she start with <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Status \/ Smiley images in the communication and collaboration tool.  We have asked team members to add this and this helps others in the team to understand the emotional state of each and every one.  It was quite beneficial and set the stage for everyone in the meetings and interaction.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Standup meetings or team meetings \u2013 First 5 min or 10 min is used for check-in and free-flow conversation. This helped team members to know what\u2019s happening, vent out some of their feelings and help each other as need. If it\u2019s a large team, use some of the survey tools to do check-in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Informal group chat\/gathering or 1:1 with each other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am sure most coaches, leaders are thinking about this and doing something to help their teams in these trying times. Let me know what are those things that you are doing.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #248 \u2013 Sensitivity during these(covid) times","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-248-sensitivity-during-thesecovid-times","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18715","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17712,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:47:04","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:17:04","post_content":"\n

Pravin has been coaching the development team for a few months on the implementation of Scrum. There were a lot of improvement ideas and opportunities that he and his team gathered for the Product team, operation teams during the retrospective. When he tried speaking to them to understand their processes and see if he can do something about it, he was told that the scrum master scope is for the IT development team and the operation teams are not part of it.  He was very excited when he read the new scrum guide and understood that the scrum master role is expanded. Will this help him to remove the obstacle of end to end coaching of the team? If not, what else can he do? Are there any suggestions or solutions that you would recommend?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suggested Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum master role definition and One product team from the scrum guide is a good starting point. Pravin can use the guide to drive the essence of one team delivering product starting from definition to support, roll out, and also point that it is from the industry best practice. In addition to that, it would be good for him to quantify the problem that he had gathered with the data; for ex the resolution time of the incident (end to end), new requirements from the operation team. Along with that, he can do an End to End process mapping w.r.t product delivery and facilitate a discussion with the relevant stakeholders. Most of the time, the problem would be due to organization design ie. Silos between the operation team, product team, and development team, and this might take a longer discussion to solve. <\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #224 - Scrum Master role in the Operations\/Support world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-224-scrum-master-role-in-the-operations-support-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17712","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17698,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:46:28","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:16:28","post_content":"\n

Last week, Scrum celebrated 25 years, and to add to that celebration, a new scrum guide was released. Over the years, Scrum has been implemented across multiple industries and domains and the feedback of its success and failures flowed back into this new Scrum guide. There was a lot of excitement among the agile community for the launch and the agile community was elated with the changes in the Scrum guide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us look at the summary of changes ( from scrum.org articles) in the new scrum guide and then talk about the impact for us (agile community). For more details, you can refer to scrum.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even Less\nPrescriptive<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years,\nthe Scrum Guide started getting a bit more prescriptive. The 2020 version aims\nto bring Scrum back to being a minimally sufficient framework. This was\nachieved by removing the Daily Scrum questions, softening language around PBI\nattributes and retro items in Sprint Backlog, shortening the Sprint\ncancellation section, and much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One Team,\nFocused on One Product<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal was to\neliminate the concept of a separate team within a team that has led to \u201cproxy\u201d\nor \u201cus and them\u201d behavior between the PO and Dev Team. There is now just one\nScrum Team focused on the same objective, with three different sets of accountabilities:\nPO, SM, and Developers (anybody who is working on the sprint increment).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction\nof Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum\nGuide introduces the concept of a Product Goal to provide the focus for the\nScrum Team toward a larger valuable objective. Each Sprint should bring the\nproduct closer to the overall Product Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Home for\nSprint Goal, Definition of Done, and Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides described Sprint Goal and Definition of Done without really giving them\nan identity. They were not quite artifacts but were somewhat attached to\nartifacts. With the addition of Product Goal, the 2020 version provides more\nclarity around this. Each of the three artifacts now contains \u2018commitments\u2019 to\nthem. For the Product Backlog, it is the Product Goal, the Sprint Backlog has\nthe Sprint Goal, and the Increment has the Definition of Done (now without the\nquotes). They exist to bring transparency and focus toward the progress of each\nartifact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-Managing\nover Self-Organizing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides referred to Development Teams (team members who are working on the\nsprint increment) as self-organizing, choosing who and how to do work. With\nmore of a focus on the Scrum Team, the 2020 version emphasizes a self-managing\nScrum Team, that chooses who, how, and what to work on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nSprint Planning Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the\nSprint Planning topics of \u201cWhat\u201d and \u201cHow,\u201d the 2020 Scrum Guide places\nemphasis on a third topic, \u201cWhy.\u201d This third topic refers to the Sprint Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

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\u00b7 Set expectations at home that you are in training and not\nto be disturbed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Have video on <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Join a few minutes early and connect with the trainer\n\/facilitator. This also helps you to take on the next steps, such as\ncertification or becoming an expert in that area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 2 min mindful breathing before the class starts (ref\n-https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/mindful-leadership\/resources\/) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7Try out the exercises or case study and submit it \n\nI\nam sure most of you have been using the virtual learning platforms, either in\nyour organization or some preferred platforms to learn and grow in your\ncareers. Hope the above tips shared from my experience are useful. Please share\nyour best practices or tips or any recommendation from your learning journey on\nhow we can get the best out of the virtual learning model.\n\n<\/p>\n","post_title":"Tips to get the best of the virtual learning world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"tips-to-get-the-best-of-the-virtual-learning-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19014","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18707,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:58","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:58","post_content":"\n

Most of us would have read about the recent\nransomware hit on Colonial pipeline, one of the largest oil pipelines in the\nUS. They had to temporarily halt all the operations, it impacted some of the\ncompany\u2019s IT system and suffered a huge loss. It took almost a week to bring\nback the services and back to normal. During this unprecedented time, as we\nwere all working from home, Organization was worried about securing the\napplications, Infrastructure, etc. Cybersecurity has been slowly gaining focus\nand these kinds of attacks make serious attention.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the past 3 months, as an agile coach, I am involved in coaching a team that is developing a highly critical application that is also the backbone of the business deals. This application had to be super secure and if this application gets hit, it can have a huge impact on the organization in terms of finance, brand, and assets, data, etc. Hence, we had to explore how to integrate agile development practices and Cybersecurity practices. There have been some thoughts that agile, with its frequent releases, introduces vulnerability in the system and sometimes not recommended as a development approach for high critical application.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In the past, Cybersecurity teams usually get involved in the tail end and now with frequent releases, ways of working and processes need to be tailored. There were few practices that we got started which I will be sharing in this blog. Would love to hear from you; your stories and experiments in this area.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cybersecurity by definition is Computer\nsecurity, cybersecurity or information technology security (IT security) is the\nprotection of computer systems<\/a> and networks<\/a> from information disclosure, theft of or damage to\ntheir hardware<\/a>, software<\/a>, or electronic data<\/a>,\nas well as from the disruption<\/a> or misdirection<\/a> of the services they provide. In the past, the role\nof security was isolated to a specific team in the final stage of development.\nThat wasn\u2019t as problematic when development cycles lasted months or even years,\nbut those days are over. Effective agile development ensures rapid and frequent\ndevelopment cycles (sometimes weeks or days), but outdated security practices\ncan make the application more vulnerable to attacks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      There have been some doubts about Agile development methodologies and how it lends to Cybersecurity practices. But with self-organizing and cross-functional teams, agile enables different skill sets to work as a team to deliver good quality and secure software.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is how we got started with the process, and practices to integrate cybersecurity practices in agile development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.     Shift- Left:<\/strong>  Having\nexperts \/Cybersecurity personnel at the initial stage not at the end state; not\nto build systems of today. They were able to determine the risk tolerance of\nthe application and conduct risk\/benefit analysis. What amount of security\ncontrols are required for this application and threat modeling exercises? What\nkind of testing required during the sprints and have them integrated with the\ntesting and DevOps plan? It also underscores the need to help developers code\nwith security in mind, a process that involves security teams sharing\nvisibility, feedback, and insights on known threats. Based on the analysis and\nplan, all our developers were trained on the security protocols, processes and\ntools required. One of the important factors to keep in mind is the balance of\ncybersecurity activities with other activities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Hacker as persona:<\/strong> We introduced Hacker as a persona for the application as a next step. By building these personas<\/strong>, we worked out the best defense against certain types of attacks and predict when they might next occur. It helps us to understand the motivation and plan for countermeasures, prioritize defense. This persona was included as one of the users in the identified features of the application and which then was elaborated during the requirements and backlog grooming session. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Tools and Automation<\/strong>: There are quite a several tools available now in the cybersecurity domain. Once the cybersecurity process\/tests are identified, we find that most of our tasks were repetitive and manual. We started looking for ways to automate as Automating repeated tasks is key to DevSecOps since running manual security checks in the pipeline can be time-intensive. Some of these tasks can be automated, such as monitoring intrusion detection systems to search for threats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the major learning in this experimentation is that Shift left does not mean moving all the cybersecurity-related processes, practices, ways of working, and tools from the tail end to the initial stage of development. There had to be a balanced approach and what is required differs from application to application. But bringing this security mindset to all the team members helped a lot in bringing the balanced approach of security and frequent release cycles that was much needed for our application.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Agile and Cybersecurity - How to get started","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-and-cybersecurity-how-to-get-started","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18707","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18715,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:41","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:41","post_content":"\n

Harshita is a scrum master for a team. With the Covid situation across India, the team has been dull and in a very somber state. As a scrum master, she could understand and relate to the situation that the team has been going through. At an organization level, there has been a lot of Employee assistance programs. But she is confused about whether it is ok to have the team be like this or does she need to do something?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution:<\/strong> Here are few things that I would recommend she start with <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Status \/ Smiley images in the communication and collaboration tool.  We have asked team members to add this and this helps others in the team to understand the emotional state of each and every one.  It was quite beneficial and set the stage for everyone in the meetings and interaction.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Standup meetings or team meetings \u2013 First 5 min or 10 min is used for check-in and free-flow conversation. This helped team members to know what\u2019s happening, vent out some of their feelings and help each other as need. If it\u2019s a large team, use some of the survey tools to do check-in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Informal group chat\/gathering or 1:1 with each other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am sure most coaches, leaders are thinking about this and doing something to help their teams in these trying times. Let me know what are those things that you are doing.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #248 \u2013 Sensitivity during these(covid) times","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-248-sensitivity-during-thesecovid-times","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18715","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17712,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:47:04","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:17:04","post_content":"\n

Pravin has been coaching the development team for a few months on the implementation of Scrum. There were a lot of improvement ideas and opportunities that he and his team gathered for the Product team, operation teams during the retrospective. When he tried speaking to them to understand their processes and see if he can do something about it, he was told that the scrum master scope is for the IT development team and the operation teams are not part of it.  He was very excited when he read the new scrum guide and understood that the scrum master role is expanded. Will this help him to remove the obstacle of end to end coaching of the team? If not, what else can he do? Are there any suggestions or solutions that you would recommend?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suggested Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum master role definition and One product team from the scrum guide is a good starting point. Pravin can use the guide to drive the essence of one team delivering product starting from definition to support, roll out, and also point that it is from the industry best practice. In addition to that, it would be good for him to quantify the problem that he had gathered with the data; for ex the resolution time of the incident (end to end), new requirements from the operation team. Along with that, he can do an End to End process mapping w.r.t product delivery and facilitate a discussion with the relevant stakeholders. Most of the time, the problem would be due to organization design ie. Silos between the operation team, product team, and development team, and this might take a longer discussion to solve. <\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #224 - Scrum Master role in the Operations\/Support world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-224-scrum-master-role-in-the-operations-support-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17712","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17698,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:46:28","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:16:28","post_content":"\n

Last week, Scrum celebrated 25 years, and to add to that celebration, a new scrum guide was released. Over the years, Scrum has been implemented across multiple industries and domains and the feedback of its success and failures flowed back into this new Scrum guide. There was a lot of excitement among the agile community for the launch and the agile community was elated with the changes in the Scrum guide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us look at the summary of changes ( from scrum.org articles) in the new scrum guide and then talk about the impact for us (agile community). For more details, you can refer to scrum.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even Less\nPrescriptive<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years,\nthe Scrum Guide started getting a bit more prescriptive. The 2020 version aims\nto bring Scrum back to being a minimally sufficient framework. This was\nachieved by removing the Daily Scrum questions, softening language around PBI\nattributes and retro items in Sprint Backlog, shortening the Sprint\ncancellation section, and much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One Team,\nFocused on One Product<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal was to\neliminate the concept of a separate team within a team that has led to \u201cproxy\u201d\nor \u201cus and them\u201d behavior between the PO and Dev Team. There is now just one\nScrum Team focused on the same objective, with three different sets of accountabilities:\nPO, SM, and Developers (anybody who is working on the sprint increment).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction\nof Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum\nGuide introduces the concept of a Product Goal to provide the focus for the\nScrum Team toward a larger valuable objective. Each Sprint should bring the\nproduct closer to the overall Product Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Home for\nSprint Goal, Definition of Done, and Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides described Sprint Goal and Definition of Done without really giving them\nan identity. They were not quite artifacts but were somewhat attached to\nartifacts. With the addition of Product Goal, the 2020 version provides more\nclarity around this. Each of the three artifacts now contains \u2018commitments\u2019 to\nthem. For the Product Backlog, it is the Product Goal, the Sprint Backlog has\nthe Sprint Goal, and the Increment has the Definition of Done (now without the\nquotes). They exist to bring transparency and focus toward the progress of each\nartifact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-Managing\nover Self-Organizing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides referred to Development Teams (team members who are working on the\nsprint increment) as self-organizing, choosing who and how to do work. With\nmore of a focus on the Scrum Team, the 2020 version emphasizes a self-managing\nScrum Team, that chooses who, how, and what to work on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nSprint Planning Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the\nSprint Planning topics of \u201cWhat\u201d and \u201cHow,\u201d the 2020 Scrum Guide places\nemphasis on a third topic, \u201cWhy.\u201d This third topic refers to the Sprint Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

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 \u00b7 Closeout the mails and collaboration channels keep\nmobile of our reach; Keep only course window open <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Set expectations at home that you are in training and not\nto be disturbed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Have video on <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Join a few minutes early and connect with the trainer\n\/facilitator. This also helps you to take on the next steps, such as\ncertification or becoming an expert in that area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 2 min mindful breathing before the class starts (ref\n-https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/mindful-leadership\/resources\/) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7Try out the exercises or case study and submit it \n\nI\nam sure most of you have been using the virtual learning platforms, either in\nyour organization or some preferred platforms to learn and grow in your\ncareers. Hope the above tips shared from my experience are useful. Please share\nyour best practices or tips or any recommendation from your learning journey on\nhow we can get the best out of the virtual learning model.\n\n<\/p>\n","post_title":"Tips to get the best of the virtual learning world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"tips-to-get-the-best-of-the-virtual-learning-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19014","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18707,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:58","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:58","post_content":"\n

Most of us would have read about the recent\nransomware hit on Colonial pipeline, one of the largest oil pipelines in the\nUS. They had to temporarily halt all the operations, it impacted some of the\ncompany\u2019s IT system and suffered a huge loss. It took almost a week to bring\nback the services and back to normal. During this unprecedented time, as we\nwere all working from home, Organization was worried about securing the\napplications, Infrastructure, etc. Cybersecurity has been slowly gaining focus\nand these kinds of attacks make serious attention.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the past 3 months, as an agile coach, I am involved in coaching a team that is developing a highly critical application that is also the backbone of the business deals. This application had to be super secure and if this application gets hit, it can have a huge impact on the organization in terms of finance, brand, and assets, data, etc. Hence, we had to explore how to integrate agile development practices and Cybersecurity practices. There have been some thoughts that agile, with its frequent releases, introduces vulnerability in the system and sometimes not recommended as a development approach for high critical application.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In the past, Cybersecurity teams usually get involved in the tail end and now with frequent releases, ways of working and processes need to be tailored. There were few practices that we got started which I will be sharing in this blog. Would love to hear from you; your stories and experiments in this area.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cybersecurity by definition is Computer\nsecurity, cybersecurity or information technology security (IT security) is the\nprotection of computer systems<\/a> and networks<\/a> from information disclosure, theft of or damage to\ntheir hardware<\/a>, software<\/a>, or electronic data<\/a>,\nas well as from the disruption<\/a> or misdirection<\/a> of the services they provide. In the past, the role\nof security was isolated to a specific team in the final stage of development.\nThat wasn\u2019t as problematic when development cycles lasted months or even years,\nbut those days are over. Effective agile development ensures rapid and frequent\ndevelopment cycles (sometimes weeks or days), but outdated security practices\ncan make the application more vulnerable to attacks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      There have been some doubts about Agile development methodologies and how it lends to Cybersecurity practices. But with self-organizing and cross-functional teams, agile enables different skill sets to work as a team to deliver good quality and secure software.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is how we got started with the process, and practices to integrate cybersecurity practices in agile development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.     Shift- Left:<\/strong>  Having\nexperts \/Cybersecurity personnel at the initial stage not at the end state; not\nto build systems of today. They were able to determine the risk tolerance of\nthe application and conduct risk\/benefit analysis. What amount of security\ncontrols are required for this application and threat modeling exercises? What\nkind of testing required during the sprints and have them integrated with the\ntesting and DevOps plan? It also underscores the need to help developers code\nwith security in mind, a process that involves security teams sharing\nvisibility, feedback, and insights on known threats. Based on the analysis and\nplan, all our developers were trained on the security protocols, processes and\ntools required. One of the important factors to keep in mind is the balance of\ncybersecurity activities with other activities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Hacker as persona:<\/strong> We introduced Hacker as a persona for the application as a next step. By building these personas<\/strong>, we worked out the best defense against certain types of attacks and predict when they might next occur. It helps us to understand the motivation and plan for countermeasures, prioritize defense. This persona was included as one of the users in the identified features of the application and which then was elaborated during the requirements and backlog grooming session. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Tools and Automation<\/strong>: There are quite a several tools available now in the cybersecurity domain. Once the cybersecurity process\/tests are identified, we find that most of our tasks were repetitive and manual. We started looking for ways to automate as Automating repeated tasks is key to DevSecOps since running manual security checks in the pipeline can be time-intensive. Some of these tasks can be automated, such as monitoring intrusion detection systems to search for threats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the major learning in this experimentation is that Shift left does not mean moving all the cybersecurity-related processes, practices, ways of working, and tools from the tail end to the initial stage of development. There had to be a balanced approach and what is required differs from application to application. But bringing this security mindset to all the team members helped a lot in bringing the balanced approach of security and frequent release cycles that was much needed for our application.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Agile and Cybersecurity - How to get started","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-and-cybersecurity-how-to-get-started","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18707","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18715,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:41","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:41","post_content":"\n

Harshita is a scrum master for a team. With the Covid situation across India, the team has been dull and in a very somber state. As a scrum master, she could understand and relate to the situation that the team has been going through. At an organization level, there has been a lot of Employee assistance programs. But she is confused about whether it is ok to have the team be like this or does she need to do something?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution:<\/strong> Here are few things that I would recommend she start with <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Status \/ Smiley images in the communication and collaboration tool.  We have asked team members to add this and this helps others in the team to understand the emotional state of each and every one.  It was quite beneficial and set the stage for everyone in the meetings and interaction.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Standup meetings or team meetings \u2013 First 5 min or 10 min is used for check-in and free-flow conversation. This helped team members to know what\u2019s happening, vent out some of their feelings and help each other as need. If it\u2019s a large team, use some of the survey tools to do check-in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Informal group chat\/gathering or 1:1 with each other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am sure most coaches, leaders are thinking about this and doing something to help their teams in these trying times. Let me know what are those things that you are doing.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #248 \u2013 Sensitivity during these(covid) times","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-248-sensitivity-during-thesecovid-times","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18715","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17712,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:47:04","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:17:04","post_content":"\n

Pravin has been coaching the development team for a few months on the implementation of Scrum. There were a lot of improvement ideas and opportunities that he and his team gathered for the Product team, operation teams during the retrospective. When he tried speaking to them to understand their processes and see if he can do something about it, he was told that the scrum master scope is for the IT development team and the operation teams are not part of it.  He was very excited when he read the new scrum guide and understood that the scrum master role is expanded. Will this help him to remove the obstacle of end to end coaching of the team? If not, what else can he do? Are there any suggestions or solutions that you would recommend?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suggested Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum master role definition and One product team from the scrum guide is a good starting point. Pravin can use the guide to drive the essence of one team delivering product starting from definition to support, roll out, and also point that it is from the industry best practice. In addition to that, it would be good for him to quantify the problem that he had gathered with the data; for ex the resolution time of the incident (end to end), new requirements from the operation team. Along with that, he can do an End to End process mapping w.r.t product delivery and facilitate a discussion with the relevant stakeholders. Most of the time, the problem would be due to organization design ie. Silos between the operation team, product team, and development team, and this might take a longer discussion to solve. <\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #224 - Scrum Master role in the Operations\/Support world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-224-scrum-master-role-in-the-operations-support-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17712","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17698,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:46:28","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:16:28","post_content":"\n

Last week, Scrum celebrated 25 years, and to add to that celebration, a new scrum guide was released. Over the years, Scrum has been implemented across multiple industries and domains and the feedback of its success and failures flowed back into this new Scrum guide. There was a lot of excitement among the agile community for the launch and the agile community was elated with the changes in the Scrum guide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us look at the summary of changes ( from scrum.org articles) in the new scrum guide and then talk about the impact for us (agile community). For more details, you can refer to scrum.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even Less\nPrescriptive<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years,\nthe Scrum Guide started getting a bit more prescriptive. The 2020 version aims\nto bring Scrum back to being a minimally sufficient framework. This was\nachieved by removing the Daily Scrum questions, softening language around PBI\nattributes and retro items in Sprint Backlog, shortening the Sprint\ncancellation section, and much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One Team,\nFocused on One Product<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal was to\neliminate the concept of a separate team within a team that has led to \u201cproxy\u201d\nor \u201cus and them\u201d behavior between the PO and Dev Team. There is now just one\nScrum Team focused on the same objective, with three different sets of accountabilities:\nPO, SM, and Developers (anybody who is working on the sprint increment).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction\nof Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum\nGuide introduces the concept of a Product Goal to provide the focus for the\nScrum Team toward a larger valuable objective. Each Sprint should bring the\nproduct closer to the overall Product Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Home for\nSprint Goal, Definition of Done, and Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides described Sprint Goal and Definition of Done without really giving them\nan identity. They were not quite artifacts but were somewhat attached to\nartifacts. With the addition of Product Goal, the 2020 version provides more\nclarity around this. Each of the three artifacts now contains \u2018commitments\u2019 to\nthem. For the Product Backlog, it is the Product Goal, the Sprint Backlog has\nthe Sprint Goal, and the Increment has the Definition of Done (now without the\nquotes). They exist to bring transparency and focus toward the progress of each\nartifact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-Managing\nover Self-Organizing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides referred to Development Teams (team members who are working on the\nsprint increment) as self-organizing, choosing who and how to do work. With\nmore of a focus on the Scrum Team, the 2020 version emphasizes a self-managing\nScrum Team, that chooses who, how, and what to work on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nSprint Planning Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the\nSprint Planning topics of \u201cWhat\u201d and \u201cHow,\u201d the 2020 Scrum Guide places\nemphasis on a third topic, \u201cWhy.\u201d This third topic refers to the Sprint Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

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2. Keeping Focus and avoiding distractions<\/strong>\u2013One of the major drawbacks of e-learning is the focus or having undivided attention. When we are in class or workshops, we do not open mobile or laptops to check emails or send messages and when we lose focus, we might daydream. However, when we are learning online, laptops or mobile that we use every day for office or for entertainment or for chatting with friends could themselves become distractions. Here are a few tips I followed to keep myself focused during classes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u00b7 Closeout the mails and collaboration channels keep\nmobile of our reach; Keep only course window open <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Set expectations at home that you are in training and not\nto be disturbed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Have video on <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Join a few minutes early and connect with the trainer\n\/facilitator. This also helps you to take on the next steps, such as\ncertification or becoming an expert in that area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 2 min mindful breathing before the class starts (ref\n-https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/mindful-leadership\/resources\/) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7Try out the exercises or case study and submit it \n\nI\nam sure most of you have been using the virtual learning platforms, either in\nyour organization or some preferred platforms to learn and grow in your\ncareers. Hope the above tips shared from my experience are useful. Please share\nyour best practices or tips or any recommendation from your learning journey on\nhow we can get the best out of the virtual learning model.\n\n<\/p>\n","post_title":"Tips to get the best of the virtual learning world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"tips-to-get-the-best-of-the-virtual-learning-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19014","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18707,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:58","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:58","post_content":"\n

Most of us would have read about the recent\nransomware hit on Colonial pipeline, one of the largest oil pipelines in the\nUS. They had to temporarily halt all the operations, it impacted some of the\ncompany\u2019s IT system and suffered a huge loss. It took almost a week to bring\nback the services and back to normal. During this unprecedented time, as we\nwere all working from home, Organization was worried about securing the\napplications, Infrastructure, etc. Cybersecurity has been slowly gaining focus\nand these kinds of attacks make serious attention.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the past 3 months, as an agile coach, I am involved in coaching a team that is developing a highly critical application that is also the backbone of the business deals. This application had to be super secure and if this application gets hit, it can have a huge impact on the organization in terms of finance, brand, and assets, data, etc. Hence, we had to explore how to integrate agile development practices and Cybersecurity practices. There have been some thoughts that agile, with its frequent releases, introduces vulnerability in the system and sometimes not recommended as a development approach for high critical application.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In the past, Cybersecurity teams usually get involved in the tail end and now with frequent releases, ways of working and processes need to be tailored. There were few practices that we got started which I will be sharing in this blog. Would love to hear from you; your stories and experiments in this area.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cybersecurity by definition is Computer\nsecurity, cybersecurity or information technology security (IT security) is the\nprotection of computer systems<\/a> and networks<\/a> from information disclosure, theft of or damage to\ntheir hardware<\/a>, software<\/a>, or electronic data<\/a>,\nas well as from the disruption<\/a> or misdirection<\/a> of the services they provide. In the past, the role\nof security was isolated to a specific team in the final stage of development.\nThat wasn\u2019t as problematic when development cycles lasted months or even years,\nbut those days are over. Effective agile development ensures rapid and frequent\ndevelopment cycles (sometimes weeks or days), but outdated security practices\ncan make the application more vulnerable to attacks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      There have been some doubts about Agile development methodologies and how it lends to Cybersecurity practices. But with self-organizing and cross-functional teams, agile enables different skill sets to work as a team to deliver good quality and secure software.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is how we got started with the process, and practices to integrate cybersecurity practices in agile development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.     Shift- Left:<\/strong>  Having\nexperts \/Cybersecurity personnel at the initial stage not at the end state; not\nto build systems of today. They were able to determine the risk tolerance of\nthe application and conduct risk\/benefit analysis. What amount of security\ncontrols are required for this application and threat modeling exercises? What\nkind of testing required during the sprints and have them integrated with the\ntesting and DevOps plan? It also underscores the need to help developers code\nwith security in mind, a process that involves security teams sharing\nvisibility, feedback, and insights on known threats. Based on the analysis and\nplan, all our developers were trained on the security protocols, processes and\ntools required. One of the important factors to keep in mind is the balance of\ncybersecurity activities with other activities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Hacker as persona:<\/strong> We introduced Hacker as a persona for the application as a next step. By building these personas<\/strong>, we worked out the best defense against certain types of attacks and predict when they might next occur. It helps us to understand the motivation and plan for countermeasures, prioritize defense. This persona was included as one of the users in the identified features of the application and which then was elaborated during the requirements and backlog grooming session. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Tools and Automation<\/strong>: There are quite a several tools available now in the cybersecurity domain. Once the cybersecurity process\/tests are identified, we find that most of our tasks were repetitive and manual. We started looking for ways to automate as Automating repeated tasks is key to DevSecOps since running manual security checks in the pipeline can be time-intensive. Some of these tasks can be automated, such as monitoring intrusion detection systems to search for threats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the major learning in this experimentation is that Shift left does not mean moving all the cybersecurity-related processes, practices, ways of working, and tools from the tail end to the initial stage of development. There had to be a balanced approach and what is required differs from application to application. But bringing this security mindset to all the team members helped a lot in bringing the balanced approach of security and frequent release cycles that was much needed for our application.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Agile and Cybersecurity - How to get started","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-and-cybersecurity-how-to-get-started","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18707","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18715,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:41","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:41","post_content":"\n

Harshita is a scrum master for a team. With the Covid situation across India, the team has been dull and in a very somber state. As a scrum master, she could understand and relate to the situation that the team has been going through. At an organization level, there has been a lot of Employee assistance programs. But she is confused about whether it is ok to have the team be like this or does she need to do something?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution:<\/strong> Here are few things that I would recommend she start with <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Status \/ Smiley images in the communication and collaboration tool.  We have asked team members to add this and this helps others in the team to understand the emotional state of each and every one.  It was quite beneficial and set the stage for everyone in the meetings and interaction.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Standup meetings or team meetings \u2013 First 5 min or 10 min is used for check-in and free-flow conversation. This helped team members to know what\u2019s happening, vent out some of their feelings and help each other as need. If it\u2019s a large team, use some of the survey tools to do check-in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Informal group chat\/gathering or 1:1 with each other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am sure most coaches, leaders are thinking about this and doing something to help their teams in these trying times. Let me know what are those things that you are doing.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #248 \u2013 Sensitivity during these(covid) times","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-248-sensitivity-during-thesecovid-times","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18715","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17712,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:47:04","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:17:04","post_content":"\n

Pravin has been coaching the development team for a few months on the implementation of Scrum. There were a lot of improvement ideas and opportunities that he and his team gathered for the Product team, operation teams during the retrospective. When he tried speaking to them to understand their processes and see if he can do something about it, he was told that the scrum master scope is for the IT development team and the operation teams are not part of it.  He was very excited when he read the new scrum guide and understood that the scrum master role is expanded. Will this help him to remove the obstacle of end to end coaching of the team? If not, what else can he do? Are there any suggestions or solutions that you would recommend?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suggested Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum master role definition and One product team from the scrum guide is a good starting point. Pravin can use the guide to drive the essence of one team delivering product starting from definition to support, roll out, and also point that it is from the industry best practice. In addition to that, it would be good for him to quantify the problem that he had gathered with the data; for ex the resolution time of the incident (end to end), new requirements from the operation team. Along with that, he can do an End to End process mapping w.r.t product delivery and facilitate a discussion with the relevant stakeholders. Most of the time, the problem would be due to organization design ie. Silos between the operation team, product team, and development team, and this might take a longer discussion to solve. <\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #224 - Scrum Master role in the Operations\/Support world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-224-scrum-master-role-in-the-operations-support-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17712","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17698,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:46:28","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:16:28","post_content":"\n

Last week, Scrum celebrated 25 years, and to add to that celebration, a new scrum guide was released. Over the years, Scrum has been implemented across multiple industries and domains and the feedback of its success and failures flowed back into this new Scrum guide. There was a lot of excitement among the agile community for the launch and the agile community was elated with the changes in the Scrum guide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us look at the summary of changes ( from scrum.org articles) in the new scrum guide and then talk about the impact for us (agile community). For more details, you can refer to scrum.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even Less\nPrescriptive<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years,\nthe Scrum Guide started getting a bit more prescriptive. The 2020 version aims\nto bring Scrum back to being a minimally sufficient framework. This was\nachieved by removing the Daily Scrum questions, softening language around PBI\nattributes and retro items in Sprint Backlog, shortening the Sprint\ncancellation section, and much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One Team,\nFocused on One Product<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal was to\neliminate the concept of a separate team within a team that has led to \u201cproxy\u201d\nor \u201cus and them\u201d behavior between the PO and Dev Team. There is now just one\nScrum Team focused on the same objective, with three different sets of accountabilities:\nPO, SM, and Developers (anybody who is working on the sprint increment).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction\nof Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum\nGuide introduces the concept of a Product Goal to provide the focus for the\nScrum Team toward a larger valuable objective. Each Sprint should bring the\nproduct closer to the overall Product Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Home for\nSprint Goal, Definition of Done, and Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides described Sprint Goal and Definition of Done without really giving them\nan identity. They were not quite artifacts but were somewhat attached to\nartifacts. With the addition of Product Goal, the 2020 version provides more\nclarity around this. Each of the three artifacts now contains \u2018commitments\u2019 to\nthem. For the Product Backlog, it is the Product Goal, the Sprint Backlog has\nthe Sprint Goal, and the Increment has the Definition of Done (now without the\nquotes). They exist to bring transparency and focus toward the progress of each\nartifact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-Managing\nover Self-Organizing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides referred to Development Teams (team members who are working on the\nsprint increment) as self-organizing, choosing who and how to do work. With\nmore of a focus on the Scrum Team, the 2020 version emphasizes a self-managing\nScrum Team, that chooses who, how, and what to work on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nSprint Planning Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the\nSprint Planning topics of \u201cWhat\u201d and \u201cHow,\u201d the 2020 Scrum Guide places\nemphasis on a third topic, \u201cWhy.\u201d This third topic refers to the Sprint Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

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For example, if I belong to the visual and kinesthetic\nlearner type, then I would prefer classes with more diagrams and more\nexperiments rather than trainers speaking about topics. However, if I am a\nverbal learner, I would love to listen to lectures from experts. Understanding\nour unique learning styles would help us choose courses or methods of learning.\nEither you can look back at the training programs where you enjoyed or do the\nsurvey available on the internet to understand your style. For me, I love working\nin groups hence I choose courses(offline) where there are options to review\nother\u2019s work and connect with the team, which helps in better learning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Keeping Focus and avoiding distractions<\/strong>\u2013One of the major drawbacks of e-learning is the focus or having undivided attention. When we are in class or workshops, we do not open mobile or laptops to check emails or send messages and when we lose focus, we might daydream. However, when we are learning online, laptops or mobile that we use every day for office or for entertainment or for chatting with friends could themselves become distractions. Here are a few tips I followed to keep myself focused during classes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u00b7 Closeout the mails and collaboration channels keep\nmobile of our reach; Keep only course window open <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Set expectations at home that you are in training and not\nto be disturbed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Have video on <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Join a few minutes early and connect with the trainer\n\/facilitator. This also helps you to take on the next steps, such as\ncertification or becoming an expert in that area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 2 min mindful breathing before the class starts (ref\n-https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/mindful-leadership\/resources\/) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7Try out the exercises or case study and submit it \n\nI\nam sure most of you have been using the virtual learning platforms, either in\nyour organization or some preferred platforms to learn and grow in your\ncareers. Hope the above tips shared from my experience are useful. Please share\nyour best practices or tips or any recommendation from your learning journey on\nhow we can get the best out of the virtual learning model.\n\n<\/p>\n","post_title":"Tips to get the best of the virtual learning world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"tips-to-get-the-best-of-the-virtual-learning-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19014","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18707,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:58","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:58","post_content":"\n

Most of us would have read about the recent\nransomware hit on Colonial pipeline, one of the largest oil pipelines in the\nUS. They had to temporarily halt all the operations, it impacted some of the\ncompany\u2019s IT system and suffered a huge loss. It took almost a week to bring\nback the services and back to normal. During this unprecedented time, as we\nwere all working from home, Organization was worried about securing the\napplications, Infrastructure, etc. Cybersecurity has been slowly gaining focus\nand these kinds of attacks make serious attention.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the past 3 months, as an agile coach, I am involved in coaching a team that is developing a highly critical application that is also the backbone of the business deals. This application had to be super secure and if this application gets hit, it can have a huge impact on the organization in terms of finance, brand, and assets, data, etc. Hence, we had to explore how to integrate agile development practices and Cybersecurity practices. There have been some thoughts that agile, with its frequent releases, introduces vulnerability in the system and sometimes not recommended as a development approach for high critical application.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In the past, Cybersecurity teams usually get involved in the tail end and now with frequent releases, ways of working and processes need to be tailored. There were few practices that we got started which I will be sharing in this blog. Would love to hear from you; your stories and experiments in this area.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cybersecurity by definition is Computer\nsecurity, cybersecurity or information technology security (IT security) is the\nprotection of computer systems<\/a> and networks<\/a> from information disclosure, theft of or damage to\ntheir hardware<\/a>, software<\/a>, or electronic data<\/a>,\nas well as from the disruption<\/a> or misdirection<\/a> of the services they provide. In the past, the role\nof security was isolated to a specific team in the final stage of development.\nThat wasn\u2019t as problematic when development cycles lasted months or even years,\nbut those days are over. Effective agile development ensures rapid and frequent\ndevelopment cycles (sometimes weeks or days), but outdated security practices\ncan make the application more vulnerable to attacks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      There have been some doubts about Agile development methodologies and how it lends to Cybersecurity practices. But with self-organizing and cross-functional teams, agile enables different skill sets to work as a team to deliver good quality and secure software.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is how we got started with the process, and practices to integrate cybersecurity practices in agile development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.     Shift- Left:<\/strong>  Having\nexperts \/Cybersecurity personnel at the initial stage not at the end state; not\nto build systems of today. They were able to determine the risk tolerance of\nthe application and conduct risk\/benefit analysis. What amount of security\ncontrols are required for this application and threat modeling exercises? What\nkind of testing required during the sprints and have them integrated with the\ntesting and DevOps plan? It also underscores the need to help developers code\nwith security in mind, a process that involves security teams sharing\nvisibility, feedback, and insights on known threats. Based on the analysis and\nplan, all our developers were trained on the security protocols, processes and\ntools required. One of the important factors to keep in mind is the balance of\ncybersecurity activities with other activities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Hacker as persona:<\/strong> We introduced Hacker as a persona for the application as a next step. By building these personas<\/strong>, we worked out the best defense against certain types of attacks and predict when they might next occur. It helps us to understand the motivation and plan for countermeasures, prioritize defense. This persona was included as one of the users in the identified features of the application and which then was elaborated during the requirements and backlog grooming session. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Tools and Automation<\/strong>: There are quite a several tools available now in the cybersecurity domain. Once the cybersecurity process\/tests are identified, we find that most of our tasks were repetitive and manual. We started looking for ways to automate as Automating repeated tasks is key to DevSecOps since running manual security checks in the pipeline can be time-intensive. Some of these tasks can be automated, such as monitoring intrusion detection systems to search for threats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the major learning in this experimentation is that Shift left does not mean moving all the cybersecurity-related processes, practices, ways of working, and tools from the tail end to the initial stage of development. There had to be a balanced approach and what is required differs from application to application. But bringing this security mindset to all the team members helped a lot in bringing the balanced approach of security and frequent release cycles that was much needed for our application.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Agile and Cybersecurity - How to get started","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-and-cybersecurity-how-to-get-started","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18707","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18715,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:41","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:41","post_content":"\n

Harshita is a scrum master for a team. With the Covid situation across India, the team has been dull and in a very somber state. As a scrum master, she could understand and relate to the situation that the team has been going through. At an organization level, there has been a lot of Employee assistance programs. But she is confused about whether it is ok to have the team be like this or does she need to do something?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution:<\/strong> Here are few things that I would recommend she start with <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Status \/ Smiley images in the communication and collaboration tool.  We have asked team members to add this and this helps others in the team to understand the emotional state of each and every one.  It was quite beneficial and set the stage for everyone in the meetings and interaction.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Standup meetings or team meetings \u2013 First 5 min or 10 min is used for check-in and free-flow conversation. This helped team members to know what\u2019s happening, vent out some of their feelings and help each other as need. If it\u2019s a large team, use some of the survey tools to do check-in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Informal group chat\/gathering or 1:1 with each other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am sure most coaches, leaders are thinking about this and doing something to help their teams in these trying times. Let me know what are those things that you are doing.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #248 \u2013 Sensitivity during these(covid) times","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-248-sensitivity-during-thesecovid-times","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18715","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17712,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:47:04","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:17:04","post_content":"\n

Pravin has been coaching the development team for a few months on the implementation of Scrum. There were a lot of improvement ideas and opportunities that he and his team gathered for the Product team, operation teams during the retrospective. When he tried speaking to them to understand their processes and see if he can do something about it, he was told that the scrum master scope is for the IT development team and the operation teams are not part of it.  He was very excited when he read the new scrum guide and understood that the scrum master role is expanded. Will this help him to remove the obstacle of end to end coaching of the team? If not, what else can he do? Are there any suggestions or solutions that you would recommend?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suggested Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum master role definition and One product team from the scrum guide is a good starting point. Pravin can use the guide to drive the essence of one team delivering product starting from definition to support, roll out, and also point that it is from the industry best practice. In addition to that, it would be good for him to quantify the problem that he had gathered with the data; for ex the resolution time of the incident (end to end), new requirements from the operation team. Along with that, he can do an End to End process mapping w.r.t product delivery and facilitate a discussion with the relevant stakeholders. Most of the time, the problem would be due to organization design ie. Silos between the operation team, product team, and development team, and this might take a longer discussion to solve. <\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #224 - Scrum Master role in the Operations\/Support world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-224-scrum-master-role-in-the-operations-support-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17712","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17698,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:46:28","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:16:28","post_content":"\n

Last week, Scrum celebrated 25 years, and to add to that celebration, a new scrum guide was released. Over the years, Scrum has been implemented across multiple industries and domains and the feedback of its success and failures flowed back into this new Scrum guide. There was a lot of excitement among the agile community for the launch and the agile community was elated with the changes in the Scrum guide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us look at the summary of changes ( from scrum.org articles) in the new scrum guide and then talk about the impact for us (agile community). For more details, you can refer to scrum.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even Less\nPrescriptive<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years,\nthe Scrum Guide started getting a bit more prescriptive. The 2020 version aims\nto bring Scrum back to being a minimally sufficient framework. This was\nachieved by removing the Daily Scrum questions, softening language around PBI\nattributes and retro items in Sprint Backlog, shortening the Sprint\ncancellation section, and much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One Team,\nFocused on One Product<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal was to\neliminate the concept of a separate team within a team that has led to \u201cproxy\u201d\nor \u201cus and them\u201d behavior between the PO and Dev Team. There is now just one\nScrum Team focused on the same objective, with three different sets of accountabilities:\nPO, SM, and Developers (anybody who is working on the sprint increment).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction\nof Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum\nGuide introduces the concept of a Product Goal to provide the focus for the\nScrum Team toward a larger valuable objective. Each Sprint should bring the\nproduct closer to the overall Product Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Home for\nSprint Goal, Definition of Done, and Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides described Sprint Goal and Definition of Done without really giving them\nan identity. They were not quite artifacts but were somewhat attached to\nartifacts. With the addition of Product Goal, the 2020 version provides more\nclarity around this. Each of the three artifacts now contains \u2018commitments\u2019 to\nthem. For the Product Backlog, it is the Product Goal, the Sprint Backlog has\nthe Sprint Goal, and the Increment has the Definition of Done (now without the\nquotes). They exist to bring transparency and focus toward the progress of each\nartifact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-Managing\nover Self-Organizing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides referred to Development Teams (team members who are working on the\nsprint increment) as self-organizing, choosing who and how to do work. With\nmore of a focus on the Scrum Team, the 2020 version emphasizes a self-managing\nScrum Team, that chooses who, how, and what to work on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nSprint Planning Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the\nSprint Planning topics of \u201cWhat\u201d and \u201cHow,\u201d the 2020 Scrum Guide places\nemphasis on a third topic, \u201cWhy.\u201d This third topic refers to the Sprint Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

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\n

\u00b7 Solitary (intrapersonal) Learner - These students prefer\nto use self-study and work alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, if I belong to the visual and kinesthetic\nlearner type, then I would prefer classes with more diagrams and more\nexperiments rather than trainers speaking about topics. However, if I am a\nverbal learner, I would love to listen to lectures from experts. Understanding\nour unique learning styles would help us choose courses or methods of learning.\nEither you can look back at the training programs where you enjoyed or do the\nsurvey available on the internet to understand your style. For me, I love working\nin groups hence I choose courses(offline) where there are options to review\nother\u2019s work and connect with the team, which helps in better learning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Keeping Focus and avoiding distractions<\/strong>\u2013One of the major drawbacks of e-learning is the focus or having undivided attention. When we are in class or workshops, we do not open mobile or laptops to check emails or send messages and when we lose focus, we might daydream. However, when we are learning online, laptops or mobile that we use every day for office or for entertainment or for chatting with friends could themselves become distractions. Here are a few tips I followed to keep myself focused during classes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u00b7 Closeout the mails and collaboration channels keep\nmobile of our reach; Keep only course window open <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Set expectations at home that you are in training and not\nto be disturbed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Have video on <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Join a few minutes early and connect with the trainer\n\/facilitator. This also helps you to take on the next steps, such as\ncertification or becoming an expert in that area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 2 min mindful breathing before the class starts (ref\n-https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/mindful-leadership\/resources\/) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7Try out the exercises or case study and submit it \n\nI\nam sure most of you have been using the virtual learning platforms, either in\nyour organization or some preferred platforms to learn and grow in your\ncareers. Hope the above tips shared from my experience are useful. Please share\nyour best practices or tips or any recommendation from your learning journey on\nhow we can get the best out of the virtual learning model.\n\n<\/p>\n","post_title":"Tips to get the best of the virtual learning world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"tips-to-get-the-best-of-the-virtual-learning-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19014","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18707,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:58","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:58","post_content":"\n

Most of us would have read about the recent\nransomware hit on Colonial pipeline, one of the largest oil pipelines in the\nUS. They had to temporarily halt all the operations, it impacted some of the\ncompany\u2019s IT system and suffered a huge loss. It took almost a week to bring\nback the services and back to normal. During this unprecedented time, as we\nwere all working from home, Organization was worried about securing the\napplications, Infrastructure, etc. Cybersecurity has been slowly gaining focus\nand these kinds of attacks make serious attention.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the past 3 months, as an agile coach, I am involved in coaching a team that is developing a highly critical application that is also the backbone of the business deals. This application had to be super secure and if this application gets hit, it can have a huge impact on the organization in terms of finance, brand, and assets, data, etc. Hence, we had to explore how to integrate agile development practices and Cybersecurity practices. There have been some thoughts that agile, with its frequent releases, introduces vulnerability in the system and sometimes not recommended as a development approach for high critical application.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In the past, Cybersecurity teams usually get involved in the tail end and now with frequent releases, ways of working and processes need to be tailored. There were few practices that we got started which I will be sharing in this blog. Would love to hear from you; your stories and experiments in this area.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cybersecurity by definition is Computer\nsecurity, cybersecurity or information technology security (IT security) is the\nprotection of computer systems<\/a> and networks<\/a> from information disclosure, theft of or damage to\ntheir hardware<\/a>, software<\/a>, or electronic data<\/a>,\nas well as from the disruption<\/a> or misdirection<\/a> of the services they provide. In the past, the role\nof security was isolated to a specific team in the final stage of development.\nThat wasn\u2019t as problematic when development cycles lasted months or even years,\nbut those days are over. Effective agile development ensures rapid and frequent\ndevelopment cycles (sometimes weeks or days), but outdated security practices\ncan make the application more vulnerable to attacks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      There have been some doubts about Agile development methodologies and how it lends to Cybersecurity practices. But with self-organizing and cross-functional teams, agile enables different skill sets to work as a team to deliver good quality and secure software.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is how we got started with the process, and practices to integrate cybersecurity practices in agile development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.     Shift- Left:<\/strong>  Having\nexperts \/Cybersecurity personnel at the initial stage not at the end state; not\nto build systems of today. They were able to determine the risk tolerance of\nthe application and conduct risk\/benefit analysis. What amount of security\ncontrols are required for this application and threat modeling exercises? What\nkind of testing required during the sprints and have them integrated with the\ntesting and DevOps plan? It also underscores the need to help developers code\nwith security in mind, a process that involves security teams sharing\nvisibility, feedback, and insights on known threats. Based on the analysis and\nplan, all our developers were trained on the security protocols, processes and\ntools required. One of the important factors to keep in mind is the balance of\ncybersecurity activities with other activities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Hacker as persona:<\/strong> We introduced Hacker as a persona for the application as a next step. By building these personas<\/strong>, we worked out the best defense against certain types of attacks and predict when they might next occur. It helps us to understand the motivation and plan for countermeasures, prioritize defense. This persona was included as one of the users in the identified features of the application and which then was elaborated during the requirements and backlog grooming session. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Tools and Automation<\/strong>: There are quite a several tools available now in the cybersecurity domain. Once the cybersecurity process\/tests are identified, we find that most of our tasks were repetitive and manual. We started looking for ways to automate as Automating repeated tasks is key to DevSecOps since running manual security checks in the pipeline can be time-intensive. Some of these tasks can be automated, such as monitoring intrusion detection systems to search for threats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the major learning in this experimentation is that Shift left does not mean moving all the cybersecurity-related processes, practices, ways of working, and tools from the tail end to the initial stage of development. There had to be a balanced approach and what is required differs from application to application. But bringing this security mindset to all the team members helped a lot in bringing the balanced approach of security and frequent release cycles that was much needed for our application.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Agile and Cybersecurity - How to get started","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-and-cybersecurity-how-to-get-started","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18707","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18715,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:41","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:41","post_content":"\n

Harshita is a scrum master for a team. With the Covid situation across India, the team has been dull and in a very somber state. As a scrum master, she could understand and relate to the situation that the team has been going through. At an organization level, there has been a lot of Employee assistance programs. But she is confused about whether it is ok to have the team be like this or does she need to do something?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution:<\/strong> Here are few things that I would recommend she start with <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Status \/ Smiley images in the communication and collaboration tool.  We have asked team members to add this and this helps others in the team to understand the emotional state of each and every one.  It was quite beneficial and set the stage for everyone in the meetings and interaction.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Standup meetings or team meetings \u2013 First 5 min or 10 min is used for check-in and free-flow conversation. This helped team members to know what\u2019s happening, vent out some of their feelings and help each other as need. If it\u2019s a large team, use some of the survey tools to do check-in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Informal group chat\/gathering or 1:1 with each other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am sure most coaches, leaders are thinking about this and doing something to help their teams in these trying times. Let me know what are those things that you are doing.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #248 \u2013 Sensitivity during these(covid) times","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-248-sensitivity-during-thesecovid-times","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18715","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17712,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:47:04","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:17:04","post_content":"\n

Pravin has been coaching the development team for a few months on the implementation of Scrum. There were a lot of improvement ideas and opportunities that he and his team gathered for the Product team, operation teams during the retrospective. When he tried speaking to them to understand their processes and see if he can do something about it, he was told that the scrum master scope is for the IT development team and the operation teams are not part of it.  He was very excited when he read the new scrum guide and understood that the scrum master role is expanded. Will this help him to remove the obstacle of end to end coaching of the team? If not, what else can he do? Are there any suggestions or solutions that you would recommend?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suggested Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum master role definition and One product team from the scrum guide is a good starting point. Pravin can use the guide to drive the essence of one team delivering product starting from definition to support, roll out, and also point that it is from the industry best practice. In addition to that, it would be good for him to quantify the problem that he had gathered with the data; for ex the resolution time of the incident (end to end), new requirements from the operation team. Along with that, he can do an End to End process mapping w.r.t product delivery and facilitate a discussion with the relevant stakeholders. Most of the time, the problem would be due to organization design ie. Silos between the operation team, product team, and development team, and this might take a longer discussion to solve. <\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #224 - Scrum Master role in the Operations\/Support world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-224-scrum-master-role-in-the-operations-support-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17712","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17698,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:46:28","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:16:28","post_content":"\n

Last week, Scrum celebrated 25 years, and to add to that celebration, a new scrum guide was released. Over the years, Scrum has been implemented across multiple industries and domains and the feedback of its success and failures flowed back into this new Scrum guide. There was a lot of excitement among the agile community for the launch and the agile community was elated with the changes in the Scrum guide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us look at the summary of changes ( from scrum.org articles) in the new scrum guide and then talk about the impact for us (agile community). For more details, you can refer to scrum.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even Less\nPrescriptive<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years,\nthe Scrum Guide started getting a bit more prescriptive. The 2020 version aims\nto bring Scrum back to being a minimally sufficient framework. This was\nachieved by removing the Daily Scrum questions, softening language around PBI\nattributes and retro items in Sprint Backlog, shortening the Sprint\ncancellation section, and much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One Team,\nFocused on One Product<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal was to\neliminate the concept of a separate team within a team that has led to \u201cproxy\u201d\nor \u201cus and them\u201d behavior between the PO and Dev Team. There is now just one\nScrum Team focused on the same objective, with three different sets of accountabilities:\nPO, SM, and Developers (anybody who is working on the sprint increment).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction\nof Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum\nGuide introduces the concept of a Product Goal to provide the focus for the\nScrum Team toward a larger valuable objective. Each Sprint should bring the\nproduct closer to the overall Product Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Home for\nSprint Goal, Definition of Done, and Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides described Sprint Goal and Definition of Done without really giving them\nan identity. They were not quite artifacts but were somewhat attached to\nartifacts. With the addition of Product Goal, the 2020 version provides more\nclarity around this. Each of the three artifacts now contains \u2018commitments\u2019 to\nthem. For the Product Backlog, it is the Product Goal, the Sprint Backlog has\nthe Sprint Goal, and the Increment has the Definition of Done (now without the\nquotes). They exist to bring transparency and focus toward the progress of each\nartifact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-Managing\nover Self-Organizing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides referred to Development Teams (team members who are working on the\nsprint increment) as self-organizing, choosing who and how to do work. With\nmore of a focus on the Scrum Team, the 2020 version emphasizes a self-managing\nScrum Team, that chooses who, how, and what to work on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nSprint Planning Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the\nSprint Planning topics of \u201cWhat\u201d and \u201cHow,\u201d the 2020 Scrum Guide places\nemphasis on a third topic, \u201cWhy.\u201d This third topic refers to the Sprint Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

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\n

\u00b7 Social learners favored Social (interpersonal)\nLearner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Solitary (intrapersonal) Learner - These students prefer\nto use self-study and work alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, if I belong to the visual and kinesthetic\nlearner type, then I would prefer classes with more diagrams and more\nexperiments rather than trainers speaking about topics. However, if I am a\nverbal learner, I would love to listen to lectures from experts. Understanding\nour unique learning styles would help us choose courses or methods of learning.\nEither you can look back at the training programs where you enjoyed or do the\nsurvey available on the internet to understand your style. For me, I love working\nin groups hence I choose courses(offline) where there are options to review\nother\u2019s work and connect with the team, which helps in better learning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Keeping Focus and avoiding distractions<\/strong>\u2013One of the major drawbacks of e-learning is the focus or having undivided attention. When we are in class or workshops, we do not open mobile or laptops to check emails or send messages and when we lose focus, we might daydream. However, when we are learning online, laptops or mobile that we use every day for office or for entertainment or for chatting with friends could themselves become distractions. Here are a few tips I followed to keep myself focused during classes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u00b7 Closeout the mails and collaboration channels keep\nmobile of our reach; Keep only course window open <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Set expectations at home that you are in training and not\nto be disturbed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Have video on <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Join a few minutes early and connect with the trainer\n\/facilitator. This also helps you to take on the next steps, such as\ncertification or becoming an expert in that area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 2 min mindful breathing before the class starts (ref\n-https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/mindful-leadership\/resources\/) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7Try out the exercises or case study and submit it \n\nI\nam sure most of you have been using the virtual learning platforms, either in\nyour organization or some preferred platforms to learn and grow in your\ncareers. Hope the above tips shared from my experience are useful. Please share\nyour best practices or tips or any recommendation from your learning journey on\nhow we can get the best out of the virtual learning model.\n\n<\/p>\n","post_title":"Tips to get the best of the virtual learning world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"tips-to-get-the-best-of-the-virtual-learning-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19014","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18707,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:58","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:58","post_content":"\n

Most of us would have read about the recent\nransomware hit on Colonial pipeline, one of the largest oil pipelines in the\nUS. They had to temporarily halt all the operations, it impacted some of the\ncompany\u2019s IT system and suffered a huge loss. It took almost a week to bring\nback the services and back to normal. During this unprecedented time, as we\nwere all working from home, Organization was worried about securing the\napplications, Infrastructure, etc. Cybersecurity has been slowly gaining focus\nand these kinds of attacks make serious attention.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the past 3 months, as an agile coach, I am involved in coaching a team that is developing a highly critical application that is also the backbone of the business deals. This application had to be super secure and if this application gets hit, it can have a huge impact on the organization in terms of finance, brand, and assets, data, etc. Hence, we had to explore how to integrate agile development practices and Cybersecurity practices. There have been some thoughts that agile, with its frequent releases, introduces vulnerability in the system and sometimes not recommended as a development approach for high critical application.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In the past, Cybersecurity teams usually get involved in the tail end and now with frequent releases, ways of working and processes need to be tailored. There were few practices that we got started which I will be sharing in this blog. Would love to hear from you; your stories and experiments in this area.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cybersecurity by definition is Computer\nsecurity, cybersecurity or information technology security (IT security) is the\nprotection of computer systems<\/a> and networks<\/a> from information disclosure, theft of or damage to\ntheir hardware<\/a>, software<\/a>, or electronic data<\/a>,\nas well as from the disruption<\/a> or misdirection<\/a> of the services they provide. In the past, the role\nof security was isolated to a specific team in the final stage of development.\nThat wasn\u2019t as problematic when development cycles lasted months or even years,\nbut those days are over. Effective agile development ensures rapid and frequent\ndevelopment cycles (sometimes weeks or days), but outdated security practices\ncan make the application more vulnerable to attacks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      There have been some doubts about Agile development methodologies and how it lends to Cybersecurity practices. But with self-organizing and cross-functional teams, agile enables different skill sets to work as a team to deliver good quality and secure software.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is how we got started with the process, and practices to integrate cybersecurity practices in agile development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.     Shift- Left:<\/strong>  Having\nexperts \/Cybersecurity personnel at the initial stage not at the end state; not\nto build systems of today. They were able to determine the risk tolerance of\nthe application and conduct risk\/benefit analysis. What amount of security\ncontrols are required for this application and threat modeling exercises? What\nkind of testing required during the sprints and have them integrated with the\ntesting and DevOps plan? It also underscores the need to help developers code\nwith security in mind, a process that involves security teams sharing\nvisibility, feedback, and insights on known threats. Based on the analysis and\nplan, all our developers were trained on the security protocols, processes and\ntools required. One of the important factors to keep in mind is the balance of\ncybersecurity activities with other activities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Hacker as persona:<\/strong> We introduced Hacker as a persona for the application as a next step. By building these personas<\/strong>, we worked out the best defense against certain types of attacks and predict when they might next occur. It helps us to understand the motivation and plan for countermeasures, prioritize defense. This persona was included as one of the users in the identified features of the application and which then was elaborated during the requirements and backlog grooming session. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Tools and Automation<\/strong>: There are quite a several tools available now in the cybersecurity domain. Once the cybersecurity process\/tests are identified, we find that most of our tasks were repetitive and manual. We started looking for ways to automate as Automating repeated tasks is key to DevSecOps since running manual security checks in the pipeline can be time-intensive. Some of these tasks can be automated, such as monitoring intrusion detection systems to search for threats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the major learning in this experimentation is that Shift left does not mean moving all the cybersecurity-related processes, practices, ways of working, and tools from the tail end to the initial stage of development. There had to be a balanced approach and what is required differs from application to application. But bringing this security mindset to all the team members helped a lot in bringing the balanced approach of security and frequent release cycles that was much needed for our application.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Agile and Cybersecurity - How to get started","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-and-cybersecurity-how-to-get-started","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18707","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18715,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:41","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:41","post_content":"\n

Harshita is a scrum master for a team. With the Covid situation across India, the team has been dull and in a very somber state. As a scrum master, she could understand and relate to the situation that the team has been going through. At an organization level, there has been a lot of Employee assistance programs. But she is confused about whether it is ok to have the team be like this or does she need to do something?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution:<\/strong> Here are few things that I would recommend she start with <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Status \/ Smiley images in the communication and collaboration tool.  We have asked team members to add this and this helps others in the team to understand the emotional state of each and every one.  It was quite beneficial and set the stage for everyone in the meetings and interaction.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Standup meetings or team meetings \u2013 First 5 min or 10 min is used for check-in and free-flow conversation. This helped team members to know what\u2019s happening, vent out some of their feelings and help each other as need. If it\u2019s a large team, use some of the survey tools to do check-in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Informal group chat\/gathering or 1:1 with each other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am sure most coaches, leaders are thinking about this and doing something to help their teams in these trying times. Let me know what are those things that you are doing.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #248 \u2013 Sensitivity during these(covid) times","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-248-sensitivity-during-thesecovid-times","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18715","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17712,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:47:04","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:17:04","post_content":"\n

Pravin has been coaching the development team for a few months on the implementation of Scrum. There were a lot of improvement ideas and opportunities that he and his team gathered for the Product team, operation teams during the retrospective. When he tried speaking to them to understand their processes and see if he can do something about it, he was told that the scrum master scope is for the IT development team and the operation teams are not part of it.  He was very excited when he read the new scrum guide and understood that the scrum master role is expanded. Will this help him to remove the obstacle of end to end coaching of the team? If not, what else can he do? Are there any suggestions or solutions that you would recommend?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suggested Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum master role definition and One product team from the scrum guide is a good starting point. Pravin can use the guide to drive the essence of one team delivering product starting from definition to support, roll out, and also point that it is from the industry best practice. In addition to that, it would be good for him to quantify the problem that he had gathered with the data; for ex the resolution time of the incident (end to end), new requirements from the operation team. Along with that, he can do an End to End process mapping w.r.t product delivery and facilitate a discussion with the relevant stakeholders. Most of the time, the problem would be due to organization design ie. Silos between the operation team, product team, and development team, and this might take a longer discussion to solve. <\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #224 - Scrum Master role in the Operations\/Support world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-224-scrum-master-role-in-the-operations-support-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17712","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17698,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:46:28","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:16:28","post_content":"\n

Last week, Scrum celebrated 25 years, and to add to that celebration, a new scrum guide was released. Over the years, Scrum has been implemented across multiple industries and domains and the feedback of its success and failures flowed back into this new Scrum guide. There was a lot of excitement among the agile community for the launch and the agile community was elated with the changes in the Scrum guide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us look at the summary of changes ( from scrum.org articles) in the new scrum guide and then talk about the impact for us (agile community). For more details, you can refer to scrum.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even Less\nPrescriptive<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years,\nthe Scrum Guide started getting a bit more prescriptive. The 2020 version aims\nto bring Scrum back to being a minimally sufficient framework. This was\nachieved by removing the Daily Scrum questions, softening language around PBI\nattributes and retro items in Sprint Backlog, shortening the Sprint\ncancellation section, and much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One Team,\nFocused on One Product<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal was to\neliminate the concept of a separate team within a team that has led to \u201cproxy\u201d\nor \u201cus and them\u201d behavior between the PO and Dev Team. There is now just one\nScrum Team focused on the same objective, with three different sets of accountabilities:\nPO, SM, and Developers (anybody who is working on the sprint increment).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction\nof Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum\nGuide introduces the concept of a Product Goal to provide the focus for the\nScrum Team toward a larger valuable objective. Each Sprint should bring the\nproduct closer to the overall Product Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Home for\nSprint Goal, Definition of Done, and Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides described Sprint Goal and Definition of Done without really giving them\nan identity. They were not quite artifacts but were somewhat attached to\nartifacts. With the addition of Product Goal, the 2020 version provides more\nclarity around this. Each of the three artifacts now contains \u2018commitments\u2019 to\nthem. For the Product Backlog, it is the Product Goal, the Sprint Backlog has\nthe Sprint Goal, and the Increment has the Definition of Done (now without the\nquotes). They exist to bring transparency and focus toward the progress of each\nartifact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-Managing\nover Self-Organizing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides referred to Development Teams (team members who are working on the\nsprint increment) as self-organizing, choosing who and how to do work. With\nmore of a focus on the Scrum Team, the 2020 version emphasizes a self-managing\nScrum Team, that chooses who, how, and what to work on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nSprint Planning Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the\nSprint Planning topics of \u201cWhat\u201d and \u201cHow,\u201d the 2020 Scrum Guide places\nemphasis on a third topic, \u201cWhy.\u201d This third topic refers to the Sprint Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

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\n

\u00b7 Logical (mathematical) Learner - If there is logic,\nreasoning, and numbers involved, these learners are sure to excel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Social learners favored Social (interpersonal)\nLearner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Solitary (intrapersonal) Learner - These students prefer\nto use self-study and work alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, if I belong to the visual and kinesthetic\nlearner type, then I would prefer classes with more diagrams and more\nexperiments rather than trainers speaking about topics. However, if I am a\nverbal learner, I would love to listen to lectures from experts. Understanding\nour unique learning styles would help us choose courses or methods of learning.\nEither you can look back at the training programs where you enjoyed or do the\nsurvey available on the internet to understand your style. For me, I love working\nin groups hence I choose courses(offline) where there are options to review\nother\u2019s work and connect with the team, which helps in better learning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Keeping Focus and avoiding distractions<\/strong>\u2013One of the major drawbacks of e-learning is the focus or having undivided attention. When we are in class or workshops, we do not open mobile or laptops to check emails or send messages and when we lose focus, we might daydream. However, when we are learning online, laptops or mobile that we use every day for office or for entertainment or for chatting with friends could themselves become distractions. Here are a few tips I followed to keep myself focused during classes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u00b7 Closeout the mails and collaboration channels keep\nmobile of our reach; Keep only course window open <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Set expectations at home that you are in training and not\nto be disturbed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Have video on <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Join a few minutes early and connect with the trainer\n\/facilitator. This also helps you to take on the next steps, such as\ncertification or becoming an expert in that area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 2 min mindful breathing before the class starts (ref\n-https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/mindful-leadership\/resources\/) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7Try out the exercises or case study and submit it \n\nI\nam sure most of you have been using the virtual learning platforms, either in\nyour organization or some preferred platforms to learn and grow in your\ncareers. Hope the above tips shared from my experience are useful. Please share\nyour best practices or tips or any recommendation from your learning journey on\nhow we can get the best out of the virtual learning model.\n\n<\/p>\n","post_title":"Tips to get the best of the virtual learning world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"tips-to-get-the-best-of-the-virtual-learning-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19014","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18707,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:58","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:58","post_content":"\n

Most of us would have read about the recent\nransomware hit on Colonial pipeline, one of the largest oil pipelines in the\nUS. They had to temporarily halt all the operations, it impacted some of the\ncompany\u2019s IT system and suffered a huge loss. It took almost a week to bring\nback the services and back to normal. During this unprecedented time, as we\nwere all working from home, Organization was worried about securing the\napplications, Infrastructure, etc. Cybersecurity has been slowly gaining focus\nand these kinds of attacks make serious attention.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the past 3 months, as an agile coach, I am involved in coaching a team that is developing a highly critical application that is also the backbone of the business deals. This application had to be super secure and if this application gets hit, it can have a huge impact on the organization in terms of finance, brand, and assets, data, etc. Hence, we had to explore how to integrate agile development practices and Cybersecurity practices. There have been some thoughts that agile, with its frequent releases, introduces vulnerability in the system and sometimes not recommended as a development approach for high critical application.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In the past, Cybersecurity teams usually get involved in the tail end and now with frequent releases, ways of working and processes need to be tailored. There were few practices that we got started which I will be sharing in this blog. Would love to hear from you; your stories and experiments in this area.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cybersecurity by definition is Computer\nsecurity, cybersecurity or information technology security (IT security) is the\nprotection of computer systems<\/a> and networks<\/a> from information disclosure, theft of or damage to\ntheir hardware<\/a>, software<\/a>, or electronic data<\/a>,\nas well as from the disruption<\/a> or misdirection<\/a> of the services they provide. In the past, the role\nof security was isolated to a specific team in the final stage of development.\nThat wasn\u2019t as problematic when development cycles lasted months or even years,\nbut those days are over. Effective agile development ensures rapid and frequent\ndevelopment cycles (sometimes weeks or days), but outdated security practices\ncan make the application more vulnerable to attacks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      There have been some doubts about Agile development methodologies and how it lends to Cybersecurity practices. But with self-organizing and cross-functional teams, agile enables different skill sets to work as a team to deliver good quality and secure software.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is how we got started with the process, and practices to integrate cybersecurity practices in agile development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.     Shift- Left:<\/strong>  Having\nexperts \/Cybersecurity personnel at the initial stage not at the end state; not\nto build systems of today. They were able to determine the risk tolerance of\nthe application and conduct risk\/benefit analysis. What amount of security\ncontrols are required for this application and threat modeling exercises? What\nkind of testing required during the sprints and have them integrated with the\ntesting and DevOps plan? It also underscores the need to help developers code\nwith security in mind, a process that involves security teams sharing\nvisibility, feedback, and insights on known threats. Based on the analysis and\nplan, all our developers were trained on the security protocols, processes and\ntools required. One of the important factors to keep in mind is the balance of\ncybersecurity activities with other activities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Hacker as persona:<\/strong> We introduced Hacker as a persona for the application as a next step. By building these personas<\/strong>, we worked out the best defense against certain types of attacks and predict when they might next occur. It helps us to understand the motivation and plan for countermeasures, prioritize defense. This persona was included as one of the users in the identified features of the application and which then was elaborated during the requirements and backlog grooming session. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Tools and Automation<\/strong>: There are quite a several tools available now in the cybersecurity domain. Once the cybersecurity process\/tests are identified, we find that most of our tasks were repetitive and manual. We started looking for ways to automate as Automating repeated tasks is key to DevSecOps since running manual security checks in the pipeline can be time-intensive. Some of these tasks can be automated, such as monitoring intrusion detection systems to search for threats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the major learning in this experimentation is that Shift left does not mean moving all the cybersecurity-related processes, practices, ways of working, and tools from the tail end to the initial stage of development. There had to be a balanced approach and what is required differs from application to application. But bringing this security mindset to all the team members helped a lot in bringing the balanced approach of security and frequent release cycles that was much needed for our application.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Agile and Cybersecurity - How to get started","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-and-cybersecurity-how-to-get-started","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18707","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18715,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:41","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:41","post_content":"\n

Harshita is a scrum master for a team. With the Covid situation across India, the team has been dull and in a very somber state. As a scrum master, she could understand and relate to the situation that the team has been going through. At an organization level, there has been a lot of Employee assistance programs. But she is confused about whether it is ok to have the team be like this or does she need to do something?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution:<\/strong> Here are few things that I would recommend she start with <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Status \/ Smiley images in the communication and collaboration tool.  We have asked team members to add this and this helps others in the team to understand the emotional state of each and every one.  It was quite beneficial and set the stage for everyone in the meetings and interaction.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Standup meetings or team meetings \u2013 First 5 min or 10 min is used for check-in and free-flow conversation. This helped team members to know what\u2019s happening, vent out some of their feelings and help each other as need. If it\u2019s a large team, use some of the survey tools to do check-in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Informal group chat\/gathering or 1:1 with each other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am sure most coaches, leaders are thinking about this and doing something to help their teams in these trying times. Let me know what are those things that you are doing.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #248 \u2013 Sensitivity during these(covid) times","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-248-sensitivity-during-thesecovid-times","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18715","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17712,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:47:04","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:17:04","post_content":"\n

Pravin has been coaching the development team for a few months on the implementation of Scrum. There were a lot of improvement ideas and opportunities that he and his team gathered for the Product team, operation teams during the retrospective. When he tried speaking to them to understand their processes and see if he can do something about it, he was told that the scrum master scope is for the IT development team and the operation teams are not part of it.  He was very excited when he read the new scrum guide and understood that the scrum master role is expanded. Will this help him to remove the obstacle of end to end coaching of the team? If not, what else can he do? Are there any suggestions or solutions that you would recommend?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suggested Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum master role definition and One product team from the scrum guide is a good starting point. Pravin can use the guide to drive the essence of one team delivering product starting from definition to support, roll out, and also point that it is from the industry best practice. In addition to that, it would be good for him to quantify the problem that he had gathered with the data; for ex the resolution time of the incident (end to end), new requirements from the operation team. Along with that, he can do an End to End process mapping w.r.t product delivery and facilitate a discussion with the relevant stakeholders. Most of the time, the problem would be due to organization design ie. Silos between the operation team, product team, and development team, and this might take a longer discussion to solve. <\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #224 - Scrum Master role in the Operations\/Support world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-224-scrum-master-role-in-the-operations-support-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17712","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17698,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:46:28","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:16:28","post_content":"\n

Last week, Scrum celebrated 25 years, and to add to that celebration, a new scrum guide was released. Over the years, Scrum has been implemented across multiple industries and domains and the feedback of its success and failures flowed back into this new Scrum guide. There was a lot of excitement among the agile community for the launch and the agile community was elated with the changes in the Scrum guide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us look at the summary of changes ( from scrum.org articles) in the new scrum guide and then talk about the impact for us (agile community). For more details, you can refer to scrum.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even Less\nPrescriptive<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years,\nthe Scrum Guide started getting a bit more prescriptive. The 2020 version aims\nto bring Scrum back to being a minimally sufficient framework. This was\nachieved by removing the Daily Scrum questions, softening language around PBI\nattributes and retro items in Sprint Backlog, shortening the Sprint\ncancellation section, and much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One Team,\nFocused on One Product<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal was to\neliminate the concept of a separate team within a team that has led to \u201cproxy\u201d\nor \u201cus and them\u201d behavior between the PO and Dev Team. There is now just one\nScrum Team focused on the same objective, with three different sets of accountabilities:\nPO, SM, and Developers (anybody who is working on the sprint increment).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction\nof Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum\nGuide introduces the concept of a Product Goal to provide the focus for the\nScrum Team toward a larger valuable objective. Each Sprint should bring the\nproduct closer to the overall Product Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Home for\nSprint Goal, Definition of Done, and Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides described Sprint Goal and Definition of Done without really giving them\nan identity. They were not quite artifacts but were somewhat attached to\nartifacts. With the addition of Product Goal, the 2020 version provides more\nclarity around this. Each of the three artifacts now contains \u2018commitments\u2019 to\nthem. For the Product Backlog, it is the Product Goal, the Sprint Backlog has\nthe Sprint Goal, and the Increment has the Definition of Done (now without the\nquotes). They exist to bring transparency and focus toward the progress of each\nartifact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-Managing\nover Self-Organizing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides referred to Development Teams (team members who are working on the\nsprint increment) as self-organizing, choosing who and how to do work. With\nmore of a focus on the Scrum Team, the 2020 version emphasizes a self-managing\nScrum Team, that chooses who, how, and what to work on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nSprint Planning Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the\nSprint Planning topics of \u201cWhat\u201d and \u201cHow,\u201d the 2020 Scrum Guide places\nemphasis on a third topic, \u201cWhy.\u201d This third topic refers to the Sprint Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

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\n

\u00b7 Physical (kinesthetic) Learner -Getting hands-on is a\nmust for these learners who love to tinker and learn best when they can do\nrather than see or hear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Logical (mathematical) Learner - If there is logic,\nreasoning, and numbers involved, these learners are sure to excel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Social learners favored Social (interpersonal)\nLearner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Solitary (intrapersonal) Learner - These students prefer\nto use self-study and work alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, if I belong to the visual and kinesthetic\nlearner type, then I would prefer classes with more diagrams and more\nexperiments rather than trainers speaking about topics. However, if I am a\nverbal learner, I would love to listen to lectures from experts. Understanding\nour unique learning styles would help us choose courses or methods of learning.\nEither you can look back at the training programs where you enjoyed or do the\nsurvey available on the internet to understand your style. For me, I love working\nin groups hence I choose courses(offline) where there are options to review\nother\u2019s work and connect with the team, which helps in better learning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Keeping Focus and avoiding distractions<\/strong>\u2013One of the major drawbacks of e-learning is the focus or having undivided attention. When we are in class or workshops, we do not open mobile or laptops to check emails or send messages and when we lose focus, we might daydream. However, when we are learning online, laptops or mobile that we use every day for office or for entertainment or for chatting with friends could themselves become distractions. Here are a few tips I followed to keep myself focused during classes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u00b7 Closeout the mails and collaboration channels keep\nmobile of our reach; Keep only course window open <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Set expectations at home that you are in training and not\nto be disturbed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Have video on <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Join a few minutes early and connect with the trainer\n\/facilitator. This also helps you to take on the next steps, such as\ncertification or becoming an expert in that area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 2 min mindful breathing before the class starts (ref\n-https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/mindful-leadership\/resources\/) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7Try out the exercises or case study and submit it \n\nI\nam sure most of you have been using the virtual learning platforms, either in\nyour organization or some preferred platforms to learn and grow in your\ncareers. Hope the above tips shared from my experience are useful. Please share\nyour best practices or tips or any recommendation from your learning journey on\nhow we can get the best out of the virtual learning model.\n\n<\/p>\n","post_title":"Tips to get the best of the virtual learning world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"tips-to-get-the-best-of-the-virtual-learning-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19014","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18707,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:58","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:58","post_content":"\n

Most of us would have read about the recent\nransomware hit on Colonial pipeline, one of the largest oil pipelines in the\nUS. They had to temporarily halt all the operations, it impacted some of the\ncompany\u2019s IT system and suffered a huge loss. It took almost a week to bring\nback the services and back to normal. During this unprecedented time, as we\nwere all working from home, Organization was worried about securing the\napplications, Infrastructure, etc. Cybersecurity has been slowly gaining focus\nand these kinds of attacks make serious attention.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the past 3 months, as an agile coach, I am involved in coaching a team that is developing a highly critical application that is also the backbone of the business deals. This application had to be super secure and if this application gets hit, it can have a huge impact on the organization in terms of finance, brand, and assets, data, etc. Hence, we had to explore how to integrate agile development practices and Cybersecurity practices. There have been some thoughts that agile, with its frequent releases, introduces vulnerability in the system and sometimes not recommended as a development approach for high critical application.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In the past, Cybersecurity teams usually get involved in the tail end and now with frequent releases, ways of working and processes need to be tailored. There were few practices that we got started which I will be sharing in this blog. Would love to hear from you; your stories and experiments in this area.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cybersecurity by definition is Computer\nsecurity, cybersecurity or information technology security (IT security) is the\nprotection of computer systems<\/a> and networks<\/a> from information disclosure, theft of or damage to\ntheir hardware<\/a>, software<\/a>, or electronic data<\/a>,\nas well as from the disruption<\/a> or misdirection<\/a> of the services they provide. In the past, the role\nof security was isolated to a specific team in the final stage of development.\nThat wasn\u2019t as problematic when development cycles lasted months or even years,\nbut those days are over. Effective agile development ensures rapid and frequent\ndevelopment cycles (sometimes weeks or days), but outdated security practices\ncan make the application more vulnerable to attacks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      There have been some doubts about Agile development methodologies and how it lends to Cybersecurity practices. But with self-organizing and cross-functional teams, agile enables different skill sets to work as a team to deliver good quality and secure software.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is how we got started with the process, and practices to integrate cybersecurity practices in agile development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.     Shift- Left:<\/strong>  Having\nexperts \/Cybersecurity personnel at the initial stage not at the end state; not\nto build systems of today. They were able to determine the risk tolerance of\nthe application and conduct risk\/benefit analysis. What amount of security\ncontrols are required for this application and threat modeling exercises? What\nkind of testing required during the sprints and have them integrated with the\ntesting and DevOps plan? It also underscores the need to help developers code\nwith security in mind, a process that involves security teams sharing\nvisibility, feedback, and insights on known threats. Based on the analysis and\nplan, all our developers were trained on the security protocols, processes and\ntools required. One of the important factors to keep in mind is the balance of\ncybersecurity activities with other activities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Hacker as persona:<\/strong> We introduced Hacker as a persona for the application as a next step. By building these personas<\/strong>, we worked out the best defense against certain types of attacks and predict when they might next occur. It helps us to understand the motivation and plan for countermeasures, prioritize defense. This persona was included as one of the users in the identified features of the application and which then was elaborated during the requirements and backlog grooming session. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Tools and Automation<\/strong>: There are quite a several tools available now in the cybersecurity domain. Once the cybersecurity process\/tests are identified, we find that most of our tasks were repetitive and manual. We started looking for ways to automate as Automating repeated tasks is key to DevSecOps since running manual security checks in the pipeline can be time-intensive. Some of these tasks can be automated, such as monitoring intrusion detection systems to search for threats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the major learning in this experimentation is that Shift left does not mean moving all the cybersecurity-related processes, practices, ways of working, and tools from the tail end to the initial stage of development. There had to be a balanced approach and what is required differs from application to application. But bringing this security mindset to all the team members helped a lot in bringing the balanced approach of security and frequent release cycles that was much needed for our application.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Agile and Cybersecurity - How to get started","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-and-cybersecurity-how-to-get-started","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18707","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18715,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:41","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:41","post_content":"\n

Harshita is a scrum master for a team. With the Covid situation across India, the team has been dull and in a very somber state. As a scrum master, she could understand and relate to the situation that the team has been going through. At an organization level, there has been a lot of Employee assistance programs. But she is confused about whether it is ok to have the team be like this or does she need to do something?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution:<\/strong> Here are few things that I would recommend she start with <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Status \/ Smiley images in the communication and collaboration tool.  We have asked team members to add this and this helps others in the team to understand the emotional state of each and every one.  It was quite beneficial and set the stage for everyone in the meetings and interaction.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Standup meetings or team meetings \u2013 First 5 min or 10 min is used for check-in and free-flow conversation. This helped team members to know what\u2019s happening, vent out some of their feelings and help each other as need. If it\u2019s a large team, use some of the survey tools to do check-in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Informal group chat\/gathering or 1:1 with each other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am sure most coaches, leaders are thinking about this and doing something to help their teams in these trying times. Let me know what are those things that you are doing.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #248 \u2013 Sensitivity during these(covid) times","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-248-sensitivity-during-thesecovid-times","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18715","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17712,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:47:04","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:17:04","post_content":"\n

Pravin has been coaching the development team for a few months on the implementation of Scrum. There were a lot of improvement ideas and opportunities that he and his team gathered for the Product team, operation teams during the retrospective. When he tried speaking to them to understand their processes and see if he can do something about it, he was told that the scrum master scope is for the IT development team and the operation teams are not part of it.  He was very excited when he read the new scrum guide and understood that the scrum master role is expanded. Will this help him to remove the obstacle of end to end coaching of the team? If not, what else can he do? Are there any suggestions or solutions that you would recommend?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suggested Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum master role definition and One product team from the scrum guide is a good starting point. Pravin can use the guide to drive the essence of one team delivering product starting from definition to support, roll out, and also point that it is from the industry best practice. In addition to that, it would be good for him to quantify the problem that he had gathered with the data; for ex the resolution time of the incident (end to end), new requirements from the operation team. Along with that, he can do an End to End process mapping w.r.t product delivery and facilitate a discussion with the relevant stakeholders. Most of the time, the problem would be due to organization design ie. Silos between the operation team, product team, and development team, and this might take a longer discussion to solve. <\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #224 - Scrum Master role in the Operations\/Support world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-224-scrum-master-role-in-the-operations-support-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17712","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17698,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:46:28","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:16:28","post_content":"\n

Last week, Scrum celebrated 25 years, and to add to that celebration, a new scrum guide was released. Over the years, Scrum has been implemented across multiple industries and domains and the feedback of its success and failures flowed back into this new Scrum guide. There was a lot of excitement among the agile community for the launch and the agile community was elated with the changes in the Scrum guide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us look at the summary of changes ( from scrum.org articles) in the new scrum guide and then talk about the impact for us (agile community). For more details, you can refer to scrum.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even Less\nPrescriptive<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years,\nthe Scrum Guide started getting a bit more prescriptive. The 2020 version aims\nto bring Scrum back to being a minimally sufficient framework. This was\nachieved by removing the Daily Scrum questions, softening language around PBI\nattributes and retro items in Sprint Backlog, shortening the Sprint\ncancellation section, and much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One Team,\nFocused on One Product<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal was to\neliminate the concept of a separate team within a team that has led to \u201cproxy\u201d\nor \u201cus and them\u201d behavior between the PO and Dev Team. There is now just one\nScrum Team focused on the same objective, with three different sets of accountabilities:\nPO, SM, and Developers (anybody who is working on the sprint increment).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction\nof Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum\nGuide introduces the concept of a Product Goal to provide the focus for the\nScrum Team toward a larger valuable objective. Each Sprint should bring the\nproduct closer to the overall Product Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Home for\nSprint Goal, Definition of Done, and Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides described Sprint Goal and Definition of Done without really giving them\nan identity. They were not quite artifacts but were somewhat attached to\nartifacts. With the addition of Product Goal, the 2020 version provides more\nclarity around this. Each of the three artifacts now contains \u2018commitments\u2019 to\nthem. For the Product Backlog, it is the Product Goal, the Sprint Backlog has\nthe Sprint Goal, and the Increment has the Definition of Done (now without the\nquotes). They exist to bring transparency and focus toward the progress of each\nartifact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-Managing\nover Self-Organizing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides referred to Development Teams (team members who are working on the\nsprint increment) as self-organizing, choosing who and how to do work. With\nmore of a focus on the Scrum Team, the 2020 version emphasizes a self-managing\nScrum Team, that chooses who, how, and what to work on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nSprint Planning Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the\nSprint Planning topics of \u201cWhat\u201d and \u201cHow,\u201d the 2020 Scrum Guide places\nemphasis on a third topic, \u201cWhy.\u201d This third topic refers to the Sprint Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

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\n

\u00b7 Verbal (linguistic) Learner -These learners prefer using\nwords, both in speech and writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Physical (kinesthetic) Learner -Getting hands-on is a\nmust for these learners who love to tinker and learn best when they can do\nrather than see or hear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Logical (mathematical) Learner - If there is logic,\nreasoning, and numbers involved, these learners are sure to excel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Social learners favored Social (interpersonal)\nLearner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Solitary (intrapersonal) Learner - These students prefer\nto use self-study and work alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, if I belong to the visual and kinesthetic\nlearner type, then I would prefer classes with more diagrams and more\nexperiments rather than trainers speaking about topics. However, if I am a\nverbal learner, I would love to listen to lectures from experts. Understanding\nour unique learning styles would help us choose courses or methods of learning.\nEither you can look back at the training programs where you enjoyed or do the\nsurvey available on the internet to understand your style. For me, I love working\nin groups hence I choose courses(offline) where there are options to review\nother\u2019s work and connect with the team, which helps in better learning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Keeping Focus and avoiding distractions<\/strong>\u2013One of the major drawbacks of e-learning is the focus or having undivided attention. When we are in class or workshops, we do not open mobile or laptops to check emails or send messages and when we lose focus, we might daydream. However, when we are learning online, laptops or mobile that we use every day for office or for entertainment or for chatting with friends could themselves become distractions. Here are a few tips I followed to keep myself focused during classes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u00b7 Closeout the mails and collaboration channels keep\nmobile of our reach; Keep only course window open <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Set expectations at home that you are in training and not\nto be disturbed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Have video on <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Join a few minutes early and connect with the trainer\n\/facilitator. This also helps you to take on the next steps, such as\ncertification or becoming an expert in that area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 2 min mindful breathing before the class starts (ref\n-https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/mindful-leadership\/resources\/) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7Try out the exercises or case study and submit it \n\nI\nam sure most of you have been using the virtual learning platforms, either in\nyour organization or some preferred platforms to learn and grow in your\ncareers. Hope the above tips shared from my experience are useful. Please share\nyour best practices or tips or any recommendation from your learning journey on\nhow we can get the best out of the virtual learning model.\n\n<\/p>\n","post_title":"Tips to get the best of the virtual learning world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"tips-to-get-the-best-of-the-virtual-learning-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19014","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18707,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:58","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:58","post_content":"\n

Most of us would have read about the recent\nransomware hit on Colonial pipeline, one of the largest oil pipelines in the\nUS. They had to temporarily halt all the operations, it impacted some of the\ncompany\u2019s IT system and suffered a huge loss. It took almost a week to bring\nback the services and back to normal. During this unprecedented time, as we\nwere all working from home, Organization was worried about securing the\napplications, Infrastructure, etc. Cybersecurity has been slowly gaining focus\nand these kinds of attacks make serious attention.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the past 3 months, as an agile coach, I am involved in coaching a team that is developing a highly critical application that is also the backbone of the business deals. This application had to be super secure and if this application gets hit, it can have a huge impact on the organization in terms of finance, brand, and assets, data, etc. Hence, we had to explore how to integrate agile development practices and Cybersecurity practices. There have been some thoughts that agile, with its frequent releases, introduces vulnerability in the system and sometimes not recommended as a development approach for high critical application.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In the past, Cybersecurity teams usually get involved in the tail end and now with frequent releases, ways of working and processes need to be tailored. There were few practices that we got started which I will be sharing in this blog. Would love to hear from you; your stories and experiments in this area.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cybersecurity by definition is Computer\nsecurity, cybersecurity or information technology security (IT security) is the\nprotection of computer systems<\/a> and networks<\/a> from information disclosure, theft of or damage to\ntheir hardware<\/a>, software<\/a>, or electronic data<\/a>,\nas well as from the disruption<\/a> or misdirection<\/a> of the services they provide. In the past, the role\nof security was isolated to a specific team in the final stage of development.\nThat wasn\u2019t as problematic when development cycles lasted months or even years,\nbut those days are over. Effective agile development ensures rapid and frequent\ndevelopment cycles (sometimes weeks or days), but outdated security practices\ncan make the application more vulnerable to attacks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      There have been some doubts about Agile development methodologies and how it lends to Cybersecurity practices. But with self-organizing and cross-functional teams, agile enables different skill sets to work as a team to deliver good quality and secure software.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is how we got started with the process, and practices to integrate cybersecurity practices in agile development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.     Shift- Left:<\/strong>  Having\nexperts \/Cybersecurity personnel at the initial stage not at the end state; not\nto build systems of today. They were able to determine the risk tolerance of\nthe application and conduct risk\/benefit analysis. What amount of security\ncontrols are required for this application and threat modeling exercises? What\nkind of testing required during the sprints and have them integrated with the\ntesting and DevOps plan? It also underscores the need to help developers code\nwith security in mind, a process that involves security teams sharing\nvisibility, feedback, and insights on known threats. Based on the analysis and\nplan, all our developers were trained on the security protocols, processes and\ntools required. One of the important factors to keep in mind is the balance of\ncybersecurity activities with other activities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Hacker as persona:<\/strong> We introduced Hacker as a persona for the application as a next step. By building these personas<\/strong>, we worked out the best defense against certain types of attacks and predict when they might next occur. It helps us to understand the motivation and plan for countermeasures, prioritize defense. This persona was included as one of the users in the identified features of the application and which then was elaborated during the requirements and backlog grooming session. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Tools and Automation<\/strong>: There are quite a several tools available now in the cybersecurity domain. Once the cybersecurity process\/tests are identified, we find that most of our tasks were repetitive and manual. We started looking for ways to automate as Automating repeated tasks is key to DevSecOps since running manual security checks in the pipeline can be time-intensive. Some of these tasks can be automated, such as monitoring intrusion detection systems to search for threats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the major learning in this experimentation is that Shift left does not mean moving all the cybersecurity-related processes, practices, ways of working, and tools from the tail end to the initial stage of development. There had to be a balanced approach and what is required differs from application to application. But bringing this security mindset to all the team members helped a lot in bringing the balanced approach of security and frequent release cycles that was much needed for our application.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Agile and Cybersecurity - How to get started","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-and-cybersecurity-how-to-get-started","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18707","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18715,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:41","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:41","post_content":"\n

Harshita is a scrum master for a team. With the Covid situation across India, the team has been dull and in a very somber state. As a scrum master, she could understand and relate to the situation that the team has been going through. At an organization level, there has been a lot of Employee assistance programs. But she is confused about whether it is ok to have the team be like this or does she need to do something?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution:<\/strong> Here are few things that I would recommend she start with <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Status \/ Smiley images in the communication and collaboration tool.  We have asked team members to add this and this helps others in the team to understand the emotional state of each and every one.  It was quite beneficial and set the stage for everyone in the meetings and interaction.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Standup meetings or team meetings \u2013 First 5 min or 10 min is used for check-in and free-flow conversation. This helped team members to know what\u2019s happening, vent out some of their feelings and help each other as need. If it\u2019s a large team, use some of the survey tools to do check-in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Informal group chat\/gathering or 1:1 with each other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am sure most coaches, leaders are thinking about this and doing something to help their teams in these trying times. Let me know what are those things that you are doing.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #248 \u2013 Sensitivity during these(covid) times","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-248-sensitivity-during-thesecovid-times","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18715","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17712,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:47:04","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:17:04","post_content":"\n

Pravin has been coaching the development team for a few months on the implementation of Scrum. There were a lot of improvement ideas and opportunities that he and his team gathered for the Product team, operation teams during the retrospective. When he tried speaking to them to understand their processes and see if he can do something about it, he was told that the scrum master scope is for the IT development team and the operation teams are not part of it.  He was very excited when he read the new scrum guide and understood that the scrum master role is expanded. Will this help him to remove the obstacle of end to end coaching of the team? If not, what else can he do? Are there any suggestions or solutions that you would recommend?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suggested Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum master role definition and One product team from the scrum guide is a good starting point. Pravin can use the guide to drive the essence of one team delivering product starting from definition to support, roll out, and also point that it is from the industry best practice. In addition to that, it would be good for him to quantify the problem that he had gathered with the data; for ex the resolution time of the incident (end to end), new requirements from the operation team. Along with that, he can do an End to End process mapping w.r.t product delivery and facilitate a discussion with the relevant stakeholders. Most of the time, the problem would be due to organization design ie. Silos between the operation team, product team, and development team, and this might take a longer discussion to solve. <\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #224 - Scrum Master role in the Operations\/Support world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-224-scrum-master-role-in-the-operations-support-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17712","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17698,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:46:28","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:16:28","post_content":"\n

Last week, Scrum celebrated 25 years, and to add to that celebration, a new scrum guide was released. Over the years, Scrum has been implemented across multiple industries and domains and the feedback of its success and failures flowed back into this new Scrum guide. There was a lot of excitement among the agile community for the launch and the agile community was elated with the changes in the Scrum guide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us look at the summary of changes ( from scrum.org articles) in the new scrum guide and then talk about the impact for us (agile community). For more details, you can refer to scrum.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even Less\nPrescriptive<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years,\nthe Scrum Guide started getting a bit more prescriptive. The 2020 version aims\nto bring Scrum back to being a minimally sufficient framework. This was\nachieved by removing the Daily Scrum questions, softening language around PBI\nattributes and retro items in Sprint Backlog, shortening the Sprint\ncancellation section, and much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One Team,\nFocused on One Product<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal was to\neliminate the concept of a separate team within a team that has led to \u201cproxy\u201d\nor \u201cus and them\u201d behavior between the PO and Dev Team. There is now just one\nScrum Team focused on the same objective, with three different sets of accountabilities:\nPO, SM, and Developers (anybody who is working on the sprint increment).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction\nof Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum\nGuide introduces the concept of a Product Goal to provide the focus for the\nScrum Team toward a larger valuable objective. Each Sprint should bring the\nproduct closer to the overall Product Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Home for\nSprint Goal, Definition of Done, and Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides described Sprint Goal and Definition of Done without really giving them\nan identity. They were not quite artifacts but were somewhat attached to\nartifacts. With the addition of Product Goal, the 2020 version provides more\nclarity around this. Each of the three artifacts now contains \u2018commitments\u2019 to\nthem. For the Product Backlog, it is the Product Goal, the Sprint Backlog has\nthe Sprint Goal, and the Increment has the Definition of Done (now without the\nquotes). They exist to bring transparency and focus toward the progress of each\nartifact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-Managing\nover Self-Organizing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides referred to Development Teams (team members who are working on the\nsprint increment) as self-organizing, choosing who and how to do work. With\nmore of a focus on the Scrum Team, the 2020 version emphasizes a self-managing\nScrum Team, that chooses who, how, and what to work on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nSprint Planning Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the\nSprint Planning topics of \u201cWhat\u201d and \u201cHow,\u201d the 2020 Scrum Guide places\nemphasis on a third topic, \u201cWhy.\u201d This third topic refers to the Sprint Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

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\n

\u00b7 Aural (auditory) Learner -Aural learners are good\nlisteners who normally learn best through verbal presentations like\nlectures and speeches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Verbal (linguistic) Learner -These learners prefer using\nwords, both in speech and writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Physical (kinesthetic) Learner -Getting hands-on is a\nmust for these learners who love to tinker and learn best when they can do\nrather than see or hear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Logical (mathematical) Learner - If there is logic,\nreasoning, and numbers involved, these learners are sure to excel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Social learners favored Social (interpersonal)\nLearner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Solitary (intrapersonal) Learner - These students prefer\nto use self-study and work alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, if I belong to the visual and kinesthetic\nlearner type, then I would prefer classes with more diagrams and more\nexperiments rather than trainers speaking about topics. However, if I am a\nverbal learner, I would love to listen to lectures from experts. Understanding\nour unique learning styles would help us choose courses or methods of learning.\nEither you can look back at the training programs where you enjoyed or do the\nsurvey available on the internet to understand your style. For me, I love working\nin groups hence I choose courses(offline) where there are options to review\nother\u2019s work and connect with the team, which helps in better learning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Keeping Focus and avoiding distractions<\/strong>\u2013One of the major drawbacks of e-learning is the focus or having undivided attention. When we are in class or workshops, we do not open mobile or laptops to check emails or send messages and when we lose focus, we might daydream. However, when we are learning online, laptops or mobile that we use every day for office or for entertainment or for chatting with friends could themselves become distractions. Here are a few tips I followed to keep myself focused during classes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u00b7 Closeout the mails and collaboration channels keep\nmobile of our reach; Keep only course window open <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Set expectations at home that you are in training and not\nto be disturbed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Have video on <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Join a few minutes early and connect with the trainer\n\/facilitator. This also helps you to take on the next steps, such as\ncertification or becoming an expert in that area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 2 min mindful breathing before the class starts (ref\n-https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/mindful-leadership\/resources\/) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7Try out the exercises or case study and submit it \n\nI\nam sure most of you have been using the virtual learning platforms, either in\nyour organization or some preferred platforms to learn and grow in your\ncareers. Hope the above tips shared from my experience are useful. Please share\nyour best practices or tips or any recommendation from your learning journey on\nhow we can get the best out of the virtual learning model.\n\n<\/p>\n","post_title":"Tips to get the best of the virtual learning world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"tips-to-get-the-best-of-the-virtual-learning-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19014","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18707,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:58","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:58","post_content":"\n

Most of us would have read about the recent\nransomware hit on Colonial pipeline, one of the largest oil pipelines in the\nUS. They had to temporarily halt all the operations, it impacted some of the\ncompany\u2019s IT system and suffered a huge loss. It took almost a week to bring\nback the services and back to normal. During this unprecedented time, as we\nwere all working from home, Organization was worried about securing the\napplications, Infrastructure, etc. Cybersecurity has been slowly gaining focus\nand these kinds of attacks make serious attention.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the past 3 months, as an agile coach, I am involved in coaching a team that is developing a highly critical application that is also the backbone of the business deals. This application had to be super secure and if this application gets hit, it can have a huge impact on the organization in terms of finance, brand, and assets, data, etc. Hence, we had to explore how to integrate agile development practices and Cybersecurity practices. There have been some thoughts that agile, with its frequent releases, introduces vulnerability in the system and sometimes not recommended as a development approach for high critical application.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In the past, Cybersecurity teams usually get involved in the tail end and now with frequent releases, ways of working and processes need to be tailored. There were few practices that we got started which I will be sharing in this blog. Would love to hear from you; your stories and experiments in this area.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cybersecurity by definition is Computer\nsecurity, cybersecurity or information technology security (IT security) is the\nprotection of computer systems<\/a> and networks<\/a> from information disclosure, theft of or damage to\ntheir hardware<\/a>, software<\/a>, or electronic data<\/a>,\nas well as from the disruption<\/a> or misdirection<\/a> of the services they provide. In the past, the role\nof security was isolated to a specific team in the final stage of development.\nThat wasn\u2019t as problematic when development cycles lasted months or even years,\nbut those days are over. Effective agile development ensures rapid and frequent\ndevelopment cycles (sometimes weeks or days), but outdated security practices\ncan make the application more vulnerable to attacks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      There have been some doubts about Agile development methodologies and how it lends to Cybersecurity practices. But with self-organizing and cross-functional teams, agile enables different skill sets to work as a team to deliver good quality and secure software.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is how we got started with the process, and practices to integrate cybersecurity practices in agile development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.     Shift- Left:<\/strong>  Having\nexperts \/Cybersecurity personnel at the initial stage not at the end state; not\nto build systems of today. They were able to determine the risk tolerance of\nthe application and conduct risk\/benefit analysis. What amount of security\ncontrols are required for this application and threat modeling exercises? What\nkind of testing required during the sprints and have them integrated with the\ntesting and DevOps plan? It also underscores the need to help developers code\nwith security in mind, a process that involves security teams sharing\nvisibility, feedback, and insights on known threats. Based on the analysis and\nplan, all our developers were trained on the security protocols, processes and\ntools required. One of the important factors to keep in mind is the balance of\ncybersecurity activities with other activities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Hacker as persona:<\/strong> We introduced Hacker as a persona for the application as a next step. By building these personas<\/strong>, we worked out the best defense against certain types of attacks and predict when they might next occur. It helps us to understand the motivation and plan for countermeasures, prioritize defense. This persona was included as one of the users in the identified features of the application and which then was elaborated during the requirements and backlog grooming session. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Tools and Automation<\/strong>: There are quite a several tools available now in the cybersecurity domain. Once the cybersecurity process\/tests are identified, we find that most of our tasks were repetitive and manual. We started looking for ways to automate as Automating repeated tasks is key to DevSecOps since running manual security checks in the pipeline can be time-intensive. Some of these tasks can be automated, such as monitoring intrusion detection systems to search for threats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the major learning in this experimentation is that Shift left does not mean moving all the cybersecurity-related processes, practices, ways of working, and tools from the tail end to the initial stage of development. There had to be a balanced approach and what is required differs from application to application. But bringing this security mindset to all the team members helped a lot in bringing the balanced approach of security and frequent release cycles that was much needed for our application.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Agile and Cybersecurity - How to get started","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-and-cybersecurity-how-to-get-started","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18707","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18715,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:41","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:41","post_content":"\n

Harshita is a scrum master for a team. With the Covid situation across India, the team has been dull and in a very somber state. As a scrum master, she could understand and relate to the situation that the team has been going through. At an organization level, there has been a lot of Employee assistance programs. But she is confused about whether it is ok to have the team be like this or does she need to do something?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution:<\/strong> Here are few things that I would recommend she start with <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Status \/ Smiley images in the communication and collaboration tool.  We have asked team members to add this and this helps others in the team to understand the emotional state of each and every one.  It was quite beneficial and set the stage for everyone in the meetings and interaction.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Standup meetings or team meetings \u2013 First 5 min or 10 min is used for check-in and free-flow conversation. This helped team members to know what\u2019s happening, vent out some of their feelings and help each other as need. If it\u2019s a large team, use some of the survey tools to do check-in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Informal group chat\/gathering or 1:1 with each other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am sure most coaches, leaders are thinking about this and doing something to help their teams in these trying times. Let me know what are those things that you are doing.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #248 \u2013 Sensitivity during these(covid) times","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-248-sensitivity-during-thesecovid-times","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18715","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17712,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:47:04","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:17:04","post_content":"\n

Pravin has been coaching the development team for a few months on the implementation of Scrum. There were a lot of improvement ideas and opportunities that he and his team gathered for the Product team, operation teams during the retrospective. When he tried speaking to them to understand their processes and see if he can do something about it, he was told that the scrum master scope is for the IT development team and the operation teams are not part of it.  He was very excited when he read the new scrum guide and understood that the scrum master role is expanded. Will this help him to remove the obstacle of end to end coaching of the team? If not, what else can he do? Are there any suggestions or solutions that you would recommend?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suggested Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum master role definition and One product team from the scrum guide is a good starting point. Pravin can use the guide to drive the essence of one team delivering product starting from definition to support, roll out, and also point that it is from the industry best practice. In addition to that, it would be good for him to quantify the problem that he had gathered with the data; for ex the resolution time of the incident (end to end), new requirements from the operation team. Along with that, he can do an End to End process mapping w.r.t product delivery and facilitate a discussion with the relevant stakeholders. Most of the time, the problem would be due to organization design ie. Silos between the operation team, product team, and development team, and this might take a longer discussion to solve. <\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #224 - Scrum Master role in the Operations\/Support world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-224-scrum-master-role-in-the-operations-support-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17712","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17698,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:46:28","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:16:28","post_content":"\n

Last week, Scrum celebrated 25 years, and to add to that celebration, a new scrum guide was released. Over the years, Scrum has been implemented across multiple industries and domains and the feedback of its success and failures flowed back into this new Scrum guide. There was a lot of excitement among the agile community for the launch and the agile community was elated with the changes in the Scrum guide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us look at the summary of changes ( from scrum.org articles) in the new scrum guide and then talk about the impact for us (agile community). For more details, you can refer to scrum.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even Less\nPrescriptive<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years,\nthe Scrum Guide started getting a bit more prescriptive. The 2020 version aims\nto bring Scrum back to being a minimally sufficient framework. This was\nachieved by removing the Daily Scrum questions, softening language around PBI\nattributes and retro items in Sprint Backlog, shortening the Sprint\ncancellation section, and much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One Team,\nFocused on One Product<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal was to\neliminate the concept of a separate team within a team that has led to \u201cproxy\u201d\nor \u201cus and them\u201d behavior between the PO and Dev Team. There is now just one\nScrum Team focused on the same objective, with three different sets of accountabilities:\nPO, SM, and Developers (anybody who is working on the sprint increment).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction\nof Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum\nGuide introduces the concept of a Product Goal to provide the focus for the\nScrum Team toward a larger valuable objective. Each Sprint should bring the\nproduct closer to the overall Product Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Home for\nSprint Goal, Definition of Done, and Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides described Sprint Goal and Definition of Done without really giving them\nan identity. They were not quite artifacts but were somewhat attached to\nartifacts. With the addition of Product Goal, the 2020 version provides more\nclarity around this. Each of the three artifacts now contains \u2018commitments\u2019 to\nthem. For the Product Backlog, it is the Product Goal, the Sprint Backlog has\nthe Sprint Goal, and the Increment has the Definition of Done (now without the\nquotes). They exist to bring transparency and focus toward the progress of each\nartifact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-Managing\nover Self-Organizing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides referred to Development Teams (team members who are working on the\nsprint increment) as self-organizing, choosing who and how to do work. With\nmore of a focus on the Scrum Team, the 2020 version emphasizes a self-managing\nScrum Team, that chooses who, how, and what to work on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nSprint Planning Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the\nSprint Planning topics of \u201cWhat\u201d and \u201cHow,\u201d the 2020 Scrum Guide places\nemphasis on a third topic, \u201cWhy.\u201d This third topic refers to the Sprint Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

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\u00b7 Visual (spatial) Learner -Using pictures, images,\ndiagrams, whiteboards and more helps these types of learners understand\ninformation better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Aural (auditory) Learner -Aural learners are good\nlisteners who normally learn best through verbal presentations like\nlectures and speeches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Verbal (linguistic) Learner -These learners prefer using\nwords, both in speech and writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Physical (kinesthetic) Learner -Getting hands-on is a\nmust for these learners who love to tinker and learn best when they can do\nrather than see or hear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Logical (mathematical) Learner - If there is logic,\nreasoning, and numbers involved, these learners are sure to excel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Social learners favored Social (interpersonal)\nLearner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Solitary (intrapersonal) Learner - These students prefer\nto use self-study and work alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, if I belong to the visual and kinesthetic\nlearner type, then I would prefer classes with more diagrams and more\nexperiments rather than trainers speaking about topics. However, if I am a\nverbal learner, I would love to listen to lectures from experts. Understanding\nour unique learning styles would help us choose courses or methods of learning.\nEither you can look back at the training programs where you enjoyed or do the\nsurvey available on the internet to understand your style. For me, I love working\nin groups hence I choose courses(offline) where there are options to review\nother\u2019s work and connect with the team, which helps in better learning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Keeping Focus and avoiding distractions<\/strong>\u2013One of the major drawbacks of e-learning is the focus or having undivided attention. When we are in class or workshops, we do not open mobile or laptops to check emails or send messages and when we lose focus, we might daydream. However, when we are learning online, laptops or mobile that we use every day for office or for entertainment or for chatting with friends could themselves become distractions. Here are a few tips I followed to keep myself focused during classes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u00b7 Closeout the mails and collaboration channels keep\nmobile of our reach; Keep only course window open <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Set expectations at home that you are in training and not\nto be disturbed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Have video on <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Join a few minutes early and connect with the trainer\n\/facilitator. This also helps you to take on the next steps, such as\ncertification or becoming an expert in that area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 2 min mindful breathing before the class starts (ref\n-https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/mindful-leadership\/resources\/) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7Try out the exercises or case study and submit it \n\nI\nam sure most of you have been using the virtual learning platforms, either in\nyour organization or some preferred platforms to learn and grow in your\ncareers. Hope the above tips shared from my experience are useful. Please share\nyour best practices or tips or any recommendation from your learning journey on\nhow we can get the best out of the virtual learning model.\n\n<\/p>\n","post_title":"Tips to get the best of the virtual learning world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"tips-to-get-the-best-of-the-virtual-learning-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19014","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18707,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:58","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:58","post_content":"\n

Most of us would have read about the recent\nransomware hit on Colonial pipeline, one of the largest oil pipelines in the\nUS. They had to temporarily halt all the operations, it impacted some of the\ncompany\u2019s IT system and suffered a huge loss. It took almost a week to bring\nback the services and back to normal. During this unprecedented time, as we\nwere all working from home, Organization was worried about securing the\napplications, Infrastructure, etc. Cybersecurity has been slowly gaining focus\nand these kinds of attacks make serious attention.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the past 3 months, as an agile coach, I am involved in coaching a team that is developing a highly critical application that is also the backbone of the business deals. This application had to be super secure and if this application gets hit, it can have a huge impact on the organization in terms of finance, brand, and assets, data, etc. Hence, we had to explore how to integrate agile development practices and Cybersecurity practices. There have been some thoughts that agile, with its frequent releases, introduces vulnerability in the system and sometimes not recommended as a development approach for high critical application.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In the past, Cybersecurity teams usually get involved in the tail end and now with frequent releases, ways of working and processes need to be tailored. There were few practices that we got started which I will be sharing in this blog. Would love to hear from you; your stories and experiments in this area.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cybersecurity by definition is Computer\nsecurity, cybersecurity or information technology security (IT security) is the\nprotection of computer systems<\/a> and networks<\/a> from information disclosure, theft of or damage to\ntheir hardware<\/a>, software<\/a>, or electronic data<\/a>,\nas well as from the disruption<\/a> or misdirection<\/a> of the services they provide. In the past, the role\nof security was isolated to a specific team in the final stage of development.\nThat wasn\u2019t as problematic when development cycles lasted months or even years,\nbut those days are over. Effective agile development ensures rapid and frequent\ndevelopment cycles (sometimes weeks or days), but outdated security practices\ncan make the application more vulnerable to attacks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      There have been some doubts about Agile development methodologies and how it lends to Cybersecurity practices. But with self-organizing and cross-functional teams, agile enables different skill sets to work as a team to deliver good quality and secure software.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is how we got started with the process, and practices to integrate cybersecurity practices in agile development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.     Shift- Left:<\/strong>  Having\nexperts \/Cybersecurity personnel at the initial stage not at the end state; not\nto build systems of today. They were able to determine the risk tolerance of\nthe application and conduct risk\/benefit analysis. What amount of security\ncontrols are required for this application and threat modeling exercises? What\nkind of testing required during the sprints and have them integrated with the\ntesting and DevOps plan? It also underscores the need to help developers code\nwith security in mind, a process that involves security teams sharing\nvisibility, feedback, and insights on known threats. Based on the analysis and\nplan, all our developers were trained on the security protocols, processes and\ntools required. One of the important factors to keep in mind is the balance of\ncybersecurity activities with other activities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Hacker as persona:<\/strong> We introduced Hacker as a persona for the application as a next step. By building these personas<\/strong>, we worked out the best defense against certain types of attacks and predict when they might next occur. It helps us to understand the motivation and plan for countermeasures, prioritize defense. This persona was included as one of the users in the identified features of the application and which then was elaborated during the requirements and backlog grooming session. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Tools and Automation<\/strong>: There are quite a several tools available now in the cybersecurity domain. Once the cybersecurity process\/tests are identified, we find that most of our tasks were repetitive and manual. We started looking for ways to automate as Automating repeated tasks is key to DevSecOps since running manual security checks in the pipeline can be time-intensive. Some of these tasks can be automated, such as monitoring intrusion detection systems to search for threats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the major learning in this experimentation is that Shift left does not mean moving all the cybersecurity-related processes, practices, ways of working, and tools from the tail end to the initial stage of development. There had to be a balanced approach and what is required differs from application to application. But bringing this security mindset to all the team members helped a lot in bringing the balanced approach of security and frequent release cycles that was much needed for our application.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Agile and Cybersecurity - How to get started","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-and-cybersecurity-how-to-get-started","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18707","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18715,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:41","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:41","post_content":"\n

Harshita is a scrum master for a team. With the Covid situation across India, the team has been dull and in a very somber state. As a scrum master, she could understand and relate to the situation that the team has been going through. At an organization level, there has been a lot of Employee assistance programs. But she is confused about whether it is ok to have the team be like this or does she need to do something?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution:<\/strong> Here are few things that I would recommend she start with <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Status \/ Smiley images in the communication and collaboration tool.  We have asked team members to add this and this helps others in the team to understand the emotional state of each and every one.  It was quite beneficial and set the stage for everyone in the meetings and interaction.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Standup meetings or team meetings \u2013 First 5 min or 10 min is used for check-in and free-flow conversation. This helped team members to know what\u2019s happening, vent out some of their feelings and help each other as need. If it\u2019s a large team, use some of the survey tools to do check-in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Informal group chat\/gathering or 1:1 with each other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am sure most coaches, leaders are thinking about this and doing something to help their teams in these trying times. Let me know what are those things that you are doing.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #248 \u2013 Sensitivity during these(covid) times","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-248-sensitivity-during-thesecovid-times","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18715","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17712,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:47:04","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:17:04","post_content":"\n

Pravin has been coaching the development team for a few months on the implementation of Scrum. There were a lot of improvement ideas and opportunities that he and his team gathered for the Product team, operation teams during the retrospective. When he tried speaking to them to understand their processes and see if he can do something about it, he was told that the scrum master scope is for the IT development team and the operation teams are not part of it.  He was very excited when he read the new scrum guide and understood that the scrum master role is expanded. Will this help him to remove the obstacle of end to end coaching of the team? If not, what else can he do? Are there any suggestions or solutions that you would recommend?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suggested Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum master role definition and One product team from the scrum guide is a good starting point. Pravin can use the guide to drive the essence of one team delivering product starting from definition to support, roll out, and also point that it is from the industry best practice. In addition to that, it would be good for him to quantify the problem that he had gathered with the data; for ex the resolution time of the incident (end to end), new requirements from the operation team. Along with that, he can do an End to End process mapping w.r.t product delivery and facilitate a discussion with the relevant stakeholders. Most of the time, the problem would be due to organization design ie. Silos between the operation team, product team, and development team, and this might take a longer discussion to solve. <\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #224 - Scrum Master role in the Operations\/Support world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-224-scrum-master-role-in-the-operations-support-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17712","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17698,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:46:28","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:16:28","post_content":"\n

Last week, Scrum celebrated 25 years, and to add to that celebration, a new scrum guide was released. Over the years, Scrum has been implemented across multiple industries and domains and the feedback of its success and failures flowed back into this new Scrum guide. There was a lot of excitement among the agile community for the launch and the agile community was elated with the changes in the Scrum guide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us look at the summary of changes ( from scrum.org articles) in the new scrum guide and then talk about the impact for us (agile community). For more details, you can refer to scrum.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even Less\nPrescriptive<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years,\nthe Scrum Guide started getting a bit more prescriptive. The 2020 version aims\nto bring Scrum back to being a minimally sufficient framework. This was\nachieved by removing the Daily Scrum questions, softening language around PBI\nattributes and retro items in Sprint Backlog, shortening the Sprint\ncancellation section, and much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One Team,\nFocused on One Product<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal was to\neliminate the concept of a separate team within a team that has led to \u201cproxy\u201d\nor \u201cus and them\u201d behavior between the PO and Dev Team. There is now just one\nScrum Team focused on the same objective, with three different sets of accountabilities:\nPO, SM, and Developers (anybody who is working on the sprint increment).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction\nof Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum\nGuide introduces the concept of a Product Goal to provide the focus for the\nScrum Team toward a larger valuable objective. Each Sprint should bring the\nproduct closer to the overall Product Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Home for\nSprint Goal, Definition of Done, and Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides described Sprint Goal and Definition of Done without really giving them\nan identity. They were not quite artifacts but were somewhat attached to\nartifacts. With the addition of Product Goal, the 2020 version provides more\nclarity around this. Each of the three artifacts now contains \u2018commitments\u2019 to\nthem. For the Product Backlog, it is the Product Goal, the Sprint Backlog has\nthe Sprint Goal, and the Increment has the Definition of Done (now without the\nquotes). They exist to bring transparency and focus toward the progress of each\nartifact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-Managing\nover Self-Organizing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides referred to Development Teams (team members who are working on the\nsprint increment) as self-organizing, choosing who and how to do work. With\nmore of a focus on the Scrum Team, the 2020 version emphasizes a self-managing\nScrum Team, that chooses who, how, and what to work on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nSprint Planning Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the\nSprint Planning topics of \u201cWhat\u201d and \u201cHow,\u201d the 2020 Scrum Guide places\nemphasis on a third topic, \u201cWhy.\u201d This third topic refers to the Sprint Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

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1.       Align learning styles<\/strong> - Each of us has different ways in which we grasp things. Some of us love to listen to lectures whereas some of us would love to do experiments to understand concepts. The study shows that there are 7 different learning styles, and they are as listed below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Visual (spatial) Learner -Using pictures, images,\ndiagrams, whiteboards and more helps these types of learners understand\ninformation better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Aural (auditory) Learner -Aural learners are good\nlisteners who normally learn best through verbal presentations like\nlectures and speeches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Verbal (linguistic) Learner -These learners prefer using\nwords, both in speech and writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Physical (kinesthetic) Learner -Getting hands-on is a\nmust for these learners who love to tinker and learn best when they can do\nrather than see or hear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Logical (mathematical) Learner - If there is logic,\nreasoning, and numbers involved, these learners are sure to excel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Social learners favored Social (interpersonal)\nLearner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Solitary (intrapersonal) Learner - These students prefer\nto use self-study and work alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, if I belong to the visual and kinesthetic\nlearner type, then I would prefer classes with more diagrams and more\nexperiments rather than trainers speaking about topics. However, if I am a\nverbal learner, I would love to listen to lectures from experts. Understanding\nour unique learning styles would help us choose courses or methods of learning.\nEither you can look back at the training programs where you enjoyed or do the\nsurvey available on the internet to understand your style. For me, I love working\nin groups hence I choose courses(offline) where there are options to review\nother\u2019s work and connect with the team, which helps in better learning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Keeping Focus and avoiding distractions<\/strong>\u2013One of the major drawbacks of e-learning is the focus or having undivided attention. When we are in class or workshops, we do not open mobile or laptops to check emails or send messages and when we lose focus, we might daydream. However, when we are learning online, laptops or mobile that we use every day for office or for entertainment or for chatting with friends could themselves become distractions. Here are a few tips I followed to keep myself focused during classes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u00b7 Closeout the mails and collaboration channels keep\nmobile of our reach; Keep only course window open <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Set expectations at home that you are in training and not\nto be disturbed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Have video on <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Join a few minutes early and connect with the trainer\n\/facilitator. This also helps you to take on the next steps, such as\ncertification or becoming an expert in that area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 2 min mindful breathing before the class starts (ref\n-https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/mindful-leadership\/resources\/) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7Try out the exercises or case study and submit it \n\nI\nam sure most of you have been using the virtual learning platforms, either in\nyour organization or some preferred platforms to learn and grow in your\ncareers. Hope the above tips shared from my experience are useful. Please share\nyour best practices or tips or any recommendation from your learning journey on\nhow we can get the best out of the virtual learning model.\n\n<\/p>\n","post_title":"Tips to get the best of the virtual learning world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"tips-to-get-the-best-of-the-virtual-learning-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19014","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18707,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:58","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:58","post_content":"\n

Most of us would have read about the recent\nransomware hit on Colonial pipeline, one of the largest oil pipelines in the\nUS. They had to temporarily halt all the operations, it impacted some of the\ncompany\u2019s IT system and suffered a huge loss. It took almost a week to bring\nback the services and back to normal. During this unprecedented time, as we\nwere all working from home, Organization was worried about securing the\napplications, Infrastructure, etc. Cybersecurity has been slowly gaining focus\nand these kinds of attacks make serious attention.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the past 3 months, as an agile coach, I am involved in coaching a team that is developing a highly critical application that is also the backbone of the business deals. This application had to be super secure and if this application gets hit, it can have a huge impact on the organization in terms of finance, brand, and assets, data, etc. Hence, we had to explore how to integrate agile development practices and Cybersecurity practices. There have been some thoughts that agile, with its frequent releases, introduces vulnerability in the system and sometimes not recommended as a development approach for high critical application.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In the past, Cybersecurity teams usually get involved in the tail end and now with frequent releases, ways of working and processes need to be tailored. There were few practices that we got started which I will be sharing in this blog. Would love to hear from you; your stories and experiments in this area.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cybersecurity by definition is Computer\nsecurity, cybersecurity or information technology security (IT security) is the\nprotection of computer systems<\/a> and networks<\/a> from information disclosure, theft of or damage to\ntheir hardware<\/a>, software<\/a>, or electronic data<\/a>,\nas well as from the disruption<\/a> or misdirection<\/a> of the services they provide. In the past, the role\nof security was isolated to a specific team in the final stage of development.\nThat wasn\u2019t as problematic when development cycles lasted months or even years,\nbut those days are over. Effective agile development ensures rapid and frequent\ndevelopment cycles (sometimes weeks or days), but outdated security practices\ncan make the application more vulnerable to attacks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      There have been some doubts about Agile development methodologies and how it lends to Cybersecurity practices. But with self-organizing and cross-functional teams, agile enables different skill sets to work as a team to deliver good quality and secure software.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is how we got started with the process, and practices to integrate cybersecurity practices in agile development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.     Shift- Left:<\/strong>  Having\nexperts \/Cybersecurity personnel at the initial stage not at the end state; not\nto build systems of today. They were able to determine the risk tolerance of\nthe application and conduct risk\/benefit analysis. What amount of security\ncontrols are required for this application and threat modeling exercises? What\nkind of testing required during the sprints and have them integrated with the\ntesting and DevOps plan? It also underscores the need to help developers code\nwith security in mind, a process that involves security teams sharing\nvisibility, feedback, and insights on known threats. Based on the analysis and\nplan, all our developers were trained on the security protocols, processes and\ntools required. One of the important factors to keep in mind is the balance of\ncybersecurity activities with other activities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Hacker as persona:<\/strong> We introduced Hacker as a persona for the application as a next step. By building these personas<\/strong>, we worked out the best defense against certain types of attacks and predict when they might next occur. It helps us to understand the motivation and plan for countermeasures, prioritize defense. This persona was included as one of the users in the identified features of the application and which then was elaborated during the requirements and backlog grooming session. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Tools and Automation<\/strong>: There are quite a several tools available now in the cybersecurity domain. Once the cybersecurity process\/tests are identified, we find that most of our tasks were repetitive and manual. We started looking for ways to automate as Automating repeated tasks is key to DevSecOps since running manual security checks in the pipeline can be time-intensive. Some of these tasks can be automated, such as monitoring intrusion detection systems to search for threats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the major learning in this experimentation is that Shift left does not mean moving all the cybersecurity-related processes, practices, ways of working, and tools from the tail end to the initial stage of development. There had to be a balanced approach and what is required differs from application to application. But bringing this security mindset to all the team members helped a lot in bringing the balanced approach of security and frequent release cycles that was much needed for our application.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Agile and Cybersecurity - How to get started","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-and-cybersecurity-how-to-get-started","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18707","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18715,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:41","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:41","post_content":"\n

Harshita is a scrum master for a team. With the Covid situation across India, the team has been dull and in a very somber state. As a scrum master, she could understand and relate to the situation that the team has been going through. At an organization level, there has been a lot of Employee assistance programs. But she is confused about whether it is ok to have the team be like this or does she need to do something?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution:<\/strong> Here are few things that I would recommend she start with <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Status \/ Smiley images in the communication and collaboration tool.  We have asked team members to add this and this helps others in the team to understand the emotional state of each and every one.  It was quite beneficial and set the stage for everyone in the meetings and interaction.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Standup meetings or team meetings \u2013 First 5 min or 10 min is used for check-in and free-flow conversation. This helped team members to know what\u2019s happening, vent out some of their feelings and help each other as need. If it\u2019s a large team, use some of the survey tools to do check-in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Informal group chat\/gathering or 1:1 with each other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am sure most coaches, leaders are thinking about this and doing something to help their teams in these trying times. Let me know what are those things that you are doing.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #248 \u2013 Sensitivity during these(covid) times","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-248-sensitivity-during-thesecovid-times","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18715","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17712,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:47:04","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:17:04","post_content":"\n

Pravin has been coaching the development team for a few months on the implementation of Scrum. There were a lot of improvement ideas and opportunities that he and his team gathered for the Product team, operation teams during the retrospective. When he tried speaking to them to understand their processes and see if he can do something about it, he was told that the scrum master scope is for the IT development team and the operation teams are not part of it.  He was very excited when he read the new scrum guide and understood that the scrum master role is expanded. Will this help him to remove the obstacle of end to end coaching of the team? If not, what else can he do? Are there any suggestions or solutions that you would recommend?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suggested Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum master role definition and One product team from the scrum guide is a good starting point. Pravin can use the guide to drive the essence of one team delivering product starting from definition to support, roll out, and also point that it is from the industry best practice. In addition to that, it would be good for him to quantify the problem that he had gathered with the data; for ex the resolution time of the incident (end to end), new requirements from the operation team. Along with that, he can do an End to End process mapping w.r.t product delivery and facilitate a discussion with the relevant stakeholders. Most of the time, the problem would be due to organization design ie. Silos between the operation team, product team, and development team, and this might take a longer discussion to solve. <\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #224 - Scrum Master role in the Operations\/Support world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-224-scrum-master-role-in-the-operations-support-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17712","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17698,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:46:28","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:16:28","post_content":"\n

Last week, Scrum celebrated 25 years, and to add to that celebration, a new scrum guide was released. Over the years, Scrum has been implemented across multiple industries and domains and the feedback of its success and failures flowed back into this new Scrum guide. There was a lot of excitement among the agile community for the launch and the agile community was elated with the changes in the Scrum guide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us look at the summary of changes ( from scrum.org articles) in the new scrum guide and then talk about the impact for us (agile community). For more details, you can refer to scrum.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even Less\nPrescriptive<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years,\nthe Scrum Guide started getting a bit more prescriptive. The 2020 version aims\nto bring Scrum back to being a minimally sufficient framework. This was\nachieved by removing the Daily Scrum questions, softening language around PBI\nattributes and retro items in Sprint Backlog, shortening the Sprint\ncancellation section, and much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One Team,\nFocused on One Product<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal was to\neliminate the concept of a separate team within a team that has led to \u201cproxy\u201d\nor \u201cus and them\u201d behavior between the PO and Dev Team. There is now just one\nScrum Team focused on the same objective, with three different sets of accountabilities:\nPO, SM, and Developers (anybody who is working on the sprint increment).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction\nof Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum\nGuide introduces the concept of a Product Goal to provide the focus for the\nScrum Team toward a larger valuable objective. Each Sprint should bring the\nproduct closer to the overall Product Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Home for\nSprint Goal, Definition of Done, and Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides described Sprint Goal and Definition of Done without really giving them\nan identity. They were not quite artifacts but were somewhat attached to\nartifacts. With the addition of Product Goal, the 2020 version provides more\nclarity around this. Each of the three artifacts now contains \u2018commitments\u2019 to\nthem. For the Product Backlog, it is the Product Goal, the Sprint Backlog has\nthe Sprint Goal, and the Increment has the Definition of Done (now without the\nquotes). They exist to bring transparency and focus toward the progress of each\nartifact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-Managing\nover Self-Organizing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides referred to Development Teams (team members who are working on the\nsprint increment) as self-organizing, choosing who and how to do work. With\nmore of a focus on the Scrum Team, the 2020 version emphasizes a self-managing\nScrum Team, that chooses who, how, and what to work on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nSprint Planning Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the\nSprint Planning topics of \u201cWhat\u201d and \u201cHow,\u201d the 2020 Scrum Guide places\nemphasis on a third topic, \u201cWhy.\u201d This third topic refers to the Sprint Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

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\n

 Here are my 2 cents <\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.       Align learning styles<\/strong> - Each of us has different ways in which we grasp things. Some of us love to listen to lectures whereas some of us would love to do experiments to understand concepts. The study shows that there are 7 different learning styles, and they are as listed below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Visual (spatial) Learner -Using pictures, images,\ndiagrams, whiteboards and more helps these types of learners understand\ninformation better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Aural (auditory) Learner -Aural learners are good\nlisteners who normally learn best through verbal presentations like\nlectures and speeches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Verbal (linguistic) Learner -These learners prefer using\nwords, both in speech and writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Physical (kinesthetic) Learner -Getting hands-on is a\nmust for these learners who love to tinker and learn best when they can do\nrather than see or hear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Logical (mathematical) Learner - If there is logic,\nreasoning, and numbers involved, these learners are sure to excel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Social learners favored Social (interpersonal)\nLearner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Solitary (intrapersonal) Learner - These students prefer\nto use self-study and work alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, if I belong to the visual and kinesthetic\nlearner type, then I would prefer classes with more diagrams and more\nexperiments rather than trainers speaking about topics. However, if I am a\nverbal learner, I would love to listen to lectures from experts. Understanding\nour unique learning styles would help us choose courses or methods of learning.\nEither you can look back at the training programs where you enjoyed or do the\nsurvey available on the internet to understand your style. For me, I love working\nin groups hence I choose courses(offline) where there are options to review\nother\u2019s work and connect with the team, which helps in better learning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Keeping Focus and avoiding distractions<\/strong>\u2013One of the major drawbacks of e-learning is the focus or having undivided attention. When we are in class or workshops, we do not open mobile or laptops to check emails or send messages and when we lose focus, we might daydream. However, when we are learning online, laptops or mobile that we use every day for office or for entertainment or for chatting with friends could themselves become distractions. Here are a few tips I followed to keep myself focused during classes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u00b7 Closeout the mails and collaboration channels keep\nmobile of our reach; Keep only course window open <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Set expectations at home that you are in training and not\nto be disturbed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Have video on <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Join a few minutes early and connect with the trainer\n\/facilitator. This also helps you to take on the next steps, such as\ncertification or becoming an expert in that area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 2 min mindful breathing before the class starts (ref\n-https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/mindful-leadership\/resources\/) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7Try out the exercises or case study and submit it \n\nI\nam sure most of you have been using the virtual learning platforms, either in\nyour organization or some preferred platforms to learn and grow in your\ncareers. Hope the above tips shared from my experience are useful. Please share\nyour best practices or tips or any recommendation from your learning journey on\nhow we can get the best out of the virtual learning model.\n\n<\/p>\n","post_title":"Tips to get the best of the virtual learning world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"tips-to-get-the-best-of-the-virtual-learning-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19014","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18707,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:58","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:58","post_content":"\n

Most of us would have read about the recent\nransomware hit on Colonial pipeline, one of the largest oil pipelines in the\nUS. They had to temporarily halt all the operations, it impacted some of the\ncompany\u2019s IT system and suffered a huge loss. It took almost a week to bring\nback the services and back to normal. During this unprecedented time, as we\nwere all working from home, Organization was worried about securing the\napplications, Infrastructure, etc. Cybersecurity has been slowly gaining focus\nand these kinds of attacks make serious attention.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the past 3 months, as an agile coach, I am involved in coaching a team that is developing a highly critical application that is also the backbone of the business deals. This application had to be super secure and if this application gets hit, it can have a huge impact on the organization in terms of finance, brand, and assets, data, etc. Hence, we had to explore how to integrate agile development practices and Cybersecurity practices. There have been some thoughts that agile, with its frequent releases, introduces vulnerability in the system and sometimes not recommended as a development approach for high critical application.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In the past, Cybersecurity teams usually get involved in the tail end and now with frequent releases, ways of working and processes need to be tailored. There were few practices that we got started which I will be sharing in this blog. Would love to hear from you; your stories and experiments in this area.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cybersecurity by definition is Computer\nsecurity, cybersecurity or information technology security (IT security) is the\nprotection of computer systems<\/a> and networks<\/a> from information disclosure, theft of or damage to\ntheir hardware<\/a>, software<\/a>, or electronic data<\/a>,\nas well as from the disruption<\/a> or misdirection<\/a> of the services they provide. In the past, the role\nof security was isolated to a specific team in the final stage of development.\nThat wasn\u2019t as problematic when development cycles lasted months or even years,\nbut those days are over. Effective agile development ensures rapid and frequent\ndevelopment cycles (sometimes weeks or days), but outdated security practices\ncan make the application more vulnerable to attacks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      There have been some doubts about Agile development methodologies and how it lends to Cybersecurity practices. But with self-organizing and cross-functional teams, agile enables different skill sets to work as a team to deliver good quality and secure software.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is how we got started with the process, and practices to integrate cybersecurity practices in agile development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.     Shift- Left:<\/strong>  Having\nexperts \/Cybersecurity personnel at the initial stage not at the end state; not\nto build systems of today. They were able to determine the risk tolerance of\nthe application and conduct risk\/benefit analysis. What amount of security\ncontrols are required for this application and threat modeling exercises? What\nkind of testing required during the sprints and have them integrated with the\ntesting and DevOps plan? It also underscores the need to help developers code\nwith security in mind, a process that involves security teams sharing\nvisibility, feedback, and insights on known threats. Based on the analysis and\nplan, all our developers were trained on the security protocols, processes and\ntools required. One of the important factors to keep in mind is the balance of\ncybersecurity activities with other activities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Hacker as persona:<\/strong> We introduced Hacker as a persona for the application as a next step. By building these personas<\/strong>, we worked out the best defense against certain types of attacks and predict when they might next occur. It helps us to understand the motivation and plan for countermeasures, prioritize defense. This persona was included as one of the users in the identified features of the application and which then was elaborated during the requirements and backlog grooming session. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Tools and Automation<\/strong>: There are quite a several tools available now in the cybersecurity domain. Once the cybersecurity process\/tests are identified, we find that most of our tasks were repetitive and manual. We started looking for ways to automate as Automating repeated tasks is key to DevSecOps since running manual security checks in the pipeline can be time-intensive. Some of these tasks can be automated, such as monitoring intrusion detection systems to search for threats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the major learning in this experimentation is that Shift left does not mean moving all the cybersecurity-related processes, practices, ways of working, and tools from the tail end to the initial stage of development. There had to be a balanced approach and what is required differs from application to application. But bringing this security mindset to all the team members helped a lot in bringing the balanced approach of security and frequent release cycles that was much needed for our application.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Agile and Cybersecurity - How to get started","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-and-cybersecurity-how-to-get-started","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18707","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18715,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:41","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:41","post_content":"\n

Harshita is a scrum master for a team. With the Covid situation across India, the team has been dull and in a very somber state. As a scrum master, she could understand and relate to the situation that the team has been going through. At an organization level, there has been a lot of Employee assistance programs. But she is confused about whether it is ok to have the team be like this or does she need to do something?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution:<\/strong> Here are few things that I would recommend she start with <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Status \/ Smiley images in the communication and collaboration tool.  We have asked team members to add this and this helps others in the team to understand the emotional state of each and every one.  It was quite beneficial and set the stage for everyone in the meetings and interaction.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Standup meetings or team meetings \u2013 First 5 min or 10 min is used for check-in and free-flow conversation. This helped team members to know what\u2019s happening, vent out some of their feelings and help each other as need. If it\u2019s a large team, use some of the survey tools to do check-in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Informal group chat\/gathering or 1:1 with each other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am sure most coaches, leaders are thinking about this and doing something to help their teams in these trying times. Let me know what are those things that you are doing.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #248 \u2013 Sensitivity during these(covid) times","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-248-sensitivity-during-thesecovid-times","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18715","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17712,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:47:04","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:17:04","post_content":"\n

Pravin has been coaching the development team for a few months on the implementation of Scrum. There were a lot of improvement ideas and opportunities that he and his team gathered for the Product team, operation teams during the retrospective. When he tried speaking to them to understand their processes and see if he can do something about it, he was told that the scrum master scope is for the IT development team and the operation teams are not part of it.  He was very excited when he read the new scrum guide and understood that the scrum master role is expanded. Will this help him to remove the obstacle of end to end coaching of the team? If not, what else can he do? Are there any suggestions or solutions that you would recommend?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suggested Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum master role definition and One product team from the scrum guide is a good starting point. Pravin can use the guide to drive the essence of one team delivering product starting from definition to support, roll out, and also point that it is from the industry best practice. In addition to that, it would be good for him to quantify the problem that he had gathered with the data; for ex the resolution time of the incident (end to end), new requirements from the operation team. Along with that, he can do an End to End process mapping w.r.t product delivery and facilitate a discussion with the relevant stakeholders. Most of the time, the problem would be due to organization design ie. Silos between the operation team, product team, and development team, and this might take a longer discussion to solve. <\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #224 - Scrum Master role in the Operations\/Support world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-224-scrum-master-role-in-the-operations-support-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17712","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17698,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:46:28","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:16:28","post_content":"\n

Last week, Scrum celebrated 25 years, and to add to that celebration, a new scrum guide was released. Over the years, Scrum has been implemented across multiple industries and domains and the feedback of its success and failures flowed back into this new Scrum guide. There was a lot of excitement among the agile community for the launch and the agile community was elated with the changes in the Scrum guide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us look at the summary of changes ( from scrum.org articles) in the new scrum guide and then talk about the impact for us (agile community). For more details, you can refer to scrum.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even Less\nPrescriptive<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years,\nthe Scrum Guide started getting a bit more prescriptive. The 2020 version aims\nto bring Scrum back to being a minimally sufficient framework. This was\nachieved by removing the Daily Scrum questions, softening language around PBI\nattributes and retro items in Sprint Backlog, shortening the Sprint\ncancellation section, and much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One Team,\nFocused on One Product<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal was to\neliminate the concept of a separate team within a team that has led to \u201cproxy\u201d\nor \u201cus and them\u201d behavior between the PO and Dev Team. There is now just one\nScrum Team focused on the same objective, with three different sets of accountabilities:\nPO, SM, and Developers (anybody who is working on the sprint increment).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction\nof Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum\nGuide introduces the concept of a Product Goal to provide the focus for the\nScrum Team toward a larger valuable objective. Each Sprint should bring the\nproduct closer to the overall Product Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Home for\nSprint Goal, Definition of Done, and Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides described Sprint Goal and Definition of Done without really giving them\nan identity. They were not quite artifacts but were somewhat attached to\nartifacts. With the addition of Product Goal, the 2020 version provides more\nclarity around this. Each of the three artifacts now contains \u2018commitments\u2019 to\nthem. For the Product Backlog, it is the Product Goal, the Sprint Backlog has\nthe Sprint Goal, and the Increment has the Definition of Done (now without the\nquotes). They exist to bring transparency and focus toward the progress of each\nartifact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-Managing\nover Self-Organizing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides referred to Development Teams (team members who are working on the\nsprint increment) as self-organizing, choosing who and how to do work. With\nmore of a focus on the Scrum Team, the 2020 version emphasizes a self-managing\nScrum Team, that chooses who, how, and what to work on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nSprint Planning Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the\nSprint Planning topics of \u201cWhat\u201d and \u201cHow,\u201d the 2020 Scrum Guide places\nemphasis on a third topic, \u201cWhy.\u201d This third topic refers to the Sprint Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

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\n

 As the industry matures, there have been lots of best\npractices and recommendations shared across to develop the right content and tips on\nhow to engage the participants for trainers. In some organizations, trainers\nare re-trained to adopt this model. Whereas I feel that as a learner, it is up\nto each of us to figure out new ways of learning in the new world that is\npoised to stay. During the past 2 years, I have been on a personal learning\njourney and was using various virtual learning tools, platforms for that\npurpose. Initially, when I started, I fumbled through these learning methods, and sometimes I dropped the course or lectures in-between as they did not fit my\nlearning styles, wasting both my time and money. After few trials, I figured out\nsome practices or tips that are helping me out to get the best out of these\nvirtual learning courses or workshops. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Here are my 2 cents <\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.       Align learning styles<\/strong> - Each of us has different ways in which we grasp things. Some of us love to listen to lectures whereas some of us would love to do experiments to understand concepts. The study shows that there are 7 different learning styles, and they are as listed below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Visual (spatial) Learner -Using pictures, images,\ndiagrams, whiteboards and more helps these types of learners understand\ninformation better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Aural (auditory) Learner -Aural learners are good\nlisteners who normally learn best through verbal presentations like\nlectures and speeches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Verbal (linguistic) Learner -These learners prefer using\nwords, both in speech and writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Physical (kinesthetic) Learner -Getting hands-on is a\nmust for these learners who love to tinker and learn best when they can do\nrather than see or hear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Logical (mathematical) Learner - If there is logic,\nreasoning, and numbers involved, these learners are sure to excel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Social learners favored Social (interpersonal)\nLearner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Solitary (intrapersonal) Learner - These students prefer\nto use self-study and work alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, if I belong to the visual and kinesthetic\nlearner type, then I would prefer classes with more diagrams and more\nexperiments rather than trainers speaking about topics. However, if I am a\nverbal learner, I would love to listen to lectures from experts. Understanding\nour unique learning styles would help us choose courses or methods of learning.\nEither you can look back at the training programs where you enjoyed or do the\nsurvey available on the internet to understand your style. For me, I love working\nin groups hence I choose courses(offline) where there are options to review\nother\u2019s work and connect with the team, which helps in better learning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Keeping Focus and avoiding distractions<\/strong>\u2013One of the major drawbacks of e-learning is the focus or having undivided attention. When we are in class or workshops, we do not open mobile or laptops to check emails or send messages and when we lose focus, we might daydream. However, when we are learning online, laptops or mobile that we use every day for office or for entertainment or for chatting with friends could themselves become distractions. Here are a few tips I followed to keep myself focused during classes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u00b7 Closeout the mails and collaboration channels keep\nmobile of our reach; Keep only course window open <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Set expectations at home that you are in training and not\nto be disturbed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Have video on <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Join a few minutes early and connect with the trainer\n\/facilitator. This also helps you to take on the next steps, such as\ncertification or becoming an expert in that area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 2 min mindful breathing before the class starts (ref\n-https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/mindful-leadership\/resources\/) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7Try out the exercises or case study and submit it \n\nI\nam sure most of you have been using the virtual learning platforms, either in\nyour organization or some preferred platforms to learn and grow in your\ncareers. Hope the above tips shared from my experience are useful. Please share\nyour best practices or tips or any recommendation from your learning journey on\nhow we can get the best out of the virtual learning model.\n\n<\/p>\n","post_title":"Tips to get the best of the virtual learning world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"tips-to-get-the-best-of-the-virtual-learning-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19014","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18707,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:58","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:58","post_content":"\n

Most of us would have read about the recent\nransomware hit on Colonial pipeline, one of the largest oil pipelines in the\nUS. They had to temporarily halt all the operations, it impacted some of the\ncompany\u2019s IT system and suffered a huge loss. It took almost a week to bring\nback the services and back to normal. During this unprecedented time, as we\nwere all working from home, Organization was worried about securing the\napplications, Infrastructure, etc. Cybersecurity has been slowly gaining focus\nand these kinds of attacks make serious attention.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the past 3 months, as an agile coach, I am involved in coaching a team that is developing a highly critical application that is also the backbone of the business deals. This application had to be super secure and if this application gets hit, it can have a huge impact on the organization in terms of finance, brand, and assets, data, etc. Hence, we had to explore how to integrate agile development practices and Cybersecurity practices. There have been some thoughts that agile, with its frequent releases, introduces vulnerability in the system and sometimes not recommended as a development approach for high critical application.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In the past, Cybersecurity teams usually get involved in the tail end and now with frequent releases, ways of working and processes need to be tailored. There were few practices that we got started which I will be sharing in this blog. Would love to hear from you; your stories and experiments in this area.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cybersecurity by definition is Computer\nsecurity, cybersecurity or information technology security (IT security) is the\nprotection of computer systems<\/a> and networks<\/a> from information disclosure, theft of or damage to\ntheir hardware<\/a>, software<\/a>, or electronic data<\/a>,\nas well as from the disruption<\/a> or misdirection<\/a> of the services they provide. In the past, the role\nof security was isolated to a specific team in the final stage of development.\nThat wasn\u2019t as problematic when development cycles lasted months or even years,\nbut those days are over. Effective agile development ensures rapid and frequent\ndevelopment cycles (sometimes weeks or days), but outdated security practices\ncan make the application more vulnerable to attacks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      There have been some doubts about Agile development methodologies and how it lends to Cybersecurity practices. But with self-organizing and cross-functional teams, agile enables different skill sets to work as a team to deliver good quality and secure software.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is how we got started with the process, and practices to integrate cybersecurity practices in agile development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.     Shift- Left:<\/strong>  Having\nexperts \/Cybersecurity personnel at the initial stage not at the end state; not\nto build systems of today. They were able to determine the risk tolerance of\nthe application and conduct risk\/benefit analysis. What amount of security\ncontrols are required for this application and threat modeling exercises? What\nkind of testing required during the sprints and have them integrated with the\ntesting and DevOps plan? It also underscores the need to help developers code\nwith security in mind, a process that involves security teams sharing\nvisibility, feedback, and insights on known threats. Based on the analysis and\nplan, all our developers were trained on the security protocols, processes and\ntools required. One of the important factors to keep in mind is the balance of\ncybersecurity activities with other activities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Hacker as persona:<\/strong> We introduced Hacker as a persona for the application as a next step. By building these personas<\/strong>, we worked out the best defense against certain types of attacks and predict when they might next occur. It helps us to understand the motivation and plan for countermeasures, prioritize defense. This persona was included as one of the users in the identified features of the application and which then was elaborated during the requirements and backlog grooming session. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Tools and Automation<\/strong>: There are quite a several tools available now in the cybersecurity domain. Once the cybersecurity process\/tests are identified, we find that most of our tasks were repetitive and manual. We started looking for ways to automate as Automating repeated tasks is key to DevSecOps since running manual security checks in the pipeline can be time-intensive. Some of these tasks can be automated, such as monitoring intrusion detection systems to search for threats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the major learning in this experimentation is that Shift left does not mean moving all the cybersecurity-related processes, practices, ways of working, and tools from the tail end to the initial stage of development. There had to be a balanced approach and what is required differs from application to application. But bringing this security mindset to all the team members helped a lot in bringing the balanced approach of security and frequent release cycles that was much needed for our application.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Agile and Cybersecurity - How to get started","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-and-cybersecurity-how-to-get-started","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18707","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18715,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:41","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:41","post_content":"\n

Harshita is a scrum master for a team. With the Covid situation across India, the team has been dull and in a very somber state. As a scrum master, she could understand and relate to the situation that the team has been going through. At an organization level, there has been a lot of Employee assistance programs. But she is confused about whether it is ok to have the team be like this or does she need to do something?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution:<\/strong> Here are few things that I would recommend she start with <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Status \/ Smiley images in the communication and collaboration tool.  We have asked team members to add this and this helps others in the team to understand the emotional state of each and every one.  It was quite beneficial and set the stage for everyone in the meetings and interaction.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Standup meetings or team meetings \u2013 First 5 min or 10 min is used for check-in and free-flow conversation. This helped team members to know what\u2019s happening, vent out some of their feelings and help each other as need. If it\u2019s a large team, use some of the survey tools to do check-in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Informal group chat\/gathering or 1:1 with each other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am sure most coaches, leaders are thinking about this and doing something to help their teams in these trying times. Let me know what are those things that you are doing.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #248 \u2013 Sensitivity during these(covid) times","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-248-sensitivity-during-thesecovid-times","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18715","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17712,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:47:04","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:17:04","post_content":"\n

Pravin has been coaching the development team for a few months on the implementation of Scrum. There were a lot of improvement ideas and opportunities that he and his team gathered for the Product team, operation teams during the retrospective. When he tried speaking to them to understand their processes and see if he can do something about it, he was told that the scrum master scope is for the IT development team and the operation teams are not part of it.  He was very excited when he read the new scrum guide and understood that the scrum master role is expanded. Will this help him to remove the obstacle of end to end coaching of the team? If not, what else can he do? Are there any suggestions or solutions that you would recommend?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suggested Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum master role definition and One product team from the scrum guide is a good starting point. Pravin can use the guide to drive the essence of one team delivering product starting from definition to support, roll out, and also point that it is from the industry best practice. In addition to that, it would be good for him to quantify the problem that he had gathered with the data; for ex the resolution time of the incident (end to end), new requirements from the operation team. Along with that, he can do an End to End process mapping w.r.t product delivery and facilitate a discussion with the relevant stakeholders. Most of the time, the problem would be due to organization design ie. Silos between the operation team, product team, and development team, and this might take a longer discussion to solve. <\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #224 - Scrum Master role in the Operations\/Support world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-224-scrum-master-role-in-the-operations-support-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17712","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17698,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:46:28","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:16:28","post_content":"\n

Last week, Scrum celebrated 25 years, and to add to that celebration, a new scrum guide was released. Over the years, Scrum has been implemented across multiple industries and domains and the feedback of its success and failures flowed back into this new Scrum guide. There was a lot of excitement among the agile community for the launch and the agile community was elated with the changes in the Scrum guide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us look at the summary of changes ( from scrum.org articles) in the new scrum guide and then talk about the impact for us (agile community). For more details, you can refer to scrum.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even Less\nPrescriptive<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years,\nthe Scrum Guide started getting a bit more prescriptive. The 2020 version aims\nto bring Scrum back to being a minimally sufficient framework. This was\nachieved by removing the Daily Scrum questions, softening language around PBI\nattributes and retro items in Sprint Backlog, shortening the Sprint\ncancellation section, and much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One Team,\nFocused on One Product<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal was to\neliminate the concept of a separate team within a team that has led to \u201cproxy\u201d\nor \u201cus and them\u201d behavior between the PO and Dev Team. There is now just one\nScrum Team focused on the same objective, with three different sets of accountabilities:\nPO, SM, and Developers (anybody who is working on the sprint increment).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction\nof Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum\nGuide introduces the concept of a Product Goal to provide the focus for the\nScrum Team toward a larger valuable objective. Each Sprint should bring the\nproduct closer to the overall Product Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Home for\nSprint Goal, Definition of Done, and Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides described Sprint Goal and Definition of Done without really giving them\nan identity. They were not quite artifacts but were somewhat attached to\nartifacts. With the addition of Product Goal, the 2020 version provides more\nclarity around this. Each of the three artifacts now contains \u2018commitments\u2019 to\nthem. For the Product Backlog, it is the Product Goal, the Sprint Backlog has\nthe Sprint Goal, and the Increment has the Definition of Done (now without the\nquotes). They exist to bring transparency and focus toward the progress of each\nartifact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-Managing\nover Self-Organizing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides referred to Development Teams (team members who are working on the\nsprint increment) as self-organizing, choosing who and how to do work. With\nmore of a focus on the Scrum Team, the 2020 version emphasizes a self-managing\nScrum Team, that chooses who, how, and what to work on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nSprint Planning Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the\nSprint Planning topics of \u201cWhat\u201d and \u201cHow,\u201d the 2020 Scrum Guide places\nemphasis on a third topic, \u201cWhy.\u201d This third topic refers to the Sprint Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

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\n

 E-learning Market Value Projected To Reach US$ 660.8\nBillion By 2027 Covering Covid-19 Impact -  The global e-learning\nmarket<\/strong><\/a> is expected to grow at a CAGR of around 15.9%\nfrom 2020 to 2027 and reach the market value of over US$ 660.8 Bn by 2027. (ref\nhttps:\/\/www.globenewswire.com\/news-release\/2021\/05\/20\/2233572\/0\/en\/<\/a>E-learning-Market-Value-Projected-To-Reach-US-660-8-Billion-By-2027-Covering-Covid-19-Impact-Acumen-Research-and-Consulting.html<\/a>)  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 As the industry matures, there have been lots of best\npractices and recommendations shared across to develop the right content and tips on\nhow to engage the participants for trainers. In some organizations, trainers\nare re-trained to adopt this model. Whereas I feel that as a learner, it is up\nto each of us to figure out new ways of learning in the new world that is\npoised to stay. During the past 2 years, I have been on a personal learning\njourney and was using various virtual learning tools, platforms for that\npurpose. Initially, when I started, I fumbled through these learning methods, and sometimes I dropped the course or lectures in-between as they did not fit my\nlearning styles, wasting both my time and money. After few trials, I figured out\nsome practices or tips that are helping me out to get the best out of these\nvirtual learning courses or workshops. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Here are my 2 cents <\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.       Align learning styles<\/strong> - Each of us has different ways in which we grasp things. Some of us love to listen to lectures whereas some of us would love to do experiments to understand concepts. The study shows that there are 7 different learning styles, and they are as listed below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Visual (spatial) Learner -Using pictures, images,\ndiagrams, whiteboards and more helps these types of learners understand\ninformation better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Aural (auditory) Learner -Aural learners are good\nlisteners who normally learn best through verbal presentations like\nlectures and speeches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Verbal (linguistic) Learner -These learners prefer using\nwords, both in speech and writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Physical (kinesthetic) Learner -Getting hands-on is a\nmust for these learners who love to tinker and learn best when they can do\nrather than see or hear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Logical (mathematical) Learner - If there is logic,\nreasoning, and numbers involved, these learners are sure to excel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Social learners favored Social (interpersonal)\nLearner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Solitary (intrapersonal) Learner - These students prefer\nto use self-study and work alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, if I belong to the visual and kinesthetic\nlearner type, then I would prefer classes with more diagrams and more\nexperiments rather than trainers speaking about topics. However, if I am a\nverbal learner, I would love to listen to lectures from experts. Understanding\nour unique learning styles would help us choose courses or methods of learning.\nEither you can look back at the training programs where you enjoyed or do the\nsurvey available on the internet to understand your style. For me, I love working\nin groups hence I choose courses(offline) where there are options to review\nother\u2019s work and connect with the team, which helps in better learning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Keeping Focus and avoiding distractions<\/strong>\u2013One of the major drawbacks of e-learning is the focus or having undivided attention. When we are in class or workshops, we do not open mobile or laptops to check emails or send messages and when we lose focus, we might daydream. However, when we are learning online, laptops or mobile that we use every day for office or for entertainment or for chatting with friends could themselves become distractions. Here are a few tips I followed to keep myself focused during classes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u00b7 Closeout the mails and collaboration channels keep\nmobile of our reach; Keep only course window open <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Set expectations at home that you are in training and not\nto be disturbed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Have video on <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Join a few minutes early and connect with the trainer\n\/facilitator. This also helps you to take on the next steps, such as\ncertification or becoming an expert in that area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 2 min mindful breathing before the class starts (ref\n-https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/mindful-leadership\/resources\/) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7Try out the exercises or case study and submit it \n\nI\nam sure most of you have been using the virtual learning platforms, either in\nyour organization or some preferred platforms to learn and grow in your\ncareers. Hope the above tips shared from my experience are useful. Please share\nyour best practices or tips or any recommendation from your learning journey on\nhow we can get the best out of the virtual learning model.\n\n<\/p>\n","post_title":"Tips to get the best of the virtual learning world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"tips-to-get-the-best-of-the-virtual-learning-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19014","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18707,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:58","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:58","post_content":"\n

Most of us would have read about the recent\nransomware hit on Colonial pipeline, one of the largest oil pipelines in the\nUS. They had to temporarily halt all the operations, it impacted some of the\ncompany\u2019s IT system and suffered a huge loss. It took almost a week to bring\nback the services and back to normal. During this unprecedented time, as we\nwere all working from home, Organization was worried about securing the\napplications, Infrastructure, etc. Cybersecurity has been slowly gaining focus\nand these kinds of attacks make serious attention.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the past 3 months, as an agile coach, I am involved in coaching a team that is developing a highly critical application that is also the backbone of the business deals. This application had to be super secure and if this application gets hit, it can have a huge impact on the organization in terms of finance, brand, and assets, data, etc. Hence, we had to explore how to integrate agile development practices and Cybersecurity practices. There have been some thoughts that agile, with its frequent releases, introduces vulnerability in the system and sometimes not recommended as a development approach for high critical application.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In the past, Cybersecurity teams usually get involved in the tail end and now with frequent releases, ways of working and processes need to be tailored. There were few practices that we got started which I will be sharing in this blog. Would love to hear from you; your stories and experiments in this area.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cybersecurity by definition is Computer\nsecurity, cybersecurity or information technology security (IT security) is the\nprotection of computer systems<\/a> and networks<\/a> from information disclosure, theft of or damage to\ntheir hardware<\/a>, software<\/a>, or electronic data<\/a>,\nas well as from the disruption<\/a> or misdirection<\/a> of the services they provide. In the past, the role\nof security was isolated to a specific team in the final stage of development.\nThat wasn\u2019t as problematic when development cycles lasted months or even years,\nbut those days are over. Effective agile development ensures rapid and frequent\ndevelopment cycles (sometimes weeks or days), but outdated security practices\ncan make the application more vulnerable to attacks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      There have been some doubts about Agile development methodologies and how it lends to Cybersecurity practices. But with self-organizing and cross-functional teams, agile enables different skill sets to work as a team to deliver good quality and secure software.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is how we got started with the process, and practices to integrate cybersecurity practices in agile development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.     Shift- Left:<\/strong>  Having\nexperts \/Cybersecurity personnel at the initial stage not at the end state; not\nto build systems of today. They were able to determine the risk tolerance of\nthe application and conduct risk\/benefit analysis. What amount of security\ncontrols are required for this application and threat modeling exercises? What\nkind of testing required during the sprints and have them integrated with the\ntesting and DevOps plan? It also underscores the need to help developers code\nwith security in mind, a process that involves security teams sharing\nvisibility, feedback, and insights on known threats. Based on the analysis and\nplan, all our developers were trained on the security protocols, processes and\ntools required. One of the important factors to keep in mind is the balance of\ncybersecurity activities with other activities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Hacker as persona:<\/strong> We introduced Hacker as a persona for the application as a next step. By building these personas<\/strong>, we worked out the best defense against certain types of attacks and predict when they might next occur. It helps us to understand the motivation and plan for countermeasures, prioritize defense. This persona was included as one of the users in the identified features of the application and which then was elaborated during the requirements and backlog grooming session. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Tools and Automation<\/strong>: There are quite a several tools available now in the cybersecurity domain. Once the cybersecurity process\/tests are identified, we find that most of our tasks were repetitive and manual. We started looking for ways to automate as Automating repeated tasks is key to DevSecOps since running manual security checks in the pipeline can be time-intensive. Some of these tasks can be automated, such as monitoring intrusion detection systems to search for threats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the major learning in this experimentation is that Shift left does not mean moving all the cybersecurity-related processes, practices, ways of working, and tools from the tail end to the initial stage of development. There had to be a balanced approach and what is required differs from application to application. But bringing this security mindset to all the team members helped a lot in bringing the balanced approach of security and frequent release cycles that was much needed for our application.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Agile and Cybersecurity - How to get started","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-and-cybersecurity-how-to-get-started","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18707","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18715,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:41","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:41","post_content":"\n

Harshita is a scrum master for a team. With the Covid situation across India, the team has been dull and in a very somber state. As a scrum master, she could understand and relate to the situation that the team has been going through. At an organization level, there has been a lot of Employee assistance programs. But she is confused about whether it is ok to have the team be like this or does she need to do something?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution:<\/strong> Here are few things that I would recommend she start with <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Status \/ Smiley images in the communication and collaboration tool.  We have asked team members to add this and this helps others in the team to understand the emotional state of each and every one.  It was quite beneficial and set the stage for everyone in the meetings and interaction.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Standup meetings or team meetings \u2013 First 5 min or 10 min is used for check-in and free-flow conversation. This helped team members to know what\u2019s happening, vent out some of their feelings and help each other as need. If it\u2019s a large team, use some of the survey tools to do check-in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Informal group chat\/gathering or 1:1 with each other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am sure most coaches, leaders are thinking about this and doing something to help their teams in these trying times. Let me know what are those things that you are doing.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #248 \u2013 Sensitivity during these(covid) times","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-248-sensitivity-during-thesecovid-times","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18715","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17712,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:47:04","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:17:04","post_content":"\n

Pravin has been coaching the development team for a few months on the implementation of Scrum. There were a lot of improvement ideas and opportunities that he and his team gathered for the Product team, operation teams during the retrospective. When he tried speaking to them to understand their processes and see if he can do something about it, he was told that the scrum master scope is for the IT development team and the operation teams are not part of it.  He was very excited when he read the new scrum guide and understood that the scrum master role is expanded. Will this help him to remove the obstacle of end to end coaching of the team? If not, what else can he do? Are there any suggestions or solutions that you would recommend?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suggested Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum master role definition and One product team from the scrum guide is a good starting point. Pravin can use the guide to drive the essence of one team delivering product starting from definition to support, roll out, and also point that it is from the industry best practice. In addition to that, it would be good for him to quantify the problem that he had gathered with the data; for ex the resolution time of the incident (end to end), new requirements from the operation team. Along with that, he can do an End to End process mapping w.r.t product delivery and facilitate a discussion with the relevant stakeholders. Most of the time, the problem would be due to organization design ie. Silos between the operation team, product team, and development team, and this might take a longer discussion to solve. <\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #224 - Scrum Master role in the Operations\/Support world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-224-scrum-master-role-in-the-operations-support-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17712","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17698,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:46:28","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:16:28","post_content":"\n

Last week, Scrum celebrated 25 years, and to add to that celebration, a new scrum guide was released. Over the years, Scrum has been implemented across multiple industries and domains and the feedback of its success and failures flowed back into this new Scrum guide. There was a lot of excitement among the agile community for the launch and the agile community was elated with the changes in the Scrum guide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us look at the summary of changes ( from scrum.org articles) in the new scrum guide and then talk about the impact for us (agile community). For more details, you can refer to scrum.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even Less\nPrescriptive<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years,\nthe Scrum Guide started getting a bit more prescriptive. The 2020 version aims\nto bring Scrum back to being a minimally sufficient framework. This was\nachieved by removing the Daily Scrum questions, softening language around PBI\nattributes and retro items in Sprint Backlog, shortening the Sprint\ncancellation section, and much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One Team,\nFocused on One Product<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal was to\neliminate the concept of a separate team within a team that has led to \u201cproxy\u201d\nor \u201cus and them\u201d behavior between the PO and Dev Team. There is now just one\nScrum Team focused on the same objective, with three different sets of accountabilities:\nPO, SM, and Developers (anybody who is working on the sprint increment).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction\nof Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum\nGuide introduces the concept of a Product Goal to provide the focus for the\nScrum Team toward a larger valuable objective. Each Sprint should bring the\nproduct closer to the overall Product Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Home for\nSprint Goal, Definition of Done, and Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides described Sprint Goal and Definition of Done without really giving them\nan identity. They were not quite artifacts but were somewhat attached to\nartifacts. With the addition of Product Goal, the 2020 version provides more\nclarity around this. Each of the three artifacts now contains \u2018commitments\u2019 to\nthem. For the Product Backlog, it is the Product Goal, the Sprint Backlog has\nthe Sprint Goal, and the Increment has the Definition of Done (now without the\nquotes). They exist to bring transparency and focus toward the progress of each\nartifact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-Managing\nover Self-Organizing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides referred to Development Teams (team members who are working on the\nsprint increment) as self-organizing, choosing who and how to do work. With\nmore of a focus on the Scrum Team, the 2020 version emphasizes a self-managing\nScrum Team, that chooses who, how, and what to work on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nSprint Planning Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the\nSprint Planning topics of \u201cWhat\u201d and \u201cHow,\u201d the 2020 Scrum Guide places\nemphasis on a third topic, \u201cWhy.\u201d This third topic refers to the Sprint Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

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https:\/\/www.weforum.org\/agenda\/2020\/04\/coronavirus-education-global-covid19-online-digital-learning\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

 E-learning Market Value Projected To Reach US$ 660.8\nBillion By 2027 Covering Covid-19 Impact -  The global e-learning\nmarket<\/strong><\/a> is expected to grow at a CAGR of around 15.9%\nfrom 2020 to 2027 and reach the market value of over US$ 660.8 Bn by 2027. (ref\nhttps:\/\/www.globenewswire.com\/news-release\/2021\/05\/20\/2233572\/0\/en\/<\/a>E-learning-Market-Value-Projected-To-Reach-US-660-8-Billion-By-2027-Covering-Covid-19-Impact-Acumen-Research-and-Consulting.html<\/a>)  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 As the industry matures, there have been lots of best\npractices and recommendations shared across to develop the right content and tips on\nhow to engage the participants for trainers. In some organizations, trainers\nare re-trained to adopt this model. Whereas I feel that as a learner, it is up\nto each of us to figure out new ways of learning in the new world that is\npoised to stay. During the past 2 years, I have been on a personal learning\njourney and was using various virtual learning tools, platforms for that\npurpose. Initially, when I started, I fumbled through these learning methods, and sometimes I dropped the course or lectures in-between as they did not fit my\nlearning styles, wasting both my time and money. After few trials, I figured out\nsome practices or tips that are helping me out to get the best out of these\nvirtual learning courses or workshops. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Here are my 2 cents <\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.       Align learning styles<\/strong> - Each of us has different ways in which we grasp things. Some of us love to listen to lectures whereas some of us would love to do experiments to understand concepts. The study shows that there are 7 different learning styles, and they are as listed below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Visual (spatial) Learner -Using pictures, images,\ndiagrams, whiteboards and more helps these types of learners understand\ninformation better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Aural (auditory) Learner -Aural learners are good\nlisteners who normally learn best through verbal presentations like\nlectures and speeches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Verbal (linguistic) Learner -These learners prefer using\nwords, both in speech and writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Physical (kinesthetic) Learner -Getting hands-on is a\nmust for these learners who love to tinker and learn best when they can do\nrather than see or hear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Logical (mathematical) Learner - If there is logic,\nreasoning, and numbers involved, these learners are sure to excel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Social learners favored Social (interpersonal)\nLearner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Solitary (intrapersonal) Learner - These students prefer\nto use self-study and work alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, if I belong to the visual and kinesthetic\nlearner type, then I would prefer classes with more diagrams and more\nexperiments rather than trainers speaking about topics. However, if I am a\nverbal learner, I would love to listen to lectures from experts. Understanding\nour unique learning styles would help us choose courses or methods of learning.\nEither you can look back at the training programs where you enjoyed or do the\nsurvey available on the internet to understand your style. For me, I love working\nin groups hence I choose courses(offline) where there are options to review\nother\u2019s work and connect with the team, which helps in better learning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Keeping Focus and avoiding distractions<\/strong>\u2013One of the major drawbacks of e-learning is the focus or having undivided attention. When we are in class or workshops, we do not open mobile or laptops to check emails or send messages and when we lose focus, we might daydream. However, when we are learning online, laptops or mobile that we use every day for office or for entertainment or for chatting with friends could themselves become distractions. Here are a few tips I followed to keep myself focused during classes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u00b7 Closeout the mails and collaboration channels keep\nmobile of our reach; Keep only course window open <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Set expectations at home that you are in training and not\nto be disturbed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Have video on <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Join a few minutes early and connect with the trainer\n\/facilitator. This also helps you to take on the next steps, such as\ncertification or becoming an expert in that area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 2 min mindful breathing before the class starts (ref\n-https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/mindful-leadership\/resources\/) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7Try out the exercises or case study and submit it \n\nI\nam sure most of you have been using the virtual learning platforms, either in\nyour organization or some preferred platforms to learn and grow in your\ncareers. Hope the above tips shared from my experience are useful. Please share\nyour best practices or tips or any recommendation from your learning journey on\nhow we can get the best out of the virtual learning model.\n\n<\/p>\n","post_title":"Tips to get the best of the virtual learning world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"tips-to-get-the-best-of-the-virtual-learning-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19014","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18707,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:58","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:58","post_content":"\n

Most of us would have read about the recent\nransomware hit on Colonial pipeline, one of the largest oil pipelines in the\nUS. They had to temporarily halt all the operations, it impacted some of the\ncompany\u2019s IT system and suffered a huge loss. It took almost a week to bring\nback the services and back to normal. During this unprecedented time, as we\nwere all working from home, Organization was worried about securing the\napplications, Infrastructure, etc. Cybersecurity has been slowly gaining focus\nand these kinds of attacks make serious attention.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the past 3 months, as an agile coach, I am involved in coaching a team that is developing a highly critical application that is also the backbone of the business deals. This application had to be super secure and if this application gets hit, it can have a huge impact on the organization in terms of finance, brand, and assets, data, etc. Hence, we had to explore how to integrate agile development practices and Cybersecurity practices. There have been some thoughts that agile, with its frequent releases, introduces vulnerability in the system and sometimes not recommended as a development approach for high critical application.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In the past, Cybersecurity teams usually get involved in the tail end and now with frequent releases, ways of working and processes need to be tailored. There were few practices that we got started which I will be sharing in this blog. Would love to hear from you; your stories and experiments in this area.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cybersecurity by definition is Computer\nsecurity, cybersecurity or information technology security (IT security) is the\nprotection of computer systems<\/a> and networks<\/a> from information disclosure, theft of or damage to\ntheir hardware<\/a>, software<\/a>, or electronic data<\/a>,\nas well as from the disruption<\/a> or misdirection<\/a> of the services they provide. In the past, the role\nof security was isolated to a specific team in the final stage of development.\nThat wasn\u2019t as problematic when development cycles lasted months or even years,\nbut those days are over. Effective agile development ensures rapid and frequent\ndevelopment cycles (sometimes weeks or days), but outdated security practices\ncan make the application more vulnerable to attacks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      There have been some doubts about Agile development methodologies and how it lends to Cybersecurity practices. But with self-organizing and cross-functional teams, agile enables different skill sets to work as a team to deliver good quality and secure software.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is how we got started with the process, and practices to integrate cybersecurity practices in agile development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.     Shift- Left:<\/strong>  Having\nexperts \/Cybersecurity personnel at the initial stage not at the end state; not\nto build systems of today. They were able to determine the risk tolerance of\nthe application and conduct risk\/benefit analysis. What amount of security\ncontrols are required for this application and threat modeling exercises? What\nkind of testing required during the sprints and have them integrated with the\ntesting and DevOps plan? It also underscores the need to help developers code\nwith security in mind, a process that involves security teams sharing\nvisibility, feedback, and insights on known threats. Based on the analysis and\nplan, all our developers were trained on the security protocols, processes and\ntools required. One of the important factors to keep in mind is the balance of\ncybersecurity activities with other activities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Hacker as persona:<\/strong> We introduced Hacker as a persona for the application as a next step. By building these personas<\/strong>, we worked out the best defense against certain types of attacks and predict when they might next occur. It helps us to understand the motivation and plan for countermeasures, prioritize defense. This persona was included as one of the users in the identified features of the application and which then was elaborated during the requirements and backlog grooming session. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Tools and Automation<\/strong>: There are quite a several tools available now in the cybersecurity domain. Once the cybersecurity process\/tests are identified, we find that most of our tasks were repetitive and manual. We started looking for ways to automate as Automating repeated tasks is key to DevSecOps since running manual security checks in the pipeline can be time-intensive. Some of these tasks can be automated, such as monitoring intrusion detection systems to search for threats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the major learning in this experimentation is that Shift left does not mean moving all the cybersecurity-related processes, practices, ways of working, and tools from the tail end to the initial stage of development. There had to be a balanced approach and what is required differs from application to application. But bringing this security mindset to all the team members helped a lot in bringing the balanced approach of security and frequent release cycles that was much needed for our application.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Agile and Cybersecurity - How to get started","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-and-cybersecurity-how-to-get-started","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18707","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18715,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:41","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:41","post_content":"\n

Harshita is a scrum master for a team. With the Covid situation across India, the team has been dull and in a very somber state. As a scrum master, she could understand and relate to the situation that the team has been going through. At an organization level, there has been a lot of Employee assistance programs. But she is confused about whether it is ok to have the team be like this or does she need to do something?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution:<\/strong> Here are few things that I would recommend she start with <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Status \/ Smiley images in the communication and collaboration tool.  We have asked team members to add this and this helps others in the team to understand the emotional state of each and every one.  It was quite beneficial and set the stage for everyone in the meetings and interaction.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Standup meetings or team meetings \u2013 First 5 min or 10 min is used for check-in and free-flow conversation. This helped team members to know what\u2019s happening, vent out some of their feelings and help each other as need. If it\u2019s a large team, use some of the survey tools to do check-in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Informal group chat\/gathering or 1:1 with each other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am sure most coaches, leaders are thinking about this and doing something to help their teams in these trying times. Let me know what are those things that you are doing.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #248 \u2013 Sensitivity during these(covid) times","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-248-sensitivity-during-thesecovid-times","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18715","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17712,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:47:04","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:17:04","post_content":"\n

Pravin has been coaching the development team for a few months on the implementation of Scrum. There were a lot of improvement ideas and opportunities that he and his team gathered for the Product team, operation teams during the retrospective. When he tried speaking to them to understand their processes and see if he can do something about it, he was told that the scrum master scope is for the IT development team and the operation teams are not part of it.  He was very excited when he read the new scrum guide and understood that the scrum master role is expanded. Will this help him to remove the obstacle of end to end coaching of the team? If not, what else can he do? Are there any suggestions or solutions that you would recommend?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suggested Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum master role definition and One product team from the scrum guide is a good starting point. Pravin can use the guide to drive the essence of one team delivering product starting from definition to support, roll out, and also point that it is from the industry best practice. In addition to that, it would be good for him to quantify the problem that he had gathered with the data; for ex the resolution time of the incident (end to end), new requirements from the operation team. Along with that, he can do an End to End process mapping w.r.t product delivery and facilitate a discussion with the relevant stakeholders. Most of the time, the problem would be due to organization design ie. Silos between the operation team, product team, and development team, and this might take a longer discussion to solve. <\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #224 - Scrum Master role in the Operations\/Support world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-224-scrum-master-role-in-the-operations-support-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17712","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17698,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:46:28","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:16:28","post_content":"\n

Last week, Scrum celebrated 25 years, and to add to that celebration, a new scrum guide was released. Over the years, Scrum has been implemented across multiple industries and domains and the feedback of its success and failures flowed back into this new Scrum guide. There was a lot of excitement among the agile community for the launch and the agile community was elated with the changes in the Scrum guide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us look at the summary of changes ( from scrum.org articles) in the new scrum guide and then talk about the impact for us (agile community). For more details, you can refer to scrum.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even Less\nPrescriptive<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years,\nthe Scrum Guide started getting a bit more prescriptive. The 2020 version aims\nto bring Scrum back to being a minimally sufficient framework. This was\nachieved by removing the Daily Scrum questions, softening language around PBI\nattributes and retro items in Sprint Backlog, shortening the Sprint\ncancellation section, and much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One Team,\nFocused on One Product<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal was to\neliminate the concept of a separate team within a team that has led to \u201cproxy\u201d\nor \u201cus and them\u201d behavior between the PO and Dev Team. There is now just one\nScrum Team focused on the same objective, with three different sets of accountabilities:\nPO, SM, and Developers (anybody who is working on the sprint increment).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction\nof Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum\nGuide introduces the concept of a Product Goal to provide the focus for the\nScrum Team toward a larger valuable objective. Each Sprint should bring the\nproduct closer to the overall Product Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Home for\nSprint Goal, Definition of Done, and Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides described Sprint Goal and Definition of Done without really giving them\nan identity. They were not quite artifacts but were somewhat attached to\nartifacts. With the addition of Product Goal, the 2020 version provides more\nclarity around this. Each of the three artifacts now contains \u2018commitments\u2019 to\nthem. For the Product Backlog, it is the Product Goal, the Sprint Backlog has\nthe Sprint Goal, and the Increment has the Definition of Done (now without the\nquotes). They exist to bring transparency and focus toward the progress of each\nartifact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-Managing\nover Self-Organizing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides referred to Development Teams (team members who are working on the\nsprint increment) as self-organizing, choosing who and how to do work. With\nmore of a focus on the Scrum Team, the 2020 version emphasizes a self-managing\nScrum Team, that chooses who, how, and what to work on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nSprint Planning Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the\nSprint Planning topics of \u201cWhat\u201d and \u201cHow,\u201d the 2020 Scrum Guide places\nemphasis on a third topic, \u201cWhy.\u201d This third topic refers to the Sprint Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

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The past 2 years have been a roller coaster ride for most\nof us. It gave us opportunities to relearn some of our\nforgotten skills or explore new areas through virtual learning platforms. It is\nnot only individuals re-looking at learning methods but also every organization\nwas also looking at changing their training, onboarding, and workshops to\nvirtual mode. We can see it in the data and the projection for that industry\npublished on the world economic forum page. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.weforum.org\/agenda\/2020\/04\/coronavirus-education-global-covid19-online-digital-learning\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

 E-learning Market Value Projected To Reach US$ 660.8\nBillion By 2027 Covering Covid-19 Impact -  The global e-learning\nmarket<\/strong><\/a> is expected to grow at a CAGR of around 15.9%\nfrom 2020 to 2027 and reach the market value of over US$ 660.8 Bn by 2027. (ref\nhttps:\/\/www.globenewswire.com\/news-release\/2021\/05\/20\/2233572\/0\/en\/<\/a>E-learning-Market-Value-Projected-To-Reach-US-660-8-Billion-By-2027-Covering-Covid-19-Impact-Acumen-Research-and-Consulting.html<\/a>)  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 As the industry matures, there have been lots of best\npractices and recommendations shared across to develop the right content and tips on\nhow to engage the participants for trainers. In some organizations, trainers\nare re-trained to adopt this model. Whereas I feel that as a learner, it is up\nto each of us to figure out new ways of learning in the new world that is\npoised to stay. During the past 2 years, I have been on a personal learning\njourney and was using various virtual learning tools, platforms for that\npurpose. Initially, when I started, I fumbled through these learning methods, and sometimes I dropped the course or lectures in-between as they did not fit my\nlearning styles, wasting both my time and money. After few trials, I figured out\nsome practices or tips that are helping me out to get the best out of these\nvirtual learning courses or workshops. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Here are my 2 cents <\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.       Align learning styles<\/strong> - Each of us has different ways in which we grasp things. Some of us love to listen to lectures whereas some of us would love to do experiments to understand concepts. The study shows that there are 7 different learning styles, and they are as listed below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Visual (spatial) Learner -Using pictures, images,\ndiagrams, whiteboards and more helps these types of learners understand\ninformation better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Aural (auditory) Learner -Aural learners are good\nlisteners who normally learn best through verbal presentations like\nlectures and speeches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Verbal (linguistic) Learner -These learners prefer using\nwords, both in speech and writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Physical (kinesthetic) Learner -Getting hands-on is a\nmust for these learners who love to tinker and learn best when they can do\nrather than see or hear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Logical (mathematical) Learner - If there is logic,\nreasoning, and numbers involved, these learners are sure to excel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Social learners favored Social (interpersonal)\nLearner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Solitary (intrapersonal) Learner - These students prefer\nto use self-study and work alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, if I belong to the visual and kinesthetic\nlearner type, then I would prefer classes with more diagrams and more\nexperiments rather than trainers speaking about topics. However, if I am a\nverbal learner, I would love to listen to lectures from experts. Understanding\nour unique learning styles would help us choose courses or methods of learning.\nEither you can look back at the training programs where you enjoyed or do the\nsurvey available on the internet to understand your style. For me, I love working\nin groups hence I choose courses(offline) where there are options to review\nother\u2019s work and connect with the team, which helps in better learning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Keeping Focus and avoiding distractions<\/strong>\u2013One of the major drawbacks of e-learning is the focus or having undivided attention. When we are in class or workshops, we do not open mobile or laptops to check emails or send messages and when we lose focus, we might daydream. However, when we are learning online, laptops or mobile that we use every day for office or for entertainment or for chatting with friends could themselves become distractions. Here are a few tips I followed to keep myself focused during classes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u00b7 Closeout the mails and collaboration channels keep\nmobile of our reach; Keep only course window open <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Set expectations at home that you are in training and not\nto be disturbed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Have video on <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Join a few minutes early and connect with the trainer\n\/facilitator. This also helps you to take on the next steps, such as\ncertification or becoming an expert in that area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 2 min mindful breathing before the class starts (ref\n-https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/mindful-leadership\/resources\/) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7Try out the exercises or case study and submit it \n\nI\nam sure most of you have been using the virtual learning platforms, either in\nyour organization or some preferred platforms to learn and grow in your\ncareers. Hope the above tips shared from my experience are useful. Please share\nyour best practices or tips or any recommendation from your learning journey on\nhow we can get the best out of the virtual learning model.\n\n<\/p>\n","post_title":"Tips to get the best of the virtual learning world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"tips-to-get-the-best-of-the-virtual-learning-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19014","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18707,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:58","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:58","post_content":"\n

Most of us would have read about the recent\nransomware hit on Colonial pipeline, one of the largest oil pipelines in the\nUS. They had to temporarily halt all the operations, it impacted some of the\ncompany\u2019s IT system and suffered a huge loss. It took almost a week to bring\nback the services and back to normal. During this unprecedented time, as we\nwere all working from home, Organization was worried about securing the\napplications, Infrastructure, etc. Cybersecurity has been slowly gaining focus\nand these kinds of attacks make serious attention.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the past 3 months, as an agile coach, I am involved in coaching a team that is developing a highly critical application that is also the backbone of the business deals. This application had to be super secure and if this application gets hit, it can have a huge impact on the organization in terms of finance, brand, and assets, data, etc. Hence, we had to explore how to integrate agile development practices and Cybersecurity practices. There have been some thoughts that agile, with its frequent releases, introduces vulnerability in the system and sometimes not recommended as a development approach for high critical application.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In the past, Cybersecurity teams usually get involved in the tail end and now with frequent releases, ways of working and processes need to be tailored. There were few practices that we got started which I will be sharing in this blog. Would love to hear from you; your stories and experiments in this area.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cybersecurity by definition is Computer\nsecurity, cybersecurity or information technology security (IT security) is the\nprotection of computer systems<\/a> and networks<\/a> from information disclosure, theft of or damage to\ntheir hardware<\/a>, software<\/a>, or electronic data<\/a>,\nas well as from the disruption<\/a> or misdirection<\/a> of the services they provide. In the past, the role\nof security was isolated to a specific team in the final stage of development.\nThat wasn\u2019t as problematic when development cycles lasted months or even years,\nbut those days are over. Effective agile development ensures rapid and frequent\ndevelopment cycles (sometimes weeks or days), but outdated security practices\ncan make the application more vulnerable to attacks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      There have been some doubts about Agile development methodologies and how it lends to Cybersecurity practices. But with self-organizing and cross-functional teams, agile enables different skill sets to work as a team to deliver good quality and secure software.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is how we got started with the process, and practices to integrate cybersecurity practices in agile development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.     Shift- Left:<\/strong>  Having\nexperts \/Cybersecurity personnel at the initial stage not at the end state; not\nto build systems of today. They were able to determine the risk tolerance of\nthe application and conduct risk\/benefit analysis. What amount of security\ncontrols are required for this application and threat modeling exercises? What\nkind of testing required during the sprints and have them integrated with the\ntesting and DevOps plan? It also underscores the need to help developers code\nwith security in mind, a process that involves security teams sharing\nvisibility, feedback, and insights on known threats. Based on the analysis and\nplan, all our developers were trained on the security protocols, processes and\ntools required. One of the important factors to keep in mind is the balance of\ncybersecurity activities with other activities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Hacker as persona:<\/strong> We introduced Hacker as a persona for the application as a next step. By building these personas<\/strong>, we worked out the best defense against certain types of attacks and predict when they might next occur. It helps us to understand the motivation and plan for countermeasures, prioritize defense. This persona was included as one of the users in the identified features of the application and which then was elaborated during the requirements and backlog grooming session. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Tools and Automation<\/strong>: There are quite a several tools available now in the cybersecurity domain. Once the cybersecurity process\/tests are identified, we find that most of our tasks were repetitive and manual. We started looking for ways to automate as Automating repeated tasks is key to DevSecOps since running manual security checks in the pipeline can be time-intensive. Some of these tasks can be automated, such as monitoring intrusion detection systems to search for threats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the major learning in this experimentation is that Shift left does not mean moving all the cybersecurity-related processes, practices, ways of working, and tools from the tail end to the initial stage of development. There had to be a balanced approach and what is required differs from application to application. But bringing this security mindset to all the team members helped a lot in bringing the balanced approach of security and frequent release cycles that was much needed for our application.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Agile and Cybersecurity - How to get started","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-and-cybersecurity-how-to-get-started","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18707","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18715,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:41","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:41","post_content":"\n

Harshita is a scrum master for a team. With the Covid situation across India, the team has been dull and in a very somber state. As a scrum master, she could understand and relate to the situation that the team has been going through. At an organization level, there has been a lot of Employee assistance programs. But she is confused about whether it is ok to have the team be like this or does she need to do something?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution:<\/strong> Here are few things that I would recommend she start with <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Status \/ Smiley images in the communication and collaboration tool.  We have asked team members to add this and this helps others in the team to understand the emotional state of each and every one.  It was quite beneficial and set the stage for everyone in the meetings and interaction.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Standup meetings or team meetings \u2013 First 5 min or 10 min is used for check-in and free-flow conversation. This helped team members to know what\u2019s happening, vent out some of their feelings and help each other as need. If it\u2019s a large team, use some of the survey tools to do check-in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Informal group chat\/gathering or 1:1 with each other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am sure most coaches, leaders are thinking about this and doing something to help their teams in these trying times. Let me know what are those things that you are doing.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #248 \u2013 Sensitivity during these(covid) times","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-248-sensitivity-during-thesecovid-times","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18715","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17712,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:47:04","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:17:04","post_content":"\n

Pravin has been coaching the development team for a few months on the implementation of Scrum. There were a lot of improvement ideas and opportunities that he and his team gathered for the Product team, operation teams during the retrospective. When he tried speaking to them to understand their processes and see if he can do something about it, he was told that the scrum master scope is for the IT development team and the operation teams are not part of it.  He was very excited when he read the new scrum guide and understood that the scrum master role is expanded. Will this help him to remove the obstacle of end to end coaching of the team? If not, what else can he do? Are there any suggestions or solutions that you would recommend?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suggested Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum master role definition and One product team from the scrum guide is a good starting point. Pravin can use the guide to drive the essence of one team delivering product starting from definition to support, roll out, and also point that it is from the industry best practice. In addition to that, it would be good for him to quantify the problem that he had gathered with the data; for ex the resolution time of the incident (end to end), new requirements from the operation team. Along with that, he can do an End to End process mapping w.r.t product delivery and facilitate a discussion with the relevant stakeholders. Most of the time, the problem would be due to organization design ie. Silos between the operation team, product team, and development team, and this might take a longer discussion to solve. <\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #224 - Scrum Master role in the Operations\/Support world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-224-scrum-master-role-in-the-operations-support-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17712","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17698,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:46:28","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:16:28","post_content":"\n

Last week, Scrum celebrated 25 years, and to add to that celebration, a new scrum guide was released. Over the years, Scrum has been implemented across multiple industries and domains and the feedback of its success and failures flowed back into this new Scrum guide. There was a lot of excitement among the agile community for the launch and the agile community was elated with the changes in the Scrum guide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us look at the summary of changes ( from scrum.org articles) in the new scrum guide and then talk about the impact for us (agile community). For more details, you can refer to scrum.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even Less\nPrescriptive<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years,\nthe Scrum Guide started getting a bit more prescriptive. The 2020 version aims\nto bring Scrum back to being a minimally sufficient framework. This was\nachieved by removing the Daily Scrum questions, softening language around PBI\nattributes and retro items in Sprint Backlog, shortening the Sprint\ncancellation section, and much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One Team,\nFocused on One Product<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal was to\neliminate the concept of a separate team within a team that has led to \u201cproxy\u201d\nor \u201cus and them\u201d behavior between the PO and Dev Team. There is now just one\nScrum Team focused on the same objective, with three different sets of accountabilities:\nPO, SM, and Developers (anybody who is working on the sprint increment).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction\nof Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum\nGuide introduces the concept of a Product Goal to provide the focus for the\nScrum Team toward a larger valuable objective. Each Sprint should bring the\nproduct closer to the overall Product Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Home for\nSprint Goal, Definition of Done, and Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides described Sprint Goal and Definition of Done without really giving them\nan identity. They were not quite artifacts but were somewhat attached to\nartifacts. With the addition of Product Goal, the 2020 version provides more\nclarity around this. Each of the three artifacts now contains \u2018commitments\u2019 to\nthem. For the Product Backlog, it is the Product Goal, the Sprint Backlog has\nthe Sprint Goal, and the Increment has the Definition of Done (now without the\nquotes). They exist to bring transparency and focus toward the progress of each\nartifact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-Managing\nover Self-Organizing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides referred to Development Teams (team members who are working on the\nsprint increment) as self-organizing, choosing who and how to do work. With\nmore of a focus on the Scrum Team, the 2020 version emphasizes a self-managing\nScrum Team, that chooses who, how, and what to work on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nSprint Planning Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the\nSprint Planning topics of \u201cWhat\u201d and \u201cHow,\u201d the 2020 Scrum Guide places\nemphasis on a third topic, \u201cWhy.\u201d This third topic refers to the Sprint Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

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PO and SM relationship is quite important. Even if there are small conflicts, the Scrum Master and Product Owner must work together to resolve them before they escalate into a full-blown misunderstanding. A supportive relationship with plenty of giving and take is necessary for the health of the team as a whole. As a first step, he should connect with PO to understand the issues as sometimes it could be just misunderstanding or miscommunication. After that, if the issues are something that he can work on, he can come up with a plan of action with concrete timelines. If some of them need organizational intervention, he can reach out to his management and project management of the team to see if he can get help to resolve those issues. Align the Plan of action with the timelines with PO so that they can start working together. <\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW 260: PO overpowering SM","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-260-po-overpowering-sm","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:38:54","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:38:54","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19019","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":19014,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-08-16 08:57:11","post_date_gmt":"2021-08-16 03:27:11","post_content":"\n

The past 2 years have been a roller coaster ride for most\nof us. It gave us opportunities to relearn some of our\nforgotten skills or explore new areas through virtual learning platforms. It is\nnot only individuals re-looking at learning methods but also every organization\nwas also looking at changing their training, onboarding, and workshops to\nvirtual mode. We can see it in the data and the projection for that industry\npublished on the world economic forum page. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.weforum.org\/agenda\/2020\/04\/coronavirus-education-global-covid19-online-digital-learning\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

 E-learning Market Value Projected To Reach US$ 660.8\nBillion By 2027 Covering Covid-19 Impact -  The global e-learning\nmarket<\/strong><\/a> is expected to grow at a CAGR of around 15.9%\nfrom 2020 to 2027 and reach the market value of over US$ 660.8 Bn by 2027. (ref\nhttps:\/\/www.globenewswire.com\/news-release\/2021\/05\/20\/2233572\/0\/en\/<\/a>E-learning-Market-Value-Projected-To-Reach-US-660-8-Billion-By-2027-Covering-Covid-19-Impact-Acumen-Research-and-Consulting.html<\/a>)  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 As the industry matures, there have been lots of best\npractices and recommendations shared across to develop the right content and tips on\nhow to engage the participants for trainers. In some organizations, trainers\nare re-trained to adopt this model. Whereas I feel that as a learner, it is up\nto each of us to figure out new ways of learning in the new world that is\npoised to stay. During the past 2 years, I have been on a personal learning\njourney and was using various virtual learning tools, platforms for that\npurpose. Initially, when I started, I fumbled through these learning methods, and sometimes I dropped the course or lectures in-between as they did not fit my\nlearning styles, wasting both my time and money. After few trials, I figured out\nsome practices or tips that are helping me out to get the best out of these\nvirtual learning courses or workshops. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Here are my 2 cents <\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.       Align learning styles<\/strong> - Each of us has different ways in which we grasp things. Some of us love to listen to lectures whereas some of us would love to do experiments to understand concepts. The study shows that there are 7 different learning styles, and they are as listed below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Visual (spatial) Learner -Using pictures, images,\ndiagrams, whiteboards and more helps these types of learners understand\ninformation better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Aural (auditory) Learner -Aural learners are good\nlisteners who normally learn best through verbal presentations like\nlectures and speeches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Verbal (linguistic) Learner -These learners prefer using\nwords, both in speech and writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Physical (kinesthetic) Learner -Getting hands-on is a\nmust for these learners who love to tinker and learn best when they can do\nrather than see or hear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Logical (mathematical) Learner - If there is logic,\nreasoning, and numbers involved, these learners are sure to excel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Social learners favored Social (interpersonal)\nLearner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Solitary (intrapersonal) Learner - These students prefer\nto use self-study and work alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, if I belong to the visual and kinesthetic\nlearner type, then I would prefer classes with more diagrams and more\nexperiments rather than trainers speaking about topics. However, if I am a\nverbal learner, I would love to listen to lectures from experts. Understanding\nour unique learning styles would help us choose courses or methods of learning.\nEither you can look back at the training programs where you enjoyed or do the\nsurvey available on the internet to understand your style. For me, I love working\nin groups hence I choose courses(offline) where there are options to review\nother\u2019s work and connect with the team, which helps in better learning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Keeping Focus and avoiding distractions<\/strong>\u2013One of the major drawbacks of e-learning is the focus or having undivided attention. When we are in class or workshops, we do not open mobile or laptops to check emails or send messages and when we lose focus, we might daydream. However, when we are learning online, laptops or mobile that we use every day for office or for entertainment or for chatting with friends could themselves become distractions. Here are a few tips I followed to keep myself focused during classes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u00b7 Closeout the mails and collaboration channels keep\nmobile of our reach; Keep only course window open <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Set expectations at home that you are in training and not\nto be disturbed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Have video on <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Join a few minutes early and connect with the trainer\n\/facilitator. This also helps you to take on the next steps, such as\ncertification or becoming an expert in that area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 2 min mindful breathing before the class starts (ref\n-https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/mindful-leadership\/resources\/) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7Try out the exercises or case study and submit it \n\nI\nam sure most of you have been using the virtual learning platforms, either in\nyour organization or some preferred platforms to learn and grow in your\ncareers. Hope the above tips shared from my experience are useful. Please share\nyour best practices or tips or any recommendation from your learning journey on\nhow we can get the best out of the virtual learning model.\n\n<\/p>\n","post_title":"Tips to get the best of the virtual learning world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"tips-to-get-the-best-of-the-virtual-learning-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19014","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18707,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:58","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:58","post_content":"\n

Most of us would have read about the recent\nransomware hit on Colonial pipeline, one of the largest oil pipelines in the\nUS. They had to temporarily halt all the operations, it impacted some of the\ncompany\u2019s IT system and suffered a huge loss. It took almost a week to bring\nback the services and back to normal. During this unprecedented time, as we\nwere all working from home, Organization was worried about securing the\napplications, Infrastructure, etc. Cybersecurity has been slowly gaining focus\nand these kinds of attacks make serious attention.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the past 3 months, as an agile coach, I am involved in coaching a team that is developing a highly critical application that is also the backbone of the business deals. This application had to be super secure and if this application gets hit, it can have a huge impact on the organization in terms of finance, brand, and assets, data, etc. Hence, we had to explore how to integrate agile development practices and Cybersecurity practices. There have been some thoughts that agile, with its frequent releases, introduces vulnerability in the system and sometimes not recommended as a development approach for high critical application.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In the past, Cybersecurity teams usually get involved in the tail end and now with frequent releases, ways of working and processes need to be tailored. There were few practices that we got started which I will be sharing in this blog. Would love to hear from you; your stories and experiments in this area.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cybersecurity by definition is Computer\nsecurity, cybersecurity or information technology security (IT security) is the\nprotection of computer systems<\/a> and networks<\/a> from information disclosure, theft of or damage to\ntheir hardware<\/a>, software<\/a>, or electronic data<\/a>,\nas well as from the disruption<\/a> or misdirection<\/a> of the services they provide. In the past, the role\nof security was isolated to a specific team in the final stage of development.\nThat wasn\u2019t as problematic when development cycles lasted months or even years,\nbut those days are over. Effective agile development ensures rapid and frequent\ndevelopment cycles (sometimes weeks or days), but outdated security practices\ncan make the application more vulnerable to attacks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      There have been some doubts about Agile development methodologies and how it lends to Cybersecurity practices. But with self-organizing and cross-functional teams, agile enables different skill sets to work as a team to deliver good quality and secure software.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is how we got started with the process, and practices to integrate cybersecurity practices in agile development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.     Shift- Left:<\/strong>  Having\nexperts \/Cybersecurity personnel at the initial stage not at the end state; not\nto build systems of today. They were able to determine the risk tolerance of\nthe application and conduct risk\/benefit analysis. What amount of security\ncontrols are required for this application and threat modeling exercises? What\nkind of testing required during the sprints and have them integrated with the\ntesting and DevOps plan? It also underscores the need to help developers code\nwith security in mind, a process that involves security teams sharing\nvisibility, feedback, and insights on known threats. Based on the analysis and\nplan, all our developers were trained on the security protocols, processes and\ntools required. One of the important factors to keep in mind is the balance of\ncybersecurity activities with other activities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Hacker as persona:<\/strong> We introduced Hacker as a persona for the application as a next step. By building these personas<\/strong>, we worked out the best defense against certain types of attacks and predict when they might next occur. It helps us to understand the motivation and plan for countermeasures, prioritize defense. This persona was included as one of the users in the identified features of the application and which then was elaborated during the requirements and backlog grooming session. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Tools and Automation<\/strong>: There are quite a several tools available now in the cybersecurity domain. Once the cybersecurity process\/tests are identified, we find that most of our tasks were repetitive and manual. We started looking for ways to automate as Automating repeated tasks is key to DevSecOps since running manual security checks in the pipeline can be time-intensive. Some of these tasks can be automated, such as monitoring intrusion detection systems to search for threats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the major learning in this experimentation is that Shift left does not mean moving all the cybersecurity-related processes, practices, ways of working, and tools from the tail end to the initial stage of development. There had to be a balanced approach and what is required differs from application to application. But bringing this security mindset to all the team members helped a lot in bringing the balanced approach of security and frequent release cycles that was much needed for our application.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Agile and Cybersecurity - How to get started","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-and-cybersecurity-how-to-get-started","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18707","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18715,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:41","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:41","post_content":"\n

Harshita is a scrum master for a team. With the Covid situation across India, the team has been dull and in a very somber state. As a scrum master, she could understand and relate to the situation that the team has been going through. At an organization level, there has been a lot of Employee assistance programs. But she is confused about whether it is ok to have the team be like this or does she need to do something?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution:<\/strong> Here are few things that I would recommend she start with <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Status \/ Smiley images in the communication and collaboration tool.  We have asked team members to add this and this helps others in the team to understand the emotional state of each and every one.  It was quite beneficial and set the stage for everyone in the meetings and interaction.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Standup meetings or team meetings \u2013 First 5 min or 10 min is used for check-in and free-flow conversation. This helped team members to know what\u2019s happening, vent out some of their feelings and help each other as need. If it\u2019s a large team, use some of the survey tools to do check-in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Informal group chat\/gathering or 1:1 with each other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am sure most coaches, leaders are thinking about this and doing something to help their teams in these trying times. Let me know what are those things that you are doing.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #248 \u2013 Sensitivity during these(covid) times","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-248-sensitivity-during-thesecovid-times","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18715","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17712,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:47:04","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:17:04","post_content":"\n

Pravin has been coaching the development team for a few months on the implementation of Scrum. There were a lot of improvement ideas and opportunities that he and his team gathered for the Product team, operation teams during the retrospective. When he tried speaking to them to understand their processes and see if he can do something about it, he was told that the scrum master scope is for the IT development team and the operation teams are not part of it.  He was very excited when he read the new scrum guide and understood that the scrum master role is expanded. Will this help him to remove the obstacle of end to end coaching of the team? If not, what else can he do? Are there any suggestions or solutions that you would recommend?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suggested Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum master role definition and One product team from the scrum guide is a good starting point. Pravin can use the guide to drive the essence of one team delivering product starting from definition to support, roll out, and also point that it is from the industry best practice. In addition to that, it would be good for him to quantify the problem that he had gathered with the data; for ex the resolution time of the incident (end to end), new requirements from the operation team. Along with that, he can do an End to End process mapping w.r.t product delivery and facilitate a discussion with the relevant stakeholders. Most of the time, the problem would be due to organization design ie. Silos between the operation team, product team, and development team, and this might take a longer discussion to solve. <\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #224 - Scrum Master role in the Operations\/Support world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-224-scrum-master-role-in-the-operations-support-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17712","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17698,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:46:28","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:16:28","post_content":"\n

Last week, Scrum celebrated 25 years, and to add to that celebration, a new scrum guide was released. Over the years, Scrum has been implemented across multiple industries and domains and the feedback of its success and failures flowed back into this new Scrum guide. There was a lot of excitement among the agile community for the launch and the agile community was elated with the changes in the Scrum guide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us look at the summary of changes ( from scrum.org articles) in the new scrum guide and then talk about the impact for us (agile community). For more details, you can refer to scrum.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even Less\nPrescriptive<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years,\nthe Scrum Guide started getting a bit more prescriptive. The 2020 version aims\nto bring Scrum back to being a minimally sufficient framework. This was\nachieved by removing the Daily Scrum questions, softening language around PBI\nattributes and retro items in Sprint Backlog, shortening the Sprint\ncancellation section, and much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One Team,\nFocused on One Product<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal was to\neliminate the concept of a separate team within a team that has led to \u201cproxy\u201d\nor \u201cus and them\u201d behavior between the PO and Dev Team. There is now just one\nScrum Team focused on the same objective, with three different sets of accountabilities:\nPO, SM, and Developers (anybody who is working on the sprint increment).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction\nof Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum\nGuide introduces the concept of a Product Goal to provide the focus for the\nScrum Team toward a larger valuable objective. Each Sprint should bring the\nproduct closer to the overall Product Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Home for\nSprint Goal, Definition of Done, and Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides described Sprint Goal and Definition of Done without really giving them\nan identity. They were not quite artifacts but were somewhat attached to\nartifacts. With the addition of Product Goal, the 2020 version provides more\nclarity around this. Each of the three artifacts now contains \u2018commitments\u2019 to\nthem. For the Product Backlog, it is the Product Goal, the Sprint Backlog has\nthe Sprint Goal, and the Increment has the Definition of Done (now without the\nquotes). They exist to bring transparency and focus toward the progress of each\nartifact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-Managing\nover Self-Organizing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides referred to Development Teams (team members who are working on the\nsprint increment) as self-organizing, choosing who and how to do work. With\nmore of a focus on the Scrum Team, the 2020 version emphasizes a self-managing\nScrum Team, that chooses who, how, and what to work on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nSprint Planning Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the\nSprint Planning topics of \u201cWhat\u201d and \u201cHow,\u201d the 2020 Scrum Guide places\nemphasis on a third topic, \u201cWhy.\u201d This third topic refers to the Sprint Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

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\n

Solution:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PO and SM relationship is quite important. Even if there are small conflicts, the Scrum Master and Product Owner must work together to resolve them before they escalate into a full-blown misunderstanding. A supportive relationship with plenty of giving and take is necessary for the health of the team as a whole. As a first step, he should connect with PO to understand the issues as sometimes it could be just misunderstanding or miscommunication. After that, if the issues are something that he can work on, he can come up with a plan of action with concrete timelines. If some of them need organizational intervention, he can reach out to his management and project management of the team to see if he can get help to resolve those issues. Align the Plan of action with the timelines with PO so that they can start working together. <\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW 260: PO overpowering SM","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-260-po-overpowering-sm","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:38:54","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:38:54","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19019","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":19014,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-08-16 08:57:11","post_date_gmt":"2021-08-16 03:27:11","post_content":"\n

The past 2 years have been a roller coaster ride for most\nof us. It gave us opportunities to relearn some of our\nforgotten skills or explore new areas through virtual learning platforms. It is\nnot only individuals re-looking at learning methods but also every organization\nwas also looking at changing their training, onboarding, and workshops to\nvirtual mode. We can see it in the data and the projection for that industry\npublished on the world economic forum page. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.weforum.org\/agenda\/2020\/04\/coronavirus-education-global-covid19-online-digital-learning\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

 E-learning Market Value Projected To Reach US$ 660.8\nBillion By 2027 Covering Covid-19 Impact -  The global e-learning\nmarket<\/strong><\/a> is expected to grow at a CAGR of around 15.9%\nfrom 2020 to 2027 and reach the market value of over US$ 660.8 Bn by 2027. (ref\nhttps:\/\/www.globenewswire.com\/news-release\/2021\/05\/20\/2233572\/0\/en\/<\/a>E-learning-Market-Value-Projected-To-Reach-US-660-8-Billion-By-2027-Covering-Covid-19-Impact-Acumen-Research-and-Consulting.html<\/a>)  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 As the industry matures, there have been lots of best\npractices and recommendations shared across to develop the right content and tips on\nhow to engage the participants for trainers. In some organizations, trainers\nare re-trained to adopt this model. Whereas I feel that as a learner, it is up\nto each of us to figure out new ways of learning in the new world that is\npoised to stay. During the past 2 years, I have been on a personal learning\njourney and was using various virtual learning tools, platforms for that\npurpose. Initially, when I started, I fumbled through these learning methods, and sometimes I dropped the course or lectures in-between as they did not fit my\nlearning styles, wasting both my time and money. After few trials, I figured out\nsome practices or tips that are helping me out to get the best out of these\nvirtual learning courses or workshops. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Here are my 2 cents <\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.       Align learning styles<\/strong> - Each of us has different ways in which we grasp things. Some of us love to listen to lectures whereas some of us would love to do experiments to understand concepts. The study shows that there are 7 different learning styles, and they are as listed below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Visual (spatial) Learner -Using pictures, images,\ndiagrams, whiteboards and more helps these types of learners understand\ninformation better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Aural (auditory) Learner -Aural learners are good\nlisteners who normally learn best through verbal presentations like\nlectures and speeches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Verbal (linguistic) Learner -These learners prefer using\nwords, both in speech and writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Physical (kinesthetic) Learner -Getting hands-on is a\nmust for these learners who love to tinker and learn best when they can do\nrather than see or hear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Logical (mathematical) Learner - If there is logic,\nreasoning, and numbers involved, these learners are sure to excel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Social learners favored Social (interpersonal)\nLearner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Solitary (intrapersonal) Learner - These students prefer\nto use self-study and work alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, if I belong to the visual and kinesthetic\nlearner type, then I would prefer classes with more diagrams and more\nexperiments rather than trainers speaking about topics. However, if I am a\nverbal learner, I would love to listen to lectures from experts. Understanding\nour unique learning styles would help us choose courses or methods of learning.\nEither you can look back at the training programs where you enjoyed or do the\nsurvey available on the internet to understand your style. For me, I love working\nin groups hence I choose courses(offline) where there are options to review\nother\u2019s work and connect with the team, which helps in better learning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Keeping Focus and avoiding distractions<\/strong>\u2013One of the major drawbacks of e-learning is the focus or having undivided attention. When we are in class or workshops, we do not open mobile or laptops to check emails or send messages and when we lose focus, we might daydream. However, when we are learning online, laptops or mobile that we use every day for office or for entertainment or for chatting with friends could themselves become distractions. Here are a few tips I followed to keep myself focused during classes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u00b7 Closeout the mails and collaboration channels keep\nmobile of our reach; Keep only course window open <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Set expectations at home that you are in training and not\nto be disturbed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Have video on <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Join a few minutes early and connect with the trainer\n\/facilitator. This also helps you to take on the next steps, such as\ncertification or becoming an expert in that area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 2 min mindful breathing before the class starts (ref\n-https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/mindful-leadership\/resources\/) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7Try out the exercises or case study and submit it \n\nI\nam sure most of you have been using the virtual learning platforms, either in\nyour organization or some preferred platforms to learn and grow in your\ncareers. Hope the above tips shared from my experience are useful. Please share\nyour best practices or tips or any recommendation from your learning journey on\nhow we can get the best out of the virtual learning model.\n\n<\/p>\n","post_title":"Tips to get the best of the virtual learning world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"tips-to-get-the-best-of-the-virtual-learning-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19014","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18707,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:58","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:58","post_content":"\n

Most of us would have read about the recent\nransomware hit on Colonial pipeline, one of the largest oil pipelines in the\nUS. They had to temporarily halt all the operations, it impacted some of the\ncompany\u2019s IT system and suffered a huge loss. It took almost a week to bring\nback the services and back to normal. During this unprecedented time, as we\nwere all working from home, Organization was worried about securing the\napplications, Infrastructure, etc. Cybersecurity has been slowly gaining focus\nand these kinds of attacks make serious attention.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the past 3 months, as an agile coach, I am involved in coaching a team that is developing a highly critical application that is also the backbone of the business deals. This application had to be super secure and if this application gets hit, it can have a huge impact on the organization in terms of finance, brand, and assets, data, etc. Hence, we had to explore how to integrate agile development practices and Cybersecurity practices. There have been some thoughts that agile, with its frequent releases, introduces vulnerability in the system and sometimes not recommended as a development approach for high critical application.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In the past, Cybersecurity teams usually get involved in the tail end and now with frequent releases, ways of working and processes need to be tailored. There were few practices that we got started which I will be sharing in this blog. Would love to hear from you; your stories and experiments in this area.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cybersecurity by definition is Computer\nsecurity, cybersecurity or information technology security (IT security) is the\nprotection of computer systems<\/a> and networks<\/a> from information disclosure, theft of or damage to\ntheir hardware<\/a>, software<\/a>, or electronic data<\/a>,\nas well as from the disruption<\/a> or misdirection<\/a> of the services they provide. In the past, the role\nof security was isolated to a specific team in the final stage of development.\nThat wasn\u2019t as problematic when development cycles lasted months or even years,\nbut those days are over. Effective agile development ensures rapid and frequent\ndevelopment cycles (sometimes weeks or days), but outdated security practices\ncan make the application more vulnerable to attacks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      There have been some doubts about Agile development methodologies and how it lends to Cybersecurity practices. But with self-organizing and cross-functional teams, agile enables different skill sets to work as a team to deliver good quality and secure software.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is how we got started with the process, and practices to integrate cybersecurity practices in agile development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.     Shift- Left:<\/strong>  Having\nexperts \/Cybersecurity personnel at the initial stage not at the end state; not\nto build systems of today. They were able to determine the risk tolerance of\nthe application and conduct risk\/benefit analysis. What amount of security\ncontrols are required for this application and threat modeling exercises? What\nkind of testing required during the sprints and have them integrated with the\ntesting and DevOps plan? It also underscores the need to help developers code\nwith security in mind, a process that involves security teams sharing\nvisibility, feedback, and insights on known threats. Based on the analysis and\nplan, all our developers were trained on the security protocols, processes and\ntools required. One of the important factors to keep in mind is the balance of\ncybersecurity activities with other activities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Hacker as persona:<\/strong> We introduced Hacker as a persona for the application as a next step. By building these personas<\/strong>, we worked out the best defense against certain types of attacks and predict when they might next occur. It helps us to understand the motivation and plan for countermeasures, prioritize defense. This persona was included as one of the users in the identified features of the application and which then was elaborated during the requirements and backlog grooming session. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Tools and Automation<\/strong>: There are quite a several tools available now in the cybersecurity domain. Once the cybersecurity process\/tests are identified, we find that most of our tasks were repetitive and manual. We started looking for ways to automate as Automating repeated tasks is key to DevSecOps since running manual security checks in the pipeline can be time-intensive. Some of these tasks can be automated, such as monitoring intrusion detection systems to search for threats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the major learning in this experimentation is that Shift left does not mean moving all the cybersecurity-related processes, practices, ways of working, and tools from the tail end to the initial stage of development. There had to be a balanced approach and what is required differs from application to application. But bringing this security mindset to all the team members helped a lot in bringing the balanced approach of security and frequent release cycles that was much needed for our application.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Agile and Cybersecurity - How to get started","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-and-cybersecurity-how-to-get-started","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18707","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18715,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:41","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:41","post_content":"\n

Harshita is a scrum master for a team. With the Covid situation across India, the team has been dull and in a very somber state. As a scrum master, she could understand and relate to the situation that the team has been going through. At an organization level, there has been a lot of Employee assistance programs. But she is confused about whether it is ok to have the team be like this or does she need to do something?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution:<\/strong> Here are few things that I would recommend she start with <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Status \/ Smiley images in the communication and collaboration tool.  We have asked team members to add this and this helps others in the team to understand the emotional state of each and every one.  It was quite beneficial and set the stage for everyone in the meetings and interaction.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Standup meetings or team meetings \u2013 First 5 min or 10 min is used for check-in and free-flow conversation. This helped team members to know what\u2019s happening, vent out some of their feelings and help each other as need. If it\u2019s a large team, use some of the survey tools to do check-in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Informal group chat\/gathering or 1:1 with each other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am sure most coaches, leaders are thinking about this and doing something to help their teams in these trying times. Let me know what are those things that you are doing.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #248 \u2013 Sensitivity during these(covid) times","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-248-sensitivity-during-thesecovid-times","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18715","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17712,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:47:04","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:17:04","post_content":"\n

Pravin has been coaching the development team for a few months on the implementation of Scrum. There were a lot of improvement ideas and opportunities that he and his team gathered for the Product team, operation teams during the retrospective. When he tried speaking to them to understand their processes and see if he can do something about it, he was told that the scrum master scope is for the IT development team and the operation teams are not part of it.  He was very excited when he read the new scrum guide and understood that the scrum master role is expanded. Will this help him to remove the obstacle of end to end coaching of the team? If not, what else can he do? Are there any suggestions or solutions that you would recommend?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suggested Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum master role definition and One product team from the scrum guide is a good starting point. Pravin can use the guide to drive the essence of one team delivering product starting from definition to support, roll out, and also point that it is from the industry best practice. In addition to that, it would be good for him to quantify the problem that he had gathered with the data; for ex the resolution time of the incident (end to end), new requirements from the operation team. Along with that, he can do an End to End process mapping w.r.t product delivery and facilitate a discussion with the relevant stakeholders. Most of the time, the problem would be due to organization design ie. Silos between the operation team, product team, and development team, and this might take a longer discussion to solve. <\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #224 - Scrum Master role in the Operations\/Support world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-224-scrum-master-role-in-the-operations-support-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17712","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17698,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:46:28","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:16:28","post_content":"\n

Last week, Scrum celebrated 25 years, and to add to that celebration, a new scrum guide was released. Over the years, Scrum has been implemented across multiple industries and domains and the feedback of its success and failures flowed back into this new Scrum guide. There was a lot of excitement among the agile community for the launch and the agile community was elated with the changes in the Scrum guide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us look at the summary of changes ( from scrum.org articles) in the new scrum guide and then talk about the impact for us (agile community). For more details, you can refer to scrum.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even Less\nPrescriptive<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years,\nthe Scrum Guide started getting a bit more prescriptive. The 2020 version aims\nto bring Scrum back to being a minimally sufficient framework. This was\nachieved by removing the Daily Scrum questions, softening language around PBI\nattributes and retro items in Sprint Backlog, shortening the Sprint\ncancellation section, and much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One Team,\nFocused on One Product<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal was to\neliminate the concept of a separate team within a team that has led to \u201cproxy\u201d\nor \u201cus and them\u201d behavior between the PO and Dev Team. There is now just one\nScrum Team focused on the same objective, with three different sets of accountabilities:\nPO, SM, and Developers (anybody who is working on the sprint increment).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction\nof Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum\nGuide introduces the concept of a Product Goal to provide the focus for the\nScrum Team toward a larger valuable objective. Each Sprint should bring the\nproduct closer to the overall Product Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Home for\nSprint Goal, Definition of Done, and Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides described Sprint Goal and Definition of Done without really giving them\nan identity. They were not quite artifacts but were somewhat attached to\nartifacts. With the addition of Product Goal, the 2020 version provides more\nclarity around this. Each of the three artifacts now contains \u2018commitments\u2019 to\nthem. For the Product Backlog, it is the Product Goal, the Sprint Backlog has\nthe Sprint Goal, and the Increment has the Definition of Done (now without the\nquotes). They exist to bring transparency and focus toward the progress of each\nartifact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-Managing\nover Self-Organizing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides referred to Development Teams (team members who are working on the\nsprint increment) as self-organizing, choosing who and how to do work. With\nmore of a focus on the Scrum Team, the 2020 version emphasizes a self-managing\nScrum Team, that chooses who, how, and what to work on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nSprint Planning Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the\nSprint Planning topics of \u201cWhat\u201d and \u201cHow,\u201d the 2020 Scrum Guide places\nemphasis on a third topic, \u201cWhy.\u201d This third topic refers to the Sprint Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

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\n

Murugan joined an organization as a Scrum master. One of the teams that he was asked to coach has been in running mode at a fast pace for 2 months already. The team has been doing basic agile practices such as having a time-boxed work commitment, daily standup, and demo to the Product owner and business. However, there have been some issues with respect to requirements and backlog quality, which might impact the tight timelines of that team has. The project is a very important project, and the first release is scheduled in just 2 months of him starting. He started participating in meetings and understanding the domain\/project etc. Within few days, PO escalated that Scrum master is not good and he is not able to fully align with the team, communication skills not good, etc. Murugan had a meeting with the Project manager to understand the issues so that he can improve. Again, after few days, PO escalated that I want the SM to be changed as he thinks that he is not the right fit? Murugan is at loss on how to handle these as he is new to an organization and new to the team. What do you think that as a recommended action to help Murugan?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PO and SM relationship is quite important. Even if there are small conflicts, the Scrum Master and Product Owner must work together to resolve them before they escalate into a full-blown misunderstanding. A supportive relationship with plenty of giving and take is necessary for the health of the team as a whole. As a first step, he should connect with PO to understand the issues as sometimes it could be just misunderstanding or miscommunication. After that, if the issues are something that he can work on, he can come up with a plan of action with concrete timelines. If some of them need organizational intervention, he can reach out to his management and project management of the team to see if he can get help to resolve those issues. Align the Plan of action with the timelines with PO so that they can start working together. <\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW 260: PO overpowering SM","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-260-po-overpowering-sm","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:38:54","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:38:54","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19019","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":19014,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-08-16 08:57:11","post_date_gmt":"2021-08-16 03:27:11","post_content":"\n

The past 2 years have been a roller coaster ride for most\nof us. It gave us opportunities to relearn some of our\nforgotten skills or explore new areas through virtual learning platforms. It is\nnot only individuals re-looking at learning methods but also every organization\nwas also looking at changing their training, onboarding, and workshops to\nvirtual mode. We can see it in the data and the projection for that industry\npublished on the world economic forum page. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.weforum.org\/agenda\/2020\/04\/coronavirus-education-global-covid19-online-digital-learning\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

 E-learning Market Value Projected To Reach US$ 660.8\nBillion By 2027 Covering Covid-19 Impact -  The global e-learning\nmarket<\/strong><\/a> is expected to grow at a CAGR of around 15.9%\nfrom 2020 to 2027 and reach the market value of over US$ 660.8 Bn by 2027. (ref\nhttps:\/\/www.globenewswire.com\/news-release\/2021\/05\/20\/2233572\/0\/en\/<\/a>E-learning-Market-Value-Projected-To-Reach-US-660-8-Billion-By-2027-Covering-Covid-19-Impact-Acumen-Research-and-Consulting.html<\/a>)  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 As the industry matures, there have been lots of best\npractices and recommendations shared across to develop the right content and tips on\nhow to engage the participants for trainers. In some organizations, trainers\nare re-trained to adopt this model. Whereas I feel that as a learner, it is up\nto each of us to figure out new ways of learning in the new world that is\npoised to stay. During the past 2 years, I have been on a personal learning\njourney and was using various virtual learning tools, platforms for that\npurpose. Initially, when I started, I fumbled through these learning methods, and sometimes I dropped the course or lectures in-between as they did not fit my\nlearning styles, wasting both my time and money. After few trials, I figured out\nsome practices or tips that are helping me out to get the best out of these\nvirtual learning courses or workshops. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Here are my 2 cents <\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.       Align learning styles<\/strong> - Each of us has different ways in which we grasp things. Some of us love to listen to lectures whereas some of us would love to do experiments to understand concepts. The study shows that there are 7 different learning styles, and they are as listed below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Visual (spatial) Learner -Using pictures, images,\ndiagrams, whiteboards and more helps these types of learners understand\ninformation better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Aural (auditory) Learner -Aural learners are good\nlisteners who normally learn best through verbal presentations like\nlectures and speeches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Verbal (linguistic) Learner -These learners prefer using\nwords, both in speech and writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Physical (kinesthetic) Learner -Getting hands-on is a\nmust for these learners who love to tinker and learn best when they can do\nrather than see or hear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Logical (mathematical) Learner - If there is logic,\nreasoning, and numbers involved, these learners are sure to excel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Social learners favored Social (interpersonal)\nLearner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Solitary (intrapersonal) Learner - These students prefer\nto use self-study and work alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, if I belong to the visual and kinesthetic\nlearner type, then I would prefer classes with more diagrams and more\nexperiments rather than trainers speaking about topics. However, if I am a\nverbal learner, I would love to listen to lectures from experts. Understanding\nour unique learning styles would help us choose courses or methods of learning.\nEither you can look back at the training programs where you enjoyed or do the\nsurvey available on the internet to understand your style. For me, I love working\nin groups hence I choose courses(offline) where there are options to review\nother\u2019s work and connect with the team, which helps in better learning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Keeping Focus and avoiding distractions<\/strong>\u2013One of the major drawbacks of e-learning is the focus or having undivided attention. When we are in class or workshops, we do not open mobile or laptops to check emails or send messages and when we lose focus, we might daydream. However, when we are learning online, laptops or mobile that we use every day for office or for entertainment or for chatting with friends could themselves become distractions. Here are a few tips I followed to keep myself focused during classes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u00b7 Closeout the mails and collaboration channels keep\nmobile of our reach; Keep only course window open <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Set expectations at home that you are in training and not\nto be disturbed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Have video on <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Join a few minutes early and connect with the trainer\n\/facilitator. This also helps you to take on the next steps, such as\ncertification or becoming an expert in that area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 2 min mindful breathing before the class starts (ref\n-https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/mindful-leadership\/resources\/) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7Try out the exercises or case study and submit it \n\nI\nam sure most of you have been using the virtual learning platforms, either in\nyour organization or some preferred platforms to learn and grow in your\ncareers. Hope the above tips shared from my experience are useful. Please share\nyour best practices or tips or any recommendation from your learning journey on\nhow we can get the best out of the virtual learning model.\n\n<\/p>\n","post_title":"Tips to get the best of the virtual learning world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"tips-to-get-the-best-of-the-virtual-learning-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19014","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18707,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:58","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:58","post_content":"\n

Most of us would have read about the recent\nransomware hit on Colonial pipeline, one of the largest oil pipelines in the\nUS. They had to temporarily halt all the operations, it impacted some of the\ncompany\u2019s IT system and suffered a huge loss. It took almost a week to bring\nback the services and back to normal. During this unprecedented time, as we\nwere all working from home, Organization was worried about securing the\napplications, Infrastructure, etc. Cybersecurity has been slowly gaining focus\nand these kinds of attacks make serious attention.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the past 3 months, as an agile coach, I am involved in coaching a team that is developing a highly critical application that is also the backbone of the business deals. This application had to be super secure and if this application gets hit, it can have a huge impact on the organization in terms of finance, brand, and assets, data, etc. Hence, we had to explore how to integrate agile development practices and Cybersecurity practices. There have been some thoughts that agile, with its frequent releases, introduces vulnerability in the system and sometimes not recommended as a development approach for high critical application.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In the past, Cybersecurity teams usually get involved in the tail end and now with frequent releases, ways of working and processes need to be tailored. There were few practices that we got started which I will be sharing in this blog. Would love to hear from you; your stories and experiments in this area.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cybersecurity by definition is Computer\nsecurity, cybersecurity or information technology security (IT security) is the\nprotection of computer systems<\/a> and networks<\/a> from information disclosure, theft of or damage to\ntheir hardware<\/a>, software<\/a>, or electronic data<\/a>,\nas well as from the disruption<\/a> or misdirection<\/a> of the services they provide. In the past, the role\nof security was isolated to a specific team in the final stage of development.\nThat wasn\u2019t as problematic when development cycles lasted months or even years,\nbut those days are over. Effective agile development ensures rapid and frequent\ndevelopment cycles (sometimes weeks or days), but outdated security practices\ncan make the application more vulnerable to attacks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      There have been some doubts about Agile development methodologies and how it lends to Cybersecurity practices. But with self-organizing and cross-functional teams, agile enables different skill sets to work as a team to deliver good quality and secure software.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is how we got started with the process, and practices to integrate cybersecurity practices in agile development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.     Shift- Left:<\/strong>  Having\nexperts \/Cybersecurity personnel at the initial stage not at the end state; not\nto build systems of today. They were able to determine the risk tolerance of\nthe application and conduct risk\/benefit analysis. What amount of security\ncontrols are required for this application and threat modeling exercises? What\nkind of testing required during the sprints and have them integrated with the\ntesting and DevOps plan? It also underscores the need to help developers code\nwith security in mind, a process that involves security teams sharing\nvisibility, feedback, and insights on known threats. Based on the analysis and\nplan, all our developers were trained on the security protocols, processes and\ntools required. One of the important factors to keep in mind is the balance of\ncybersecurity activities with other activities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Hacker as persona:<\/strong> We introduced Hacker as a persona for the application as a next step. By building these personas<\/strong>, we worked out the best defense against certain types of attacks and predict when they might next occur. It helps us to understand the motivation and plan for countermeasures, prioritize defense. This persona was included as one of the users in the identified features of the application and which then was elaborated during the requirements and backlog grooming session. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Tools and Automation<\/strong>: There are quite a several tools available now in the cybersecurity domain. Once the cybersecurity process\/tests are identified, we find that most of our tasks were repetitive and manual. We started looking for ways to automate as Automating repeated tasks is key to DevSecOps since running manual security checks in the pipeline can be time-intensive. Some of these tasks can be automated, such as monitoring intrusion detection systems to search for threats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the major learning in this experimentation is that Shift left does not mean moving all the cybersecurity-related processes, practices, ways of working, and tools from the tail end to the initial stage of development. There had to be a balanced approach and what is required differs from application to application. But bringing this security mindset to all the team members helped a lot in bringing the balanced approach of security and frequent release cycles that was much needed for our application.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Agile and Cybersecurity - How to get started","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-and-cybersecurity-how-to-get-started","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18707","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18715,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:41","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:41","post_content":"\n

Harshita is a scrum master for a team. With the Covid situation across India, the team has been dull and in a very somber state. As a scrum master, she could understand and relate to the situation that the team has been going through. At an organization level, there has been a lot of Employee assistance programs. But she is confused about whether it is ok to have the team be like this or does she need to do something?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution:<\/strong> Here are few things that I would recommend she start with <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Status \/ Smiley images in the communication and collaboration tool.  We have asked team members to add this and this helps others in the team to understand the emotional state of each and every one.  It was quite beneficial and set the stage for everyone in the meetings and interaction.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Standup meetings or team meetings \u2013 First 5 min or 10 min is used for check-in and free-flow conversation. This helped team members to know what\u2019s happening, vent out some of their feelings and help each other as need. If it\u2019s a large team, use some of the survey tools to do check-in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Informal group chat\/gathering or 1:1 with each other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am sure most coaches, leaders are thinking about this and doing something to help their teams in these trying times. Let me know what are those things that you are doing.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #248 \u2013 Sensitivity during these(covid) times","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-248-sensitivity-during-thesecovid-times","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18715","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17712,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:47:04","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:17:04","post_content":"\n

Pravin has been coaching the development team for a few months on the implementation of Scrum. There were a lot of improvement ideas and opportunities that he and his team gathered for the Product team, operation teams during the retrospective. When he tried speaking to them to understand their processes and see if he can do something about it, he was told that the scrum master scope is for the IT development team and the operation teams are not part of it.  He was very excited when he read the new scrum guide and understood that the scrum master role is expanded. Will this help him to remove the obstacle of end to end coaching of the team? If not, what else can he do? Are there any suggestions or solutions that you would recommend?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suggested Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum master role definition and One product team from the scrum guide is a good starting point. Pravin can use the guide to drive the essence of one team delivering product starting from definition to support, roll out, and also point that it is from the industry best practice. In addition to that, it would be good for him to quantify the problem that he had gathered with the data; for ex the resolution time of the incident (end to end), new requirements from the operation team. Along with that, he can do an End to End process mapping w.r.t product delivery and facilitate a discussion with the relevant stakeholders. Most of the time, the problem would be due to organization design ie. Silos between the operation team, product team, and development team, and this might take a longer discussion to solve. <\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #224 - Scrum Master role in the Operations\/Support world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-224-scrum-master-role-in-the-operations-support-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17712","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17698,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:46:28","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:16:28","post_content":"\n

Last week, Scrum celebrated 25 years, and to add to that celebration, a new scrum guide was released. Over the years, Scrum has been implemented across multiple industries and domains and the feedback of its success and failures flowed back into this new Scrum guide. There was a lot of excitement among the agile community for the launch and the agile community was elated with the changes in the Scrum guide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us look at the summary of changes ( from scrum.org articles) in the new scrum guide and then talk about the impact for us (agile community). For more details, you can refer to scrum.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even Less\nPrescriptive<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years,\nthe Scrum Guide started getting a bit more prescriptive. The 2020 version aims\nto bring Scrum back to being a minimally sufficient framework. This was\nachieved by removing the Daily Scrum questions, softening language around PBI\nattributes and retro items in Sprint Backlog, shortening the Sprint\ncancellation section, and much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One Team,\nFocused on One Product<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal was to\neliminate the concept of a separate team within a team that has led to \u201cproxy\u201d\nor \u201cus and them\u201d behavior between the PO and Dev Team. There is now just one\nScrum Team focused on the same objective, with three different sets of accountabilities:\nPO, SM, and Developers (anybody who is working on the sprint increment).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction\nof Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum\nGuide introduces the concept of a Product Goal to provide the focus for the\nScrum Team toward a larger valuable objective. Each Sprint should bring the\nproduct closer to the overall Product Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Home for\nSprint Goal, Definition of Done, and Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides described Sprint Goal and Definition of Done without really giving them\nan identity. They were not quite artifacts but were somewhat attached to\nartifacts. With the addition of Product Goal, the 2020 version provides more\nclarity around this. Each of the three artifacts now contains \u2018commitments\u2019 to\nthem. For the Product Backlog, it is the Product Goal, the Sprint Backlog has\nthe Sprint Goal, and the Increment has the Definition of Done (now without the\nquotes). They exist to bring transparency and focus toward the progress of each\nartifact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-Managing\nover Self-Organizing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides referred to Development Teams (team members who are working on the\nsprint increment) as self-organizing, choosing who and how to do work. With\nmore of a focus on the Scrum Team, the 2020 version emphasizes a self-managing\nScrum Team, that chooses who, how, and what to work on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nSprint Planning Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the\nSprint Planning topics of \u201cWhat\u201d and \u201cHow,\u201d the 2020 Scrum Guide places\nemphasis on a third topic, \u201cWhy.\u201d This third topic refers to the Sprint Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

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<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #271: Lack of planning and Agile","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-271-lack-of-planning-and-agile","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:38:28","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:38:28","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19344","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":19019,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-08-16 09:07:06","post_date_gmt":"2021-08-16 03:37:06","post_content":"\n

Murugan joined an organization as a Scrum master. One of the teams that he was asked to coach has been in running mode at a fast pace for 2 months already. The team has been doing basic agile practices such as having a time-boxed work commitment, daily standup, and demo to the Product owner and business. However, there have been some issues with respect to requirements and backlog quality, which might impact the tight timelines of that team has. The project is a very important project, and the first release is scheduled in just 2 months of him starting. He started participating in meetings and understanding the domain\/project etc. Within few days, PO escalated that Scrum master is not good and he is not able to fully align with the team, communication skills not good, etc. Murugan had a meeting with the Project manager to understand the issues so that he can improve. Again, after few days, PO escalated that I want the SM to be changed as he thinks that he is not the right fit? Murugan is at loss on how to handle these as he is new to an organization and new to the team. What do you think that as a recommended action to help Murugan?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PO and SM relationship is quite important. Even if there are small conflicts, the Scrum Master and Product Owner must work together to resolve them before they escalate into a full-blown misunderstanding. A supportive relationship with plenty of giving and take is necessary for the health of the team as a whole. As a first step, he should connect with PO to understand the issues as sometimes it could be just misunderstanding or miscommunication. After that, if the issues are something that he can work on, he can come up with a plan of action with concrete timelines. If some of them need organizational intervention, he can reach out to his management and project management of the team to see if he can get help to resolve those issues. Align the Plan of action with the timelines with PO so that they can start working together. <\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW 260: PO overpowering SM","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-260-po-overpowering-sm","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:38:54","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:38:54","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19019","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":19014,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-08-16 08:57:11","post_date_gmt":"2021-08-16 03:27:11","post_content":"\n

The past 2 years have been a roller coaster ride for most\nof us. It gave us opportunities to relearn some of our\nforgotten skills or explore new areas through virtual learning platforms. It is\nnot only individuals re-looking at learning methods but also every organization\nwas also looking at changing their training, onboarding, and workshops to\nvirtual mode. We can see it in the data and the projection for that industry\npublished on the world economic forum page. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.weforum.org\/agenda\/2020\/04\/coronavirus-education-global-covid19-online-digital-learning\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

 E-learning Market Value Projected To Reach US$ 660.8\nBillion By 2027 Covering Covid-19 Impact -  The global e-learning\nmarket<\/strong><\/a> is expected to grow at a CAGR of around 15.9%\nfrom 2020 to 2027 and reach the market value of over US$ 660.8 Bn by 2027. (ref\nhttps:\/\/www.globenewswire.com\/news-release\/2021\/05\/20\/2233572\/0\/en\/<\/a>E-learning-Market-Value-Projected-To-Reach-US-660-8-Billion-By-2027-Covering-Covid-19-Impact-Acumen-Research-and-Consulting.html<\/a>)  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 As the industry matures, there have been lots of best\npractices and recommendations shared across to develop the right content and tips on\nhow to engage the participants for trainers. In some organizations, trainers\nare re-trained to adopt this model. Whereas I feel that as a learner, it is up\nto each of us to figure out new ways of learning in the new world that is\npoised to stay. During the past 2 years, I have been on a personal learning\njourney and was using various virtual learning tools, platforms for that\npurpose. Initially, when I started, I fumbled through these learning methods, and sometimes I dropped the course or lectures in-between as they did not fit my\nlearning styles, wasting both my time and money. After few trials, I figured out\nsome practices or tips that are helping me out to get the best out of these\nvirtual learning courses or workshops. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Here are my 2 cents <\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.       Align learning styles<\/strong> - Each of us has different ways in which we grasp things. Some of us love to listen to lectures whereas some of us would love to do experiments to understand concepts. The study shows that there are 7 different learning styles, and they are as listed below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Visual (spatial) Learner -Using pictures, images,\ndiagrams, whiteboards and more helps these types of learners understand\ninformation better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Aural (auditory) Learner -Aural learners are good\nlisteners who normally learn best through verbal presentations like\nlectures and speeches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Verbal (linguistic) Learner -These learners prefer using\nwords, both in speech and writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Physical (kinesthetic) Learner -Getting hands-on is a\nmust for these learners who love to tinker and learn best when they can do\nrather than see or hear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Logical (mathematical) Learner - If there is logic,\nreasoning, and numbers involved, these learners are sure to excel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Social learners favored Social (interpersonal)\nLearner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Solitary (intrapersonal) Learner - These students prefer\nto use self-study and work alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, if I belong to the visual and kinesthetic\nlearner type, then I would prefer classes with more diagrams and more\nexperiments rather than trainers speaking about topics. However, if I am a\nverbal learner, I would love to listen to lectures from experts. Understanding\nour unique learning styles would help us choose courses or methods of learning.\nEither you can look back at the training programs where you enjoyed or do the\nsurvey available on the internet to understand your style. For me, I love working\nin groups hence I choose courses(offline) where there are options to review\nother\u2019s work and connect with the team, which helps in better learning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Keeping Focus and avoiding distractions<\/strong>\u2013One of the major drawbacks of e-learning is the focus or having undivided attention. When we are in class or workshops, we do not open mobile or laptops to check emails or send messages and when we lose focus, we might daydream. However, when we are learning online, laptops or mobile that we use every day for office or for entertainment or for chatting with friends could themselves become distractions. Here are a few tips I followed to keep myself focused during classes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u00b7 Closeout the mails and collaboration channels keep\nmobile of our reach; Keep only course window open <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Set expectations at home that you are in training and not\nto be disturbed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Have video on <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Join a few minutes early and connect with the trainer\n\/facilitator. This also helps you to take on the next steps, such as\ncertification or becoming an expert in that area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 2 min mindful breathing before the class starts (ref\n-https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/mindful-leadership\/resources\/) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7Try out the exercises or case study and submit it \n\nI\nam sure most of you have been using the virtual learning platforms, either in\nyour organization or some preferred platforms to learn and grow in your\ncareers. Hope the above tips shared from my experience are useful. Please share\nyour best practices or tips or any recommendation from your learning journey on\nhow we can get the best out of the virtual learning model.\n\n<\/p>\n","post_title":"Tips to get the best of the virtual learning world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"tips-to-get-the-best-of-the-virtual-learning-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19014","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18707,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:58","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:58","post_content":"\n

Most of us would have read about the recent\nransomware hit on Colonial pipeline, one of the largest oil pipelines in the\nUS. They had to temporarily halt all the operations, it impacted some of the\ncompany\u2019s IT system and suffered a huge loss. It took almost a week to bring\nback the services and back to normal. During this unprecedented time, as we\nwere all working from home, Organization was worried about securing the\napplications, Infrastructure, etc. Cybersecurity has been slowly gaining focus\nand these kinds of attacks make serious attention.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the past 3 months, as an agile coach, I am involved in coaching a team that is developing a highly critical application that is also the backbone of the business deals. This application had to be super secure and if this application gets hit, it can have a huge impact on the organization in terms of finance, brand, and assets, data, etc. Hence, we had to explore how to integrate agile development practices and Cybersecurity practices. There have been some thoughts that agile, with its frequent releases, introduces vulnerability in the system and sometimes not recommended as a development approach for high critical application.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In the past, Cybersecurity teams usually get involved in the tail end and now with frequent releases, ways of working and processes need to be tailored. There were few practices that we got started which I will be sharing in this blog. Would love to hear from you; your stories and experiments in this area.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cybersecurity by definition is Computer\nsecurity, cybersecurity or information technology security (IT security) is the\nprotection of computer systems<\/a> and networks<\/a> from information disclosure, theft of or damage to\ntheir hardware<\/a>, software<\/a>, or electronic data<\/a>,\nas well as from the disruption<\/a> or misdirection<\/a> of the services they provide. In the past, the role\nof security was isolated to a specific team in the final stage of development.\nThat wasn\u2019t as problematic when development cycles lasted months or even years,\nbut those days are over. Effective agile development ensures rapid and frequent\ndevelopment cycles (sometimes weeks or days), but outdated security practices\ncan make the application more vulnerable to attacks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      There have been some doubts about Agile development methodologies and how it lends to Cybersecurity practices. But with self-organizing and cross-functional teams, agile enables different skill sets to work as a team to deliver good quality and secure software.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is how we got started with the process, and practices to integrate cybersecurity practices in agile development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.     Shift- Left:<\/strong>  Having\nexperts \/Cybersecurity personnel at the initial stage not at the end state; not\nto build systems of today. They were able to determine the risk tolerance of\nthe application and conduct risk\/benefit analysis. What amount of security\ncontrols are required for this application and threat modeling exercises? What\nkind of testing required during the sprints and have them integrated with the\ntesting and DevOps plan? It also underscores the need to help developers code\nwith security in mind, a process that involves security teams sharing\nvisibility, feedback, and insights on known threats. Based on the analysis and\nplan, all our developers were trained on the security protocols, processes and\ntools required. One of the important factors to keep in mind is the balance of\ncybersecurity activities with other activities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Hacker as persona:<\/strong> We introduced Hacker as a persona for the application as a next step. By building these personas<\/strong>, we worked out the best defense against certain types of attacks and predict when they might next occur. It helps us to understand the motivation and plan for countermeasures, prioritize defense. This persona was included as one of the users in the identified features of the application and which then was elaborated during the requirements and backlog grooming session. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Tools and Automation<\/strong>: There are quite a several tools available now in the cybersecurity domain. Once the cybersecurity process\/tests are identified, we find that most of our tasks were repetitive and manual. We started looking for ways to automate as Automating repeated tasks is key to DevSecOps since running manual security checks in the pipeline can be time-intensive. Some of these tasks can be automated, such as monitoring intrusion detection systems to search for threats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the major learning in this experimentation is that Shift left does not mean moving all the cybersecurity-related processes, practices, ways of working, and tools from the tail end to the initial stage of development. There had to be a balanced approach and what is required differs from application to application. But bringing this security mindset to all the team members helped a lot in bringing the balanced approach of security and frequent release cycles that was much needed for our application.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Agile and Cybersecurity - How to get started","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-and-cybersecurity-how-to-get-started","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18707","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18715,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:41","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:41","post_content":"\n

Harshita is a scrum master for a team. With the Covid situation across India, the team has been dull and in a very somber state. As a scrum master, she could understand and relate to the situation that the team has been going through. At an organization level, there has been a lot of Employee assistance programs. But she is confused about whether it is ok to have the team be like this or does she need to do something?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution:<\/strong> Here are few things that I would recommend she start with <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Status \/ Smiley images in the communication and collaboration tool.  We have asked team members to add this and this helps others in the team to understand the emotional state of each and every one.  It was quite beneficial and set the stage for everyone in the meetings and interaction.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Standup meetings or team meetings \u2013 First 5 min or 10 min is used for check-in and free-flow conversation. This helped team members to know what\u2019s happening, vent out some of their feelings and help each other as need. If it\u2019s a large team, use some of the survey tools to do check-in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Informal group chat\/gathering or 1:1 with each other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am sure most coaches, leaders are thinking about this and doing something to help their teams in these trying times. Let me know what are those things that you are doing.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #248 \u2013 Sensitivity during these(covid) times","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-248-sensitivity-during-thesecovid-times","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18715","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17712,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:47:04","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:17:04","post_content":"\n

Pravin has been coaching the development team for a few months on the implementation of Scrum. There were a lot of improvement ideas and opportunities that he and his team gathered for the Product team, operation teams during the retrospective. When he tried speaking to them to understand their processes and see if he can do something about it, he was told that the scrum master scope is for the IT development team and the operation teams are not part of it.  He was very excited when he read the new scrum guide and understood that the scrum master role is expanded. Will this help him to remove the obstacle of end to end coaching of the team? If not, what else can he do? Are there any suggestions or solutions that you would recommend?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suggested Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum master role definition and One product team from the scrum guide is a good starting point. Pravin can use the guide to drive the essence of one team delivering product starting from definition to support, roll out, and also point that it is from the industry best practice. In addition to that, it would be good for him to quantify the problem that he had gathered with the data; for ex the resolution time of the incident (end to end), new requirements from the operation team. Along with that, he can do an End to End process mapping w.r.t product delivery and facilitate a discussion with the relevant stakeholders. Most of the time, the problem would be due to organization design ie. Silos between the operation team, product team, and development team, and this might take a longer discussion to solve. <\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #224 - Scrum Master role in the Operations\/Support world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-224-scrum-master-role-in-the-operations-support-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17712","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17698,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:46:28","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:16:28","post_content":"\n

Last week, Scrum celebrated 25 years, and to add to that celebration, a new scrum guide was released. Over the years, Scrum has been implemented across multiple industries and domains and the feedback of its success and failures flowed back into this new Scrum guide. There was a lot of excitement among the agile community for the launch and the agile community was elated with the changes in the Scrum guide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us look at the summary of changes ( from scrum.org articles) in the new scrum guide and then talk about the impact for us (agile community). For more details, you can refer to scrum.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even Less\nPrescriptive<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years,\nthe Scrum Guide started getting a bit more prescriptive. The 2020 version aims\nto bring Scrum back to being a minimally sufficient framework. This was\nachieved by removing the Daily Scrum questions, softening language around PBI\nattributes and retro items in Sprint Backlog, shortening the Sprint\ncancellation section, and much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One Team,\nFocused on One Product<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal was to\neliminate the concept of a separate team within a team that has led to \u201cproxy\u201d\nor \u201cus and them\u201d behavior between the PO and Dev Team. There is now just one\nScrum Team focused on the same objective, with three different sets of accountabilities:\nPO, SM, and Developers (anybody who is working on the sprint increment).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction\nof Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum\nGuide introduces the concept of a Product Goal to provide the focus for the\nScrum Team toward a larger valuable objective. Each Sprint should bring the\nproduct closer to the overall Product Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Home for\nSprint Goal, Definition of Done, and Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides described Sprint Goal and Definition of Done without really giving them\nan identity. They were not quite artifacts but were somewhat attached to\nartifacts. With the addition of Product Goal, the 2020 version provides more\nclarity around this. Each of the three artifacts now contains \u2018commitments\u2019 to\nthem. For the Product Backlog, it is the Product Goal, the Sprint Backlog has\nthe Sprint Goal, and the Increment has the Definition of Done (now without the\nquotes). They exist to bring transparency and focus toward the progress of each\nartifact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-Managing\nover Self-Organizing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides referred to Development Teams (team members who are working on the\nsprint increment) as self-organizing, choosing who and how to do work. With\nmore of a focus on the Scrum Team, the 2020 version emphasizes a self-managing\nScrum Team, that chooses who, how, and what to work on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nSprint Planning Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the\nSprint Planning topics of \u201cWhat\u201d and \u201cHow,\u201d the 2020 Scrum Guide places\nemphasis on a third topic, \u201cWhy.\u201d This third topic refers to the Sprint Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

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Solution:<\/strong> It\u2019s ok to do some detailed requirements exploration, architecture, and design work upfront, to provide some estimates in hours and dollars, or real dates in addition to points and sprint numbers. \u201cYou can still get the benefits of agile by revisiting requirements and designs in sprint planning, being test-driven, and working with business partners every day,\u201d . Talk to the team and explain Agile is not an excuse not to plan. She can get initial Sprint zero to explore on the requirements so that team can come up with estimates. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #271: Lack of planning and Agile","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-271-lack-of-planning-and-agile","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:38:28","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:38:28","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19344","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":19019,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-08-16 09:07:06","post_date_gmt":"2021-08-16 03:37:06","post_content":"\n

Murugan joined an organization as a Scrum master. One of the teams that he was asked to coach has been in running mode at a fast pace for 2 months already. The team has been doing basic agile practices such as having a time-boxed work commitment, daily standup, and demo to the Product owner and business. However, there have been some issues with respect to requirements and backlog quality, which might impact the tight timelines of that team has. The project is a very important project, and the first release is scheduled in just 2 months of him starting. He started participating in meetings and understanding the domain\/project etc. Within few days, PO escalated that Scrum master is not good and he is not able to fully align with the team, communication skills not good, etc. Murugan had a meeting with the Project manager to understand the issues so that he can improve. Again, after few days, PO escalated that I want the SM to be changed as he thinks that he is not the right fit? Murugan is at loss on how to handle these as he is new to an organization and new to the team. What do you think that as a recommended action to help Murugan?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PO and SM relationship is quite important. Even if there are small conflicts, the Scrum Master and Product Owner must work together to resolve them before they escalate into a full-blown misunderstanding. A supportive relationship with plenty of giving and take is necessary for the health of the team as a whole. As a first step, he should connect with PO to understand the issues as sometimes it could be just misunderstanding or miscommunication. After that, if the issues are something that he can work on, he can come up with a plan of action with concrete timelines. If some of them need organizational intervention, he can reach out to his management and project management of the team to see if he can get help to resolve those issues. Align the Plan of action with the timelines with PO so that they can start working together. <\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW 260: PO overpowering SM","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-260-po-overpowering-sm","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:38:54","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:38:54","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19019","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":19014,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-08-16 08:57:11","post_date_gmt":"2021-08-16 03:27:11","post_content":"\n

The past 2 years have been a roller coaster ride for most\nof us. It gave us opportunities to relearn some of our\nforgotten skills or explore new areas through virtual learning platforms. It is\nnot only individuals re-looking at learning methods but also every organization\nwas also looking at changing their training, onboarding, and workshops to\nvirtual mode. We can see it in the data and the projection for that industry\npublished on the world economic forum page. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.weforum.org\/agenda\/2020\/04\/coronavirus-education-global-covid19-online-digital-learning\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

 E-learning Market Value Projected To Reach US$ 660.8\nBillion By 2027 Covering Covid-19 Impact -  The global e-learning\nmarket<\/strong><\/a> is expected to grow at a CAGR of around 15.9%\nfrom 2020 to 2027 and reach the market value of over US$ 660.8 Bn by 2027. (ref\nhttps:\/\/www.globenewswire.com\/news-release\/2021\/05\/20\/2233572\/0\/en\/<\/a>E-learning-Market-Value-Projected-To-Reach-US-660-8-Billion-By-2027-Covering-Covid-19-Impact-Acumen-Research-and-Consulting.html<\/a>)  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 As the industry matures, there have been lots of best\npractices and recommendations shared across to develop the right content and tips on\nhow to engage the participants for trainers. In some organizations, trainers\nare re-trained to adopt this model. Whereas I feel that as a learner, it is up\nto each of us to figure out new ways of learning in the new world that is\npoised to stay. During the past 2 years, I have been on a personal learning\njourney and was using various virtual learning tools, platforms for that\npurpose. Initially, when I started, I fumbled through these learning methods, and sometimes I dropped the course or lectures in-between as they did not fit my\nlearning styles, wasting both my time and money. After few trials, I figured out\nsome practices or tips that are helping me out to get the best out of these\nvirtual learning courses or workshops. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Here are my 2 cents <\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.       Align learning styles<\/strong> - Each of us has different ways in which we grasp things. Some of us love to listen to lectures whereas some of us would love to do experiments to understand concepts. The study shows that there are 7 different learning styles, and they are as listed below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Visual (spatial) Learner -Using pictures, images,\ndiagrams, whiteboards and more helps these types of learners understand\ninformation better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Aural (auditory) Learner -Aural learners are good\nlisteners who normally learn best through verbal presentations like\nlectures and speeches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Verbal (linguistic) Learner -These learners prefer using\nwords, both in speech and writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Physical (kinesthetic) Learner -Getting hands-on is a\nmust for these learners who love to tinker and learn best when they can do\nrather than see or hear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Logical (mathematical) Learner - If there is logic,\nreasoning, and numbers involved, these learners are sure to excel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Social learners favored Social (interpersonal)\nLearner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Solitary (intrapersonal) Learner - These students prefer\nto use self-study and work alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, if I belong to the visual and kinesthetic\nlearner type, then I would prefer classes with more diagrams and more\nexperiments rather than trainers speaking about topics. However, if I am a\nverbal learner, I would love to listen to lectures from experts. Understanding\nour unique learning styles would help us choose courses or methods of learning.\nEither you can look back at the training programs where you enjoyed or do the\nsurvey available on the internet to understand your style. For me, I love working\nin groups hence I choose courses(offline) where there are options to review\nother\u2019s work and connect with the team, which helps in better learning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Keeping Focus and avoiding distractions<\/strong>\u2013One of the major drawbacks of e-learning is the focus or having undivided attention. When we are in class or workshops, we do not open mobile or laptops to check emails or send messages and when we lose focus, we might daydream. However, when we are learning online, laptops or mobile that we use every day for office or for entertainment or for chatting with friends could themselves become distractions. Here are a few tips I followed to keep myself focused during classes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u00b7 Closeout the mails and collaboration channels keep\nmobile of our reach; Keep only course window open <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Set expectations at home that you are in training and not\nto be disturbed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Have video on <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Join a few minutes early and connect with the trainer\n\/facilitator. This also helps you to take on the next steps, such as\ncertification or becoming an expert in that area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 2 min mindful breathing before the class starts (ref\n-https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/mindful-leadership\/resources\/) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7Try out the exercises or case study and submit it \n\nI\nam sure most of you have been using the virtual learning platforms, either in\nyour organization or some preferred platforms to learn and grow in your\ncareers. Hope the above tips shared from my experience are useful. Please share\nyour best practices or tips or any recommendation from your learning journey on\nhow we can get the best out of the virtual learning model.\n\n<\/p>\n","post_title":"Tips to get the best of the virtual learning world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"tips-to-get-the-best-of-the-virtual-learning-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19014","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18707,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:58","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:58","post_content":"\n

Most of us would have read about the recent\nransomware hit on Colonial pipeline, one of the largest oil pipelines in the\nUS. They had to temporarily halt all the operations, it impacted some of the\ncompany\u2019s IT system and suffered a huge loss. It took almost a week to bring\nback the services and back to normal. During this unprecedented time, as we\nwere all working from home, Organization was worried about securing the\napplications, Infrastructure, etc. Cybersecurity has been slowly gaining focus\nand these kinds of attacks make serious attention.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the past 3 months, as an agile coach, I am involved in coaching a team that is developing a highly critical application that is also the backbone of the business deals. This application had to be super secure and if this application gets hit, it can have a huge impact on the organization in terms of finance, brand, and assets, data, etc. Hence, we had to explore how to integrate agile development practices and Cybersecurity practices. There have been some thoughts that agile, with its frequent releases, introduces vulnerability in the system and sometimes not recommended as a development approach for high critical application.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In the past, Cybersecurity teams usually get involved in the tail end and now with frequent releases, ways of working and processes need to be tailored. There were few practices that we got started which I will be sharing in this blog. Would love to hear from you; your stories and experiments in this area.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cybersecurity by definition is Computer\nsecurity, cybersecurity or information technology security (IT security) is the\nprotection of computer systems<\/a> and networks<\/a> from information disclosure, theft of or damage to\ntheir hardware<\/a>, software<\/a>, or electronic data<\/a>,\nas well as from the disruption<\/a> or misdirection<\/a> of the services they provide. In the past, the role\nof security was isolated to a specific team in the final stage of development.\nThat wasn\u2019t as problematic when development cycles lasted months or even years,\nbut those days are over. Effective agile development ensures rapid and frequent\ndevelopment cycles (sometimes weeks or days), but outdated security practices\ncan make the application more vulnerable to attacks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      There have been some doubts about Agile development methodologies and how it lends to Cybersecurity practices. But with self-organizing and cross-functional teams, agile enables different skill sets to work as a team to deliver good quality and secure software.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is how we got started with the process, and practices to integrate cybersecurity practices in agile development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.     Shift- Left:<\/strong>  Having\nexperts \/Cybersecurity personnel at the initial stage not at the end state; not\nto build systems of today. They were able to determine the risk tolerance of\nthe application and conduct risk\/benefit analysis. What amount of security\ncontrols are required for this application and threat modeling exercises? What\nkind of testing required during the sprints and have them integrated with the\ntesting and DevOps plan? It also underscores the need to help developers code\nwith security in mind, a process that involves security teams sharing\nvisibility, feedback, and insights on known threats. Based on the analysis and\nplan, all our developers were trained on the security protocols, processes and\ntools required. One of the important factors to keep in mind is the balance of\ncybersecurity activities with other activities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Hacker as persona:<\/strong> We introduced Hacker as a persona for the application as a next step. By building these personas<\/strong>, we worked out the best defense against certain types of attacks and predict when they might next occur. It helps us to understand the motivation and plan for countermeasures, prioritize defense. This persona was included as one of the users in the identified features of the application and which then was elaborated during the requirements and backlog grooming session. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Tools and Automation<\/strong>: There are quite a several tools available now in the cybersecurity domain. Once the cybersecurity process\/tests are identified, we find that most of our tasks were repetitive and manual. We started looking for ways to automate as Automating repeated tasks is key to DevSecOps since running manual security checks in the pipeline can be time-intensive. Some of these tasks can be automated, such as monitoring intrusion detection systems to search for threats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the major learning in this experimentation is that Shift left does not mean moving all the cybersecurity-related processes, practices, ways of working, and tools from the tail end to the initial stage of development. There had to be a balanced approach and what is required differs from application to application. But bringing this security mindset to all the team members helped a lot in bringing the balanced approach of security and frequent release cycles that was much needed for our application.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Agile and Cybersecurity - How to get started","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-and-cybersecurity-how-to-get-started","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18707","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18715,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:41","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:41","post_content":"\n

Harshita is a scrum master for a team. With the Covid situation across India, the team has been dull and in a very somber state. As a scrum master, she could understand and relate to the situation that the team has been going through. At an organization level, there has been a lot of Employee assistance programs. But she is confused about whether it is ok to have the team be like this or does she need to do something?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution:<\/strong> Here are few things that I would recommend she start with <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Status \/ Smiley images in the communication and collaboration tool.  We have asked team members to add this and this helps others in the team to understand the emotional state of each and every one.  It was quite beneficial and set the stage for everyone in the meetings and interaction.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Standup meetings or team meetings \u2013 First 5 min or 10 min is used for check-in and free-flow conversation. This helped team members to know what\u2019s happening, vent out some of their feelings and help each other as need. If it\u2019s a large team, use some of the survey tools to do check-in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Informal group chat\/gathering or 1:1 with each other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am sure most coaches, leaders are thinking about this and doing something to help their teams in these trying times. Let me know what are those things that you are doing.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #248 \u2013 Sensitivity during these(covid) times","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-248-sensitivity-during-thesecovid-times","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18715","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17712,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:47:04","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:17:04","post_content":"\n

Pravin has been coaching the development team for a few months on the implementation of Scrum. There were a lot of improvement ideas and opportunities that he and his team gathered for the Product team, operation teams during the retrospective. When he tried speaking to them to understand their processes and see if he can do something about it, he was told that the scrum master scope is for the IT development team and the operation teams are not part of it.  He was very excited when he read the new scrum guide and understood that the scrum master role is expanded. Will this help him to remove the obstacle of end to end coaching of the team? If not, what else can he do? Are there any suggestions or solutions that you would recommend?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suggested Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum master role definition and One product team from the scrum guide is a good starting point. Pravin can use the guide to drive the essence of one team delivering product starting from definition to support, roll out, and also point that it is from the industry best practice. In addition to that, it would be good for him to quantify the problem that he had gathered with the data; for ex the resolution time of the incident (end to end), new requirements from the operation team. Along with that, he can do an End to End process mapping w.r.t product delivery and facilitate a discussion with the relevant stakeholders. Most of the time, the problem would be due to organization design ie. Silos between the operation team, product team, and development team, and this might take a longer discussion to solve. <\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #224 - Scrum Master role in the Operations\/Support world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-224-scrum-master-role-in-the-operations-support-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17712","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17698,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:46:28","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:16:28","post_content":"\n

Last week, Scrum celebrated 25 years, and to add to that celebration, a new scrum guide was released. Over the years, Scrum has been implemented across multiple industries and domains and the feedback of its success and failures flowed back into this new Scrum guide. There was a lot of excitement among the agile community for the launch and the agile community was elated with the changes in the Scrum guide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us look at the summary of changes ( from scrum.org articles) in the new scrum guide and then talk about the impact for us (agile community). For more details, you can refer to scrum.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even Less\nPrescriptive<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years,\nthe Scrum Guide started getting a bit more prescriptive. The 2020 version aims\nto bring Scrum back to being a minimally sufficient framework. This was\nachieved by removing the Daily Scrum questions, softening language around PBI\nattributes and retro items in Sprint Backlog, shortening the Sprint\ncancellation section, and much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One Team,\nFocused on One Product<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal was to\neliminate the concept of a separate team within a team that has led to \u201cproxy\u201d\nor \u201cus and them\u201d behavior between the PO and Dev Team. There is now just one\nScrum Team focused on the same objective, with three different sets of accountabilities:\nPO, SM, and Developers (anybody who is working on the sprint increment).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction\nof Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum\nGuide introduces the concept of a Product Goal to provide the focus for the\nScrum Team toward a larger valuable objective. Each Sprint should bring the\nproduct closer to the overall Product Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Home for\nSprint Goal, Definition of Done, and Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides described Sprint Goal and Definition of Done without really giving them\nan identity. They were not quite artifacts but were somewhat attached to\nartifacts. With the addition of Product Goal, the 2020 version provides more\nclarity around this. Each of the three artifacts now contains \u2018commitments\u2019 to\nthem. For the Product Backlog, it is the Product Goal, the Sprint Backlog has\nthe Sprint Goal, and the Increment has the Definition of Done (now without the\nquotes). They exist to bring transparency and focus toward the progress of each\nartifact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-Managing\nover Self-Organizing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides referred to Development Teams (team members who are working on the\nsprint increment) as self-organizing, choosing who and how to do work. With\nmore of a focus on the Scrum Team, the 2020 version emphasizes a self-managing\nScrum Team, that chooses who, how, and what to work on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nSprint Planning Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the\nSprint Planning topics of \u201cWhat\u201d and \u201cHow,\u201d the 2020 Scrum Guide places\nemphasis on a third topic, \u201cWhy.\u201d This third topic refers to the Sprint Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

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\n

Kavya is a new project manager in an MNC. The project was asked to run in an agile mode. As in most projects, the Backlog was not detailed and only high-level one-line requirements were available. Business leaders wanted to know what something will cost and what the benefits are before committing to it. Whereas the project team was saying that they cannot do a detailed plan and hence they will not be able to estimate. Kavya was also worried that by doing detailed planning, you will be accused of falling back to the waterfall. What should she do in this case?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution:<\/strong> It\u2019s ok to do some detailed requirements exploration, architecture, and design work upfront, to provide some estimates in hours and dollars, or real dates in addition to points and sprint numbers. \u201cYou can still get the benefits of agile by revisiting requirements and designs in sprint planning, being test-driven, and working with business partners every day,\u201d . Talk to the team and explain Agile is not an excuse not to plan. She can get initial Sprint zero to explore on the requirements so that team can come up with estimates. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #271: Lack of planning and Agile","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-271-lack-of-planning-and-agile","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:38:28","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:38:28","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19344","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":19019,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-08-16 09:07:06","post_date_gmt":"2021-08-16 03:37:06","post_content":"\n

Murugan joined an organization as a Scrum master. One of the teams that he was asked to coach has been in running mode at a fast pace for 2 months already. The team has been doing basic agile practices such as having a time-boxed work commitment, daily standup, and demo to the Product owner and business. However, there have been some issues with respect to requirements and backlog quality, which might impact the tight timelines of that team has. The project is a very important project, and the first release is scheduled in just 2 months of him starting. He started participating in meetings and understanding the domain\/project etc. Within few days, PO escalated that Scrum master is not good and he is not able to fully align with the team, communication skills not good, etc. Murugan had a meeting with the Project manager to understand the issues so that he can improve. Again, after few days, PO escalated that I want the SM to be changed as he thinks that he is not the right fit? Murugan is at loss on how to handle these as he is new to an organization and new to the team. What do you think that as a recommended action to help Murugan?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PO and SM relationship is quite important. Even if there are small conflicts, the Scrum Master and Product Owner must work together to resolve them before they escalate into a full-blown misunderstanding. A supportive relationship with plenty of giving and take is necessary for the health of the team as a whole. As a first step, he should connect with PO to understand the issues as sometimes it could be just misunderstanding or miscommunication. After that, if the issues are something that he can work on, he can come up with a plan of action with concrete timelines. If some of them need organizational intervention, he can reach out to his management and project management of the team to see if he can get help to resolve those issues. Align the Plan of action with the timelines with PO so that they can start working together. <\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW 260: PO overpowering SM","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-260-po-overpowering-sm","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:38:54","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:38:54","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19019","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":19014,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-08-16 08:57:11","post_date_gmt":"2021-08-16 03:27:11","post_content":"\n

The past 2 years have been a roller coaster ride for most\nof us. It gave us opportunities to relearn some of our\nforgotten skills or explore new areas through virtual learning platforms. It is\nnot only individuals re-looking at learning methods but also every organization\nwas also looking at changing their training, onboarding, and workshops to\nvirtual mode. We can see it in the data and the projection for that industry\npublished on the world economic forum page. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.weforum.org\/agenda\/2020\/04\/coronavirus-education-global-covid19-online-digital-learning\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

 E-learning Market Value Projected To Reach US$ 660.8\nBillion By 2027 Covering Covid-19 Impact -  The global e-learning\nmarket<\/strong><\/a> is expected to grow at a CAGR of around 15.9%\nfrom 2020 to 2027 and reach the market value of over US$ 660.8 Bn by 2027. (ref\nhttps:\/\/www.globenewswire.com\/news-release\/2021\/05\/20\/2233572\/0\/en\/<\/a>E-learning-Market-Value-Projected-To-Reach-US-660-8-Billion-By-2027-Covering-Covid-19-Impact-Acumen-Research-and-Consulting.html<\/a>)  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 As the industry matures, there have been lots of best\npractices and recommendations shared across to develop the right content and tips on\nhow to engage the participants for trainers. In some organizations, trainers\nare re-trained to adopt this model. Whereas I feel that as a learner, it is up\nto each of us to figure out new ways of learning in the new world that is\npoised to stay. During the past 2 years, I have been on a personal learning\njourney and was using various virtual learning tools, platforms for that\npurpose. Initially, when I started, I fumbled through these learning methods, and sometimes I dropped the course or lectures in-between as they did not fit my\nlearning styles, wasting both my time and money. After few trials, I figured out\nsome practices or tips that are helping me out to get the best out of these\nvirtual learning courses or workshops. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Here are my 2 cents <\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.       Align learning styles<\/strong> - Each of us has different ways in which we grasp things. Some of us love to listen to lectures whereas some of us would love to do experiments to understand concepts. The study shows that there are 7 different learning styles, and they are as listed below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Visual (spatial) Learner -Using pictures, images,\ndiagrams, whiteboards and more helps these types of learners understand\ninformation better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Aural (auditory) Learner -Aural learners are good\nlisteners who normally learn best through verbal presentations like\nlectures and speeches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Verbal (linguistic) Learner -These learners prefer using\nwords, both in speech and writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Physical (kinesthetic) Learner -Getting hands-on is a\nmust for these learners who love to tinker and learn best when they can do\nrather than see or hear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Logical (mathematical) Learner - If there is logic,\nreasoning, and numbers involved, these learners are sure to excel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Social learners favored Social (interpersonal)\nLearner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Solitary (intrapersonal) Learner - These students prefer\nto use self-study and work alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, if I belong to the visual and kinesthetic\nlearner type, then I would prefer classes with more diagrams and more\nexperiments rather than trainers speaking about topics. However, if I am a\nverbal learner, I would love to listen to lectures from experts. Understanding\nour unique learning styles would help us choose courses or methods of learning.\nEither you can look back at the training programs where you enjoyed or do the\nsurvey available on the internet to understand your style. For me, I love working\nin groups hence I choose courses(offline) where there are options to review\nother\u2019s work and connect with the team, which helps in better learning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Keeping Focus and avoiding distractions<\/strong>\u2013One of the major drawbacks of e-learning is the focus or having undivided attention. When we are in class or workshops, we do not open mobile or laptops to check emails or send messages and when we lose focus, we might daydream. However, when we are learning online, laptops or mobile that we use every day for office or for entertainment or for chatting with friends could themselves become distractions. Here are a few tips I followed to keep myself focused during classes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u00b7 Closeout the mails and collaboration channels keep\nmobile of our reach; Keep only course window open <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Set expectations at home that you are in training and not\nto be disturbed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Have video on <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Join a few minutes early and connect with the trainer\n\/facilitator. This also helps you to take on the next steps, such as\ncertification or becoming an expert in that area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 2 min mindful breathing before the class starts (ref\n-https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/mindful-leadership\/resources\/) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7Try out the exercises or case study and submit it \n\nI\nam sure most of you have been using the virtual learning platforms, either in\nyour organization or some preferred platforms to learn and grow in your\ncareers. Hope the above tips shared from my experience are useful. Please share\nyour best practices or tips or any recommendation from your learning journey on\nhow we can get the best out of the virtual learning model.\n\n<\/p>\n","post_title":"Tips to get the best of the virtual learning world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"tips-to-get-the-best-of-the-virtual-learning-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19014","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18707,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:58","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:58","post_content":"\n

Most of us would have read about the recent\nransomware hit on Colonial pipeline, one of the largest oil pipelines in the\nUS. They had to temporarily halt all the operations, it impacted some of the\ncompany\u2019s IT system and suffered a huge loss. It took almost a week to bring\nback the services and back to normal. During this unprecedented time, as we\nwere all working from home, Organization was worried about securing the\napplications, Infrastructure, etc. Cybersecurity has been slowly gaining focus\nand these kinds of attacks make serious attention.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the past 3 months, as an agile coach, I am involved in coaching a team that is developing a highly critical application that is also the backbone of the business deals. This application had to be super secure and if this application gets hit, it can have a huge impact on the organization in terms of finance, brand, and assets, data, etc. Hence, we had to explore how to integrate agile development practices and Cybersecurity practices. There have been some thoughts that agile, with its frequent releases, introduces vulnerability in the system and sometimes not recommended as a development approach for high critical application.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In the past, Cybersecurity teams usually get involved in the tail end and now with frequent releases, ways of working and processes need to be tailored. There were few practices that we got started which I will be sharing in this blog. Would love to hear from you; your stories and experiments in this area.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cybersecurity by definition is Computer\nsecurity, cybersecurity or information technology security (IT security) is the\nprotection of computer systems<\/a> and networks<\/a> from information disclosure, theft of or damage to\ntheir hardware<\/a>, software<\/a>, or electronic data<\/a>,\nas well as from the disruption<\/a> or misdirection<\/a> of the services they provide. In the past, the role\nof security was isolated to a specific team in the final stage of development.\nThat wasn\u2019t as problematic when development cycles lasted months or even years,\nbut those days are over. Effective agile development ensures rapid and frequent\ndevelopment cycles (sometimes weeks or days), but outdated security practices\ncan make the application more vulnerable to attacks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      There have been some doubts about Agile development methodologies and how it lends to Cybersecurity practices. But with self-organizing and cross-functional teams, agile enables different skill sets to work as a team to deliver good quality and secure software.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is how we got started with the process, and practices to integrate cybersecurity practices in agile development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.     Shift- Left:<\/strong>  Having\nexperts \/Cybersecurity personnel at the initial stage not at the end state; not\nto build systems of today. They were able to determine the risk tolerance of\nthe application and conduct risk\/benefit analysis. What amount of security\ncontrols are required for this application and threat modeling exercises? What\nkind of testing required during the sprints and have them integrated with the\ntesting and DevOps plan? It also underscores the need to help developers code\nwith security in mind, a process that involves security teams sharing\nvisibility, feedback, and insights on known threats. Based on the analysis and\nplan, all our developers were trained on the security protocols, processes and\ntools required. One of the important factors to keep in mind is the balance of\ncybersecurity activities with other activities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Hacker as persona:<\/strong> We introduced Hacker as a persona for the application as a next step. By building these personas<\/strong>, we worked out the best defense against certain types of attacks and predict when they might next occur. It helps us to understand the motivation and plan for countermeasures, prioritize defense. This persona was included as one of the users in the identified features of the application and which then was elaborated during the requirements and backlog grooming session. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Tools and Automation<\/strong>: There are quite a several tools available now in the cybersecurity domain. Once the cybersecurity process\/tests are identified, we find that most of our tasks were repetitive and manual. We started looking for ways to automate as Automating repeated tasks is key to DevSecOps since running manual security checks in the pipeline can be time-intensive. Some of these tasks can be automated, such as monitoring intrusion detection systems to search for threats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the major learning in this experimentation is that Shift left does not mean moving all the cybersecurity-related processes, practices, ways of working, and tools from the tail end to the initial stage of development. There had to be a balanced approach and what is required differs from application to application. But bringing this security mindset to all the team members helped a lot in bringing the balanced approach of security and frequent release cycles that was much needed for our application.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Agile and Cybersecurity - How to get started","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-and-cybersecurity-how-to-get-started","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18707","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18715,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:41","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:41","post_content":"\n

Harshita is a scrum master for a team. With the Covid situation across India, the team has been dull and in a very somber state. As a scrum master, she could understand and relate to the situation that the team has been going through. At an organization level, there has been a lot of Employee assistance programs. But she is confused about whether it is ok to have the team be like this or does she need to do something?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution:<\/strong> Here are few things that I would recommend she start with <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Status \/ Smiley images in the communication and collaboration tool.  We have asked team members to add this and this helps others in the team to understand the emotional state of each and every one.  It was quite beneficial and set the stage for everyone in the meetings and interaction.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Standup meetings or team meetings \u2013 First 5 min or 10 min is used for check-in and free-flow conversation. This helped team members to know what\u2019s happening, vent out some of their feelings and help each other as need. If it\u2019s a large team, use some of the survey tools to do check-in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Informal group chat\/gathering or 1:1 with each other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am sure most coaches, leaders are thinking about this and doing something to help their teams in these trying times. Let me know what are those things that you are doing.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #248 \u2013 Sensitivity during these(covid) times","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-248-sensitivity-during-thesecovid-times","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18715","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17712,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:47:04","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:17:04","post_content":"\n

Pravin has been coaching the development team for a few months on the implementation of Scrum. There were a lot of improvement ideas and opportunities that he and his team gathered for the Product team, operation teams during the retrospective. When he tried speaking to them to understand their processes and see if he can do something about it, he was told that the scrum master scope is for the IT development team and the operation teams are not part of it.  He was very excited when he read the new scrum guide and understood that the scrum master role is expanded. Will this help him to remove the obstacle of end to end coaching of the team? If not, what else can he do? Are there any suggestions or solutions that you would recommend?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suggested Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum master role definition and One product team from the scrum guide is a good starting point. Pravin can use the guide to drive the essence of one team delivering product starting from definition to support, roll out, and also point that it is from the industry best practice. In addition to that, it would be good for him to quantify the problem that he had gathered with the data; for ex the resolution time of the incident (end to end), new requirements from the operation team. Along with that, he can do an End to End process mapping w.r.t product delivery and facilitate a discussion with the relevant stakeholders. Most of the time, the problem would be due to organization design ie. Silos between the operation team, product team, and development team, and this might take a longer discussion to solve. <\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #224 - Scrum Master role in the Operations\/Support world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-224-scrum-master-role-in-the-operations-support-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17712","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17698,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:46:28","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:16:28","post_content":"\n

Last week, Scrum celebrated 25 years, and to add to that celebration, a new scrum guide was released. Over the years, Scrum has been implemented across multiple industries and domains and the feedback of its success and failures flowed back into this new Scrum guide. There was a lot of excitement among the agile community for the launch and the agile community was elated with the changes in the Scrum guide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us look at the summary of changes ( from scrum.org articles) in the new scrum guide and then talk about the impact for us (agile community). For more details, you can refer to scrum.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even Less\nPrescriptive<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years,\nthe Scrum Guide started getting a bit more prescriptive. The 2020 version aims\nto bring Scrum back to being a minimally sufficient framework. This was\nachieved by removing the Daily Scrum questions, softening language around PBI\nattributes and retro items in Sprint Backlog, shortening the Sprint\ncancellation section, and much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One Team,\nFocused on One Product<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal was to\neliminate the concept of a separate team within a team that has led to \u201cproxy\u201d\nor \u201cus and them\u201d behavior between the PO and Dev Team. There is now just one\nScrum Team focused on the same objective, with three different sets of accountabilities:\nPO, SM, and Developers (anybody who is working on the sprint increment).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction\nof Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum\nGuide introduces the concept of a Product Goal to provide the focus for the\nScrum Team toward a larger valuable objective. Each Sprint should bring the\nproduct closer to the overall Product Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Home for\nSprint Goal, Definition of Done, and Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides described Sprint Goal and Definition of Done without really giving them\nan identity. They were not quite artifacts but were somewhat attached to\nartifacts. With the addition of Product Goal, the 2020 version provides more\nclarity around this. Each of the three artifacts now contains \u2018commitments\u2019 to\nthem. For the Product Backlog, it is the Product Goal, the Sprint Backlog has\nthe Sprint Goal, and the Increment has the Definition of Done (now without the\nquotes). They exist to bring transparency and focus toward the progress of each\nartifact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-Managing\nover Self-Organizing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides referred to Development Teams (team members who are working on the\nsprint increment) as self-organizing, choosing who and how to do work. With\nmore of a focus on the Scrum Team, the 2020 version emphasizes a self-managing\nScrum Team, that chooses who, how, and what to work on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nSprint Planning Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the\nSprint Planning topics of \u201cWhat\u201d and \u201cHow,\u201d the 2020 Scrum Guide places\nemphasis on a third topic, \u201cWhy.\u201d This third topic refers to the Sprint Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

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\n

CHOW 271: Lack of planning - Is Agile the reason?<\/strong>  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kavya is a new project manager in an MNC. The project was asked to run in an agile mode. As in most projects, the Backlog was not detailed and only high-level one-line requirements were available. Business leaders wanted to know what something will cost and what the benefits are before committing to it. Whereas the project team was saying that they cannot do a detailed plan and hence they will not be able to estimate. Kavya was also worried that by doing detailed planning, you will be accused of falling back to the waterfall. What should she do in this case?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution:<\/strong> It\u2019s ok to do some detailed requirements exploration, architecture, and design work upfront, to provide some estimates in hours and dollars, or real dates in addition to points and sprint numbers. \u201cYou can still get the benefits of agile by revisiting requirements and designs in sprint planning, being test-driven, and working with business partners every day,\u201d . Talk to the team and explain Agile is not an excuse not to plan. She can get initial Sprint zero to explore on the requirements so that team can come up with estimates. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #271: Lack of planning and Agile","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-271-lack-of-planning-and-agile","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:38:28","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:38:28","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19344","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":19019,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-08-16 09:07:06","post_date_gmt":"2021-08-16 03:37:06","post_content":"\n

Murugan joined an organization as a Scrum master. One of the teams that he was asked to coach has been in running mode at a fast pace for 2 months already. The team has been doing basic agile practices such as having a time-boxed work commitment, daily standup, and demo to the Product owner and business. However, there have been some issues with respect to requirements and backlog quality, which might impact the tight timelines of that team has. The project is a very important project, and the first release is scheduled in just 2 months of him starting. He started participating in meetings and understanding the domain\/project etc. Within few days, PO escalated that Scrum master is not good and he is not able to fully align with the team, communication skills not good, etc. Murugan had a meeting with the Project manager to understand the issues so that he can improve. Again, after few days, PO escalated that I want the SM to be changed as he thinks that he is not the right fit? Murugan is at loss on how to handle these as he is new to an organization and new to the team. What do you think that as a recommended action to help Murugan?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PO and SM relationship is quite important. Even if there are small conflicts, the Scrum Master and Product Owner must work together to resolve them before they escalate into a full-blown misunderstanding. A supportive relationship with plenty of giving and take is necessary for the health of the team as a whole. As a first step, he should connect with PO to understand the issues as sometimes it could be just misunderstanding or miscommunication. After that, if the issues are something that he can work on, he can come up with a plan of action with concrete timelines. If some of them need organizational intervention, he can reach out to his management and project management of the team to see if he can get help to resolve those issues. Align the Plan of action with the timelines with PO so that they can start working together. <\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW 260: PO overpowering SM","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-260-po-overpowering-sm","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:38:54","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:38:54","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19019","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":19014,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-08-16 08:57:11","post_date_gmt":"2021-08-16 03:27:11","post_content":"\n

The past 2 years have been a roller coaster ride for most\nof us. It gave us opportunities to relearn some of our\nforgotten skills or explore new areas through virtual learning platforms. It is\nnot only individuals re-looking at learning methods but also every organization\nwas also looking at changing their training, onboarding, and workshops to\nvirtual mode. We can see it in the data and the projection for that industry\npublished on the world economic forum page. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.weforum.org\/agenda\/2020\/04\/coronavirus-education-global-covid19-online-digital-learning\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

 E-learning Market Value Projected To Reach US$ 660.8\nBillion By 2027 Covering Covid-19 Impact -  The global e-learning\nmarket<\/strong><\/a> is expected to grow at a CAGR of around 15.9%\nfrom 2020 to 2027 and reach the market value of over US$ 660.8 Bn by 2027. (ref\nhttps:\/\/www.globenewswire.com\/news-release\/2021\/05\/20\/2233572\/0\/en\/<\/a>E-learning-Market-Value-Projected-To-Reach-US-660-8-Billion-By-2027-Covering-Covid-19-Impact-Acumen-Research-and-Consulting.html<\/a>)  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 As the industry matures, there have been lots of best\npractices and recommendations shared across to develop the right content and tips on\nhow to engage the participants for trainers. In some organizations, trainers\nare re-trained to adopt this model. Whereas I feel that as a learner, it is up\nto each of us to figure out new ways of learning in the new world that is\npoised to stay. During the past 2 years, I have been on a personal learning\njourney and was using various virtual learning tools, platforms for that\npurpose. Initially, when I started, I fumbled through these learning methods, and sometimes I dropped the course or lectures in-between as they did not fit my\nlearning styles, wasting both my time and money. After few trials, I figured out\nsome practices or tips that are helping me out to get the best out of these\nvirtual learning courses or workshops. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Here are my 2 cents <\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.       Align learning styles<\/strong> - Each of us has different ways in which we grasp things. Some of us love to listen to lectures whereas some of us would love to do experiments to understand concepts. The study shows that there are 7 different learning styles, and they are as listed below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Visual (spatial) Learner -Using pictures, images,\ndiagrams, whiteboards and more helps these types of learners understand\ninformation better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Aural (auditory) Learner -Aural learners are good\nlisteners who normally learn best through verbal presentations like\nlectures and speeches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Verbal (linguistic) Learner -These learners prefer using\nwords, both in speech and writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Physical (kinesthetic) Learner -Getting hands-on is a\nmust for these learners who love to tinker and learn best when they can do\nrather than see or hear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Logical (mathematical) Learner - If there is logic,\nreasoning, and numbers involved, these learners are sure to excel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Social learners favored Social (interpersonal)\nLearner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Solitary (intrapersonal) Learner - These students prefer\nto use self-study and work alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, if I belong to the visual and kinesthetic\nlearner type, then I would prefer classes with more diagrams and more\nexperiments rather than trainers speaking about topics. However, if I am a\nverbal learner, I would love to listen to lectures from experts. Understanding\nour unique learning styles would help us choose courses or methods of learning.\nEither you can look back at the training programs where you enjoyed or do the\nsurvey available on the internet to understand your style. For me, I love working\nin groups hence I choose courses(offline) where there are options to review\nother\u2019s work and connect with the team, which helps in better learning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Keeping Focus and avoiding distractions<\/strong>\u2013One of the major drawbacks of e-learning is the focus or having undivided attention. When we are in class or workshops, we do not open mobile or laptops to check emails or send messages and when we lose focus, we might daydream. However, when we are learning online, laptops or mobile that we use every day for office or for entertainment or for chatting with friends could themselves become distractions. Here are a few tips I followed to keep myself focused during classes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u00b7 Closeout the mails and collaboration channels keep\nmobile of our reach; Keep only course window open <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Set expectations at home that you are in training and not\nto be disturbed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Have video on <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Join a few minutes early and connect with the trainer\n\/facilitator. This also helps you to take on the next steps, such as\ncertification or becoming an expert in that area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 2 min mindful breathing before the class starts (ref\n-https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/mindful-leadership\/resources\/) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7Try out the exercises or case study and submit it \n\nI\nam sure most of you have been using the virtual learning platforms, either in\nyour organization or some preferred platforms to learn and grow in your\ncareers. Hope the above tips shared from my experience are useful. Please share\nyour best practices or tips or any recommendation from your learning journey on\nhow we can get the best out of the virtual learning model.\n\n<\/p>\n","post_title":"Tips to get the best of the virtual learning world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"tips-to-get-the-best-of-the-virtual-learning-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19014","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18707,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:58","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:58","post_content":"\n

Most of us would have read about the recent\nransomware hit on Colonial pipeline, one of the largest oil pipelines in the\nUS. They had to temporarily halt all the operations, it impacted some of the\ncompany\u2019s IT system and suffered a huge loss. It took almost a week to bring\nback the services and back to normal. During this unprecedented time, as we\nwere all working from home, Organization was worried about securing the\napplications, Infrastructure, etc. Cybersecurity has been slowly gaining focus\nand these kinds of attacks make serious attention.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the past 3 months, as an agile coach, I am involved in coaching a team that is developing a highly critical application that is also the backbone of the business deals. This application had to be super secure and if this application gets hit, it can have a huge impact on the organization in terms of finance, brand, and assets, data, etc. Hence, we had to explore how to integrate agile development practices and Cybersecurity practices. There have been some thoughts that agile, with its frequent releases, introduces vulnerability in the system and sometimes not recommended as a development approach for high critical application.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In the past, Cybersecurity teams usually get involved in the tail end and now with frequent releases, ways of working and processes need to be tailored. There were few practices that we got started which I will be sharing in this blog. Would love to hear from you; your stories and experiments in this area.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cybersecurity by definition is Computer\nsecurity, cybersecurity or information technology security (IT security) is the\nprotection of computer systems<\/a> and networks<\/a> from information disclosure, theft of or damage to\ntheir hardware<\/a>, software<\/a>, or electronic data<\/a>,\nas well as from the disruption<\/a> or misdirection<\/a> of the services they provide. In the past, the role\nof security was isolated to a specific team in the final stage of development.\nThat wasn\u2019t as problematic when development cycles lasted months or even years,\nbut those days are over. Effective agile development ensures rapid and frequent\ndevelopment cycles (sometimes weeks or days), but outdated security practices\ncan make the application more vulnerable to attacks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      There have been some doubts about Agile development methodologies and how it lends to Cybersecurity practices. But with self-organizing and cross-functional teams, agile enables different skill sets to work as a team to deliver good quality and secure software.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is how we got started with the process, and practices to integrate cybersecurity practices in agile development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.     Shift- Left:<\/strong>  Having\nexperts \/Cybersecurity personnel at the initial stage not at the end state; not\nto build systems of today. They were able to determine the risk tolerance of\nthe application and conduct risk\/benefit analysis. What amount of security\ncontrols are required for this application and threat modeling exercises? What\nkind of testing required during the sprints and have them integrated with the\ntesting and DevOps plan? It also underscores the need to help developers code\nwith security in mind, a process that involves security teams sharing\nvisibility, feedback, and insights on known threats. Based on the analysis and\nplan, all our developers were trained on the security protocols, processes and\ntools required. One of the important factors to keep in mind is the balance of\ncybersecurity activities with other activities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Hacker as persona:<\/strong> We introduced Hacker as a persona for the application as a next step. By building these personas<\/strong>, we worked out the best defense against certain types of attacks and predict when they might next occur. It helps us to understand the motivation and plan for countermeasures, prioritize defense. This persona was included as one of the users in the identified features of the application and which then was elaborated during the requirements and backlog grooming session. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Tools and Automation<\/strong>: There are quite a several tools available now in the cybersecurity domain. Once the cybersecurity process\/tests are identified, we find that most of our tasks were repetitive and manual. We started looking for ways to automate as Automating repeated tasks is key to DevSecOps since running manual security checks in the pipeline can be time-intensive. Some of these tasks can be automated, such as monitoring intrusion detection systems to search for threats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the major learning in this experimentation is that Shift left does not mean moving all the cybersecurity-related processes, practices, ways of working, and tools from the tail end to the initial stage of development. There had to be a balanced approach and what is required differs from application to application. But bringing this security mindset to all the team members helped a lot in bringing the balanced approach of security and frequent release cycles that was much needed for our application.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Agile and Cybersecurity - How to get started","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-and-cybersecurity-how-to-get-started","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18707","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18715,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:41","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:41","post_content":"\n

Harshita is a scrum master for a team. With the Covid situation across India, the team has been dull and in a very somber state. As a scrum master, she could understand and relate to the situation that the team has been going through. At an organization level, there has been a lot of Employee assistance programs. But she is confused about whether it is ok to have the team be like this or does she need to do something?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution:<\/strong> Here are few things that I would recommend she start with <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Status \/ Smiley images in the communication and collaboration tool.  We have asked team members to add this and this helps others in the team to understand the emotional state of each and every one.  It was quite beneficial and set the stage for everyone in the meetings and interaction.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Standup meetings or team meetings \u2013 First 5 min or 10 min is used for check-in and free-flow conversation. This helped team members to know what\u2019s happening, vent out some of their feelings and help each other as need. If it\u2019s a large team, use some of the survey tools to do check-in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Informal group chat\/gathering or 1:1 with each other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am sure most coaches, leaders are thinking about this and doing something to help their teams in these trying times. Let me know what are those things that you are doing.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #248 \u2013 Sensitivity during these(covid) times","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-248-sensitivity-during-thesecovid-times","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18715","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17712,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:47:04","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:17:04","post_content":"\n

Pravin has been coaching the development team for a few months on the implementation of Scrum. There were a lot of improvement ideas and opportunities that he and his team gathered for the Product team, operation teams during the retrospective. When he tried speaking to them to understand their processes and see if he can do something about it, he was told that the scrum master scope is for the IT development team and the operation teams are not part of it.  He was very excited when he read the new scrum guide and understood that the scrum master role is expanded. Will this help him to remove the obstacle of end to end coaching of the team? If not, what else can he do? Are there any suggestions or solutions that you would recommend?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suggested Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum master role definition and One product team from the scrum guide is a good starting point. Pravin can use the guide to drive the essence of one team delivering product starting from definition to support, roll out, and also point that it is from the industry best practice. In addition to that, it would be good for him to quantify the problem that he had gathered with the data; for ex the resolution time of the incident (end to end), new requirements from the operation team. Along with that, he can do an End to End process mapping w.r.t product delivery and facilitate a discussion with the relevant stakeholders. Most of the time, the problem would be due to organization design ie. Silos between the operation team, product team, and development team, and this might take a longer discussion to solve. <\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #224 - Scrum Master role in the Operations\/Support world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-224-scrum-master-role-in-the-operations-support-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17712","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17698,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:46:28","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:16:28","post_content":"\n

Last week, Scrum celebrated 25 years, and to add to that celebration, a new scrum guide was released. Over the years, Scrum has been implemented across multiple industries and domains and the feedback of its success and failures flowed back into this new Scrum guide. There was a lot of excitement among the agile community for the launch and the agile community was elated with the changes in the Scrum guide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us look at the summary of changes ( from scrum.org articles) in the new scrum guide and then talk about the impact for us (agile community). For more details, you can refer to scrum.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even Less\nPrescriptive<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years,\nthe Scrum Guide started getting a bit more prescriptive. The 2020 version aims\nto bring Scrum back to being a minimally sufficient framework. This was\nachieved by removing the Daily Scrum questions, softening language around PBI\nattributes and retro items in Sprint Backlog, shortening the Sprint\ncancellation section, and much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One Team,\nFocused on One Product<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal was to\neliminate the concept of a separate team within a team that has led to \u201cproxy\u201d\nor \u201cus and them\u201d behavior between the PO and Dev Team. There is now just one\nScrum Team focused on the same objective, with three different sets of accountabilities:\nPO, SM, and Developers (anybody who is working on the sprint increment).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction\nof Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum\nGuide introduces the concept of a Product Goal to provide the focus for the\nScrum Team toward a larger valuable objective. Each Sprint should bring the\nproduct closer to the overall Product Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Home for\nSprint Goal, Definition of Done, and Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides described Sprint Goal and Definition of Done without really giving them\nan identity. They were not quite artifacts but were somewhat attached to\nartifacts. With the addition of Product Goal, the 2020 version provides more\nclarity around this. Each of the three artifacts now contains \u2018commitments\u2019 to\nthem. For the Product Backlog, it is the Product Goal, the Sprint Backlog has\nthe Sprint Goal, and the Increment has the Definition of Done (now without the\nquotes). They exist to bring transparency and focus toward the progress of each\nartifact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-Managing\nover Self-Organizing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides referred to Development Teams (team members who are working on the\nsprint increment) as self-organizing, choosing who and how to do work. With\nmore of a focus on the Scrum Team, the 2020 version emphasizes a self-managing\nScrum Team, that chooses who, how, and what to work on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nSprint Planning Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the\nSprint Planning topics of \u201cWhat\u201d and \u201cHow,\u201d the 2020 Scrum Guide places\nemphasis on a third topic, \u201cWhy.\u201d This third topic refers to the Sprint Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

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Let us know if there are other areas that you\nhave considered or set the stage so that maturity assessments were fun,\nengaging and effective.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Agile Maturity Assessment - How to do it right?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-maturity-assessment-how-to-do-it-right","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:37:49","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:37:49","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19339","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":19344,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-11-08 10:01:16","post_date_gmt":"2021-11-08 04:31:16","post_content":"\n

CHOW 271: Lack of planning - Is Agile the reason?<\/strong>  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kavya is a new project manager in an MNC. The project was asked to run in an agile mode. As in most projects, the Backlog was not detailed and only high-level one-line requirements were available. Business leaders wanted to know what something will cost and what the benefits are before committing to it. Whereas the project team was saying that they cannot do a detailed plan and hence they will not be able to estimate. Kavya was also worried that by doing detailed planning, you will be accused of falling back to the waterfall. What should she do in this case?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution:<\/strong> It\u2019s ok to do some detailed requirements exploration, architecture, and design work upfront, to provide some estimates in hours and dollars, or real dates in addition to points and sprint numbers. \u201cYou can still get the benefits of agile by revisiting requirements and designs in sprint planning, being test-driven, and working with business partners every day,\u201d . Talk to the team and explain Agile is not an excuse not to plan. She can get initial Sprint zero to explore on the requirements so that team can come up with estimates. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #271: Lack of planning and Agile","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-271-lack-of-planning-and-agile","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:38:28","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:38:28","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19344","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":19019,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-08-16 09:07:06","post_date_gmt":"2021-08-16 03:37:06","post_content":"\n

Murugan joined an organization as a Scrum master. One of the teams that he was asked to coach has been in running mode at a fast pace for 2 months already. The team has been doing basic agile practices such as having a time-boxed work commitment, daily standup, and demo to the Product owner and business. However, there have been some issues with respect to requirements and backlog quality, which might impact the tight timelines of that team has. The project is a very important project, and the first release is scheduled in just 2 months of him starting. He started participating in meetings and understanding the domain\/project etc. Within few days, PO escalated that Scrum master is not good and he is not able to fully align with the team, communication skills not good, etc. Murugan had a meeting with the Project manager to understand the issues so that he can improve. Again, after few days, PO escalated that I want the SM to be changed as he thinks that he is not the right fit? Murugan is at loss on how to handle these as he is new to an organization and new to the team. What do you think that as a recommended action to help Murugan?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PO and SM relationship is quite important. Even if there are small conflicts, the Scrum Master and Product Owner must work together to resolve them before they escalate into a full-blown misunderstanding. A supportive relationship with plenty of giving and take is necessary for the health of the team as a whole. As a first step, he should connect with PO to understand the issues as sometimes it could be just misunderstanding or miscommunication. After that, if the issues are something that he can work on, he can come up with a plan of action with concrete timelines. If some of them need organizational intervention, he can reach out to his management and project management of the team to see if he can get help to resolve those issues. Align the Plan of action with the timelines with PO so that they can start working together. <\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW 260: PO overpowering SM","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-260-po-overpowering-sm","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:38:54","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:38:54","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19019","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":19014,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-08-16 08:57:11","post_date_gmt":"2021-08-16 03:27:11","post_content":"\n

The past 2 years have been a roller coaster ride for most\nof us. It gave us opportunities to relearn some of our\nforgotten skills or explore new areas through virtual learning platforms. It is\nnot only individuals re-looking at learning methods but also every organization\nwas also looking at changing their training, onboarding, and workshops to\nvirtual mode. We can see it in the data and the projection for that industry\npublished on the world economic forum page. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.weforum.org\/agenda\/2020\/04\/coronavirus-education-global-covid19-online-digital-learning\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

 E-learning Market Value Projected To Reach US$ 660.8\nBillion By 2027 Covering Covid-19 Impact -  The global e-learning\nmarket<\/strong><\/a> is expected to grow at a CAGR of around 15.9%\nfrom 2020 to 2027 and reach the market value of over US$ 660.8 Bn by 2027. (ref\nhttps:\/\/www.globenewswire.com\/news-release\/2021\/05\/20\/2233572\/0\/en\/<\/a>E-learning-Market-Value-Projected-To-Reach-US-660-8-Billion-By-2027-Covering-Covid-19-Impact-Acumen-Research-and-Consulting.html<\/a>)  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 As the industry matures, there have been lots of best\npractices and recommendations shared across to develop the right content and tips on\nhow to engage the participants for trainers. In some organizations, trainers\nare re-trained to adopt this model. Whereas I feel that as a learner, it is up\nto each of us to figure out new ways of learning in the new world that is\npoised to stay. During the past 2 years, I have been on a personal learning\njourney and was using various virtual learning tools, platforms for that\npurpose. Initially, when I started, I fumbled through these learning methods, and sometimes I dropped the course or lectures in-between as they did not fit my\nlearning styles, wasting both my time and money. After few trials, I figured out\nsome practices or tips that are helping me out to get the best out of these\nvirtual learning courses or workshops. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Here are my 2 cents <\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.       Align learning styles<\/strong> - Each of us has different ways in which we grasp things. Some of us love to listen to lectures whereas some of us would love to do experiments to understand concepts. The study shows that there are 7 different learning styles, and they are as listed below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Visual (spatial) Learner -Using pictures, images,\ndiagrams, whiteboards and more helps these types of learners understand\ninformation better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Aural (auditory) Learner -Aural learners are good\nlisteners who normally learn best through verbal presentations like\nlectures and speeches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Verbal (linguistic) Learner -These learners prefer using\nwords, both in speech and writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Physical (kinesthetic) Learner -Getting hands-on is a\nmust for these learners who love to tinker and learn best when they can do\nrather than see or hear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Logical (mathematical) Learner - If there is logic,\nreasoning, and numbers involved, these learners are sure to excel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Social learners favored Social (interpersonal)\nLearner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Solitary (intrapersonal) Learner - These students prefer\nto use self-study and work alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, if I belong to the visual and kinesthetic\nlearner type, then I would prefer classes with more diagrams and more\nexperiments rather than trainers speaking about topics. However, if I am a\nverbal learner, I would love to listen to lectures from experts. Understanding\nour unique learning styles would help us choose courses or methods of learning.\nEither you can look back at the training programs where you enjoyed or do the\nsurvey available on the internet to understand your style. For me, I love working\nin groups hence I choose courses(offline) where there are options to review\nother\u2019s work and connect with the team, which helps in better learning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Keeping Focus and avoiding distractions<\/strong>\u2013One of the major drawbacks of e-learning is the focus or having undivided attention. When we are in class or workshops, we do not open mobile or laptops to check emails or send messages and when we lose focus, we might daydream. However, when we are learning online, laptops or mobile that we use every day for office or for entertainment or for chatting with friends could themselves become distractions. Here are a few tips I followed to keep myself focused during classes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u00b7 Closeout the mails and collaboration channels keep\nmobile of our reach; Keep only course window open <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Set expectations at home that you are in training and not\nto be disturbed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Have video on <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Join a few minutes early and connect with the trainer\n\/facilitator. This also helps you to take on the next steps, such as\ncertification or becoming an expert in that area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 2 min mindful breathing before the class starts (ref\n-https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/mindful-leadership\/resources\/) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7Try out the exercises or case study and submit it \n\nI\nam sure most of you have been using the virtual learning platforms, either in\nyour organization or some preferred platforms to learn and grow in your\ncareers. Hope the above tips shared from my experience are useful. Please share\nyour best practices or tips or any recommendation from your learning journey on\nhow we can get the best out of the virtual learning model.\n\n<\/p>\n","post_title":"Tips to get the best of the virtual learning world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"tips-to-get-the-best-of-the-virtual-learning-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19014","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18707,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:58","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:58","post_content":"\n

Most of us would have read about the recent\nransomware hit on Colonial pipeline, one of the largest oil pipelines in the\nUS. They had to temporarily halt all the operations, it impacted some of the\ncompany\u2019s IT system and suffered a huge loss. It took almost a week to bring\nback the services and back to normal. During this unprecedented time, as we\nwere all working from home, Organization was worried about securing the\napplications, Infrastructure, etc. Cybersecurity has been slowly gaining focus\nand these kinds of attacks make serious attention.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the past 3 months, as an agile coach, I am involved in coaching a team that is developing a highly critical application that is also the backbone of the business deals. This application had to be super secure and if this application gets hit, it can have a huge impact on the organization in terms of finance, brand, and assets, data, etc. Hence, we had to explore how to integrate agile development practices and Cybersecurity practices. There have been some thoughts that agile, with its frequent releases, introduces vulnerability in the system and sometimes not recommended as a development approach for high critical application.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In the past, Cybersecurity teams usually get involved in the tail end and now with frequent releases, ways of working and processes need to be tailored. There were few practices that we got started which I will be sharing in this blog. Would love to hear from you; your stories and experiments in this area.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cybersecurity by definition is Computer\nsecurity, cybersecurity or information technology security (IT security) is the\nprotection of computer systems<\/a> and networks<\/a> from information disclosure, theft of or damage to\ntheir hardware<\/a>, software<\/a>, or electronic data<\/a>,\nas well as from the disruption<\/a> or misdirection<\/a> of the services they provide. In the past, the role\nof security was isolated to a specific team in the final stage of development.\nThat wasn\u2019t as problematic when development cycles lasted months or even years,\nbut those days are over. Effective agile development ensures rapid and frequent\ndevelopment cycles (sometimes weeks or days), but outdated security practices\ncan make the application more vulnerable to attacks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      There have been some doubts about Agile development methodologies and how it lends to Cybersecurity practices. But with self-organizing and cross-functional teams, agile enables different skill sets to work as a team to deliver good quality and secure software.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is how we got started with the process, and practices to integrate cybersecurity practices in agile development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.     Shift- Left:<\/strong>  Having\nexperts \/Cybersecurity personnel at the initial stage not at the end state; not\nto build systems of today. They were able to determine the risk tolerance of\nthe application and conduct risk\/benefit analysis. What amount of security\ncontrols are required for this application and threat modeling exercises? What\nkind of testing required during the sprints and have them integrated with the\ntesting and DevOps plan? It also underscores the need to help developers code\nwith security in mind, a process that involves security teams sharing\nvisibility, feedback, and insights on known threats. Based on the analysis and\nplan, all our developers were trained on the security protocols, processes and\ntools required. One of the important factors to keep in mind is the balance of\ncybersecurity activities with other activities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Hacker as persona:<\/strong> We introduced Hacker as a persona for the application as a next step. By building these personas<\/strong>, we worked out the best defense against certain types of attacks and predict when they might next occur. It helps us to understand the motivation and plan for countermeasures, prioritize defense. This persona was included as one of the users in the identified features of the application and which then was elaborated during the requirements and backlog grooming session. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Tools and Automation<\/strong>: There are quite a several tools available now in the cybersecurity domain. Once the cybersecurity process\/tests are identified, we find that most of our tasks were repetitive and manual. We started looking for ways to automate as Automating repeated tasks is key to DevSecOps since running manual security checks in the pipeline can be time-intensive. Some of these tasks can be automated, such as monitoring intrusion detection systems to search for threats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the major learning in this experimentation is that Shift left does not mean moving all the cybersecurity-related processes, practices, ways of working, and tools from the tail end to the initial stage of development. There had to be a balanced approach and what is required differs from application to application. But bringing this security mindset to all the team members helped a lot in bringing the balanced approach of security and frequent release cycles that was much needed for our application.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Agile and Cybersecurity - How to get started","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-and-cybersecurity-how-to-get-started","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18707","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18715,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:41","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:41","post_content":"\n

Harshita is a scrum master for a team. With the Covid situation across India, the team has been dull and in a very somber state. As a scrum master, she could understand and relate to the situation that the team has been going through. At an organization level, there has been a lot of Employee assistance programs. But she is confused about whether it is ok to have the team be like this or does she need to do something?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution:<\/strong> Here are few things that I would recommend she start with <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Status \/ Smiley images in the communication and collaboration tool.  We have asked team members to add this and this helps others in the team to understand the emotional state of each and every one.  It was quite beneficial and set the stage for everyone in the meetings and interaction.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Standup meetings or team meetings \u2013 First 5 min or 10 min is used for check-in and free-flow conversation. This helped team members to know what\u2019s happening, vent out some of their feelings and help each other as need. If it\u2019s a large team, use some of the survey tools to do check-in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Informal group chat\/gathering or 1:1 with each other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am sure most coaches, leaders are thinking about this and doing something to help their teams in these trying times. Let me know what are those things that you are doing.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #248 \u2013 Sensitivity during these(covid) times","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-248-sensitivity-during-thesecovid-times","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18715","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17712,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:47:04","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:17:04","post_content":"\n

Pravin has been coaching the development team for a few months on the implementation of Scrum. There were a lot of improvement ideas and opportunities that he and his team gathered for the Product team, operation teams during the retrospective. When he tried speaking to them to understand their processes and see if he can do something about it, he was told that the scrum master scope is for the IT development team and the operation teams are not part of it.  He was very excited when he read the new scrum guide and understood that the scrum master role is expanded. Will this help him to remove the obstacle of end to end coaching of the team? If not, what else can he do? Are there any suggestions or solutions that you would recommend?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suggested Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum master role definition and One product team from the scrum guide is a good starting point. Pravin can use the guide to drive the essence of one team delivering product starting from definition to support, roll out, and also point that it is from the industry best practice. In addition to that, it would be good for him to quantify the problem that he had gathered with the data; for ex the resolution time of the incident (end to end), new requirements from the operation team. Along with that, he can do an End to End process mapping w.r.t product delivery and facilitate a discussion with the relevant stakeholders. Most of the time, the problem would be due to organization design ie. Silos between the operation team, product team, and development team, and this might take a longer discussion to solve. <\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #224 - Scrum Master role in the Operations\/Support world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-224-scrum-master-role-in-the-operations-support-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17712","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17698,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:46:28","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:16:28","post_content":"\n

Last week, Scrum celebrated 25 years, and to add to that celebration, a new scrum guide was released. Over the years, Scrum has been implemented across multiple industries and domains and the feedback of its success and failures flowed back into this new Scrum guide. There was a lot of excitement among the agile community for the launch and the agile community was elated with the changes in the Scrum guide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us look at the summary of changes ( from scrum.org articles) in the new scrum guide and then talk about the impact for us (agile community). For more details, you can refer to scrum.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even Less\nPrescriptive<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years,\nthe Scrum Guide started getting a bit more prescriptive. The 2020 version aims\nto bring Scrum back to being a minimally sufficient framework. This was\nachieved by removing the Daily Scrum questions, softening language around PBI\nattributes and retro items in Sprint Backlog, shortening the Sprint\ncancellation section, and much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One Team,\nFocused on One Product<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal was to\neliminate the concept of a separate team within a team that has led to \u201cproxy\u201d\nor \u201cus and them\u201d behavior between the PO and Dev Team. There is now just one\nScrum Team focused on the same objective, with three different sets of accountabilities:\nPO, SM, and Developers (anybody who is working on the sprint increment).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction\nof Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum\nGuide introduces the concept of a Product Goal to provide the focus for the\nScrum Team toward a larger valuable objective. Each Sprint should bring the\nproduct closer to the overall Product Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Home for\nSprint Goal, Definition of Done, and Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides described Sprint Goal and Definition of Done without really giving them\nan identity. They were not quite artifacts but were somewhat attached to\nartifacts. With the addition of Product Goal, the 2020 version provides more\nclarity around this. Each of the three artifacts now contains \u2018commitments\u2019 to\nthem. For the Product Backlog, it is the Product Goal, the Sprint Backlog has\nthe Sprint Goal, and the Increment has the Definition of Done (now without the\nquotes). They exist to bring transparency and focus toward the progress of each\nartifact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-Managing\nover Self-Organizing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides referred to Development Teams (team members who are working on the\nsprint increment) as self-organizing, choosing who and how to do work. With\nmore of a focus on the Scrum Team, the 2020 version emphasizes a self-managing\nScrum Team, that chooses who, how, and what to work on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nSprint Planning Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the\nSprint Planning topics of \u201cWhat\u201d and \u201cHow,\u201d the 2020 Scrum Guide places\nemphasis on a third topic, \u201cWhy.\u201d This third topic refers to the Sprint Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

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d. Results and audience<\/strong>: Once we do the assessment and understand the maturity, the team comes up with an improvement plan\/roadmap. It is for the team to act on it.  Most of the time, the results will be shared with the leadership team \/executive team. The leadership team needs to be also engaged so that the reports are consumed correctly and not used as a tool to blame or appraisal system. This factor might not have the impact before the assessment as much as the other 3 factors mentioned above but it creates a safe and trusting environment in the organization.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us know if there are other areas that you\nhave considered or set the stage so that maturity assessments were fun,\nengaging and effective.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Agile Maturity Assessment - How to do it right?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-maturity-assessment-how-to-do-it-right","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:37:49","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:37:49","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19339","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":19344,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-11-08 10:01:16","post_date_gmt":"2021-11-08 04:31:16","post_content":"\n

CHOW 271: Lack of planning - Is Agile the reason?<\/strong>  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kavya is a new project manager in an MNC. The project was asked to run in an agile mode. As in most projects, the Backlog was not detailed and only high-level one-line requirements were available. Business leaders wanted to know what something will cost and what the benefits are before committing to it. Whereas the project team was saying that they cannot do a detailed plan and hence they will not be able to estimate. Kavya was also worried that by doing detailed planning, you will be accused of falling back to the waterfall. What should she do in this case?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution:<\/strong> It\u2019s ok to do some detailed requirements exploration, architecture, and design work upfront, to provide some estimates in hours and dollars, or real dates in addition to points and sprint numbers. \u201cYou can still get the benefits of agile by revisiting requirements and designs in sprint planning, being test-driven, and working with business partners every day,\u201d . Talk to the team and explain Agile is not an excuse not to plan. She can get initial Sprint zero to explore on the requirements so that team can come up with estimates. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #271: Lack of planning and Agile","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-271-lack-of-planning-and-agile","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:38:28","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:38:28","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19344","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":19019,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-08-16 09:07:06","post_date_gmt":"2021-08-16 03:37:06","post_content":"\n

Murugan joined an organization as a Scrum master. One of the teams that he was asked to coach has been in running mode at a fast pace for 2 months already. The team has been doing basic agile practices such as having a time-boxed work commitment, daily standup, and demo to the Product owner and business. However, there have been some issues with respect to requirements and backlog quality, which might impact the tight timelines of that team has. The project is a very important project, and the first release is scheduled in just 2 months of him starting. He started participating in meetings and understanding the domain\/project etc. Within few days, PO escalated that Scrum master is not good and he is not able to fully align with the team, communication skills not good, etc. Murugan had a meeting with the Project manager to understand the issues so that he can improve. Again, after few days, PO escalated that I want the SM to be changed as he thinks that he is not the right fit? Murugan is at loss on how to handle these as he is new to an organization and new to the team. What do you think that as a recommended action to help Murugan?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PO and SM relationship is quite important. Even if there are small conflicts, the Scrum Master and Product Owner must work together to resolve them before they escalate into a full-blown misunderstanding. A supportive relationship with plenty of giving and take is necessary for the health of the team as a whole. As a first step, he should connect with PO to understand the issues as sometimes it could be just misunderstanding or miscommunication. After that, if the issues are something that he can work on, he can come up with a plan of action with concrete timelines. If some of them need organizational intervention, he can reach out to his management and project management of the team to see if he can get help to resolve those issues. Align the Plan of action with the timelines with PO so that they can start working together. <\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW 260: PO overpowering SM","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-260-po-overpowering-sm","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:38:54","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:38:54","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19019","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":19014,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-08-16 08:57:11","post_date_gmt":"2021-08-16 03:27:11","post_content":"\n

The past 2 years have been a roller coaster ride for most\nof us. It gave us opportunities to relearn some of our\nforgotten skills or explore new areas through virtual learning platforms. It is\nnot only individuals re-looking at learning methods but also every organization\nwas also looking at changing their training, onboarding, and workshops to\nvirtual mode. We can see it in the data and the projection for that industry\npublished on the world economic forum page. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.weforum.org\/agenda\/2020\/04\/coronavirus-education-global-covid19-online-digital-learning\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

 E-learning Market Value Projected To Reach US$ 660.8\nBillion By 2027 Covering Covid-19 Impact -  The global e-learning\nmarket<\/strong><\/a> is expected to grow at a CAGR of around 15.9%\nfrom 2020 to 2027 and reach the market value of over US$ 660.8 Bn by 2027. (ref\nhttps:\/\/www.globenewswire.com\/news-release\/2021\/05\/20\/2233572\/0\/en\/<\/a>E-learning-Market-Value-Projected-To-Reach-US-660-8-Billion-By-2027-Covering-Covid-19-Impact-Acumen-Research-and-Consulting.html<\/a>)  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 As the industry matures, there have been lots of best\npractices and recommendations shared across to develop the right content and tips on\nhow to engage the participants for trainers. In some organizations, trainers\nare re-trained to adopt this model. Whereas I feel that as a learner, it is up\nto each of us to figure out new ways of learning in the new world that is\npoised to stay. During the past 2 years, I have been on a personal learning\njourney and was using various virtual learning tools, platforms for that\npurpose. Initially, when I started, I fumbled through these learning methods, and sometimes I dropped the course or lectures in-between as they did not fit my\nlearning styles, wasting both my time and money. After few trials, I figured out\nsome practices or tips that are helping me out to get the best out of these\nvirtual learning courses or workshops. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Here are my 2 cents <\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.       Align learning styles<\/strong> - Each of us has different ways in which we grasp things. Some of us love to listen to lectures whereas some of us would love to do experiments to understand concepts. The study shows that there are 7 different learning styles, and they are as listed below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Visual (spatial) Learner -Using pictures, images,\ndiagrams, whiteboards and more helps these types of learners understand\ninformation better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Aural (auditory) Learner -Aural learners are good\nlisteners who normally learn best through verbal presentations like\nlectures and speeches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Verbal (linguistic) Learner -These learners prefer using\nwords, both in speech and writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Physical (kinesthetic) Learner -Getting hands-on is a\nmust for these learners who love to tinker and learn best when they can do\nrather than see or hear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Logical (mathematical) Learner - If there is logic,\nreasoning, and numbers involved, these learners are sure to excel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Social learners favored Social (interpersonal)\nLearner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Solitary (intrapersonal) Learner - These students prefer\nto use self-study and work alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, if I belong to the visual and kinesthetic\nlearner type, then I would prefer classes with more diagrams and more\nexperiments rather than trainers speaking about topics. However, if I am a\nverbal learner, I would love to listen to lectures from experts. Understanding\nour unique learning styles would help us choose courses or methods of learning.\nEither you can look back at the training programs where you enjoyed or do the\nsurvey available on the internet to understand your style. For me, I love working\nin groups hence I choose courses(offline) where there are options to review\nother\u2019s work and connect with the team, which helps in better learning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Keeping Focus and avoiding distractions<\/strong>\u2013One of the major drawbacks of e-learning is the focus or having undivided attention. When we are in class or workshops, we do not open mobile or laptops to check emails or send messages and when we lose focus, we might daydream. However, when we are learning online, laptops or mobile that we use every day for office or for entertainment or for chatting with friends could themselves become distractions. Here are a few tips I followed to keep myself focused during classes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u00b7 Closeout the mails and collaboration channels keep\nmobile of our reach; Keep only course window open <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Set expectations at home that you are in training and not\nto be disturbed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Have video on <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Join a few minutes early and connect with the trainer\n\/facilitator. This also helps you to take on the next steps, such as\ncertification or becoming an expert in that area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 2 min mindful breathing before the class starts (ref\n-https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/mindful-leadership\/resources\/) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7Try out the exercises or case study and submit it \n\nI\nam sure most of you have been using the virtual learning platforms, either in\nyour organization or some preferred platforms to learn and grow in your\ncareers. Hope the above tips shared from my experience are useful. Please share\nyour best practices or tips or any recommendation from your learning journey on\nhow we can get the best out of the virtual learning model.\n\n<\/p>\n","post_title":"Tips to get the best of the virtual learning world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"tips-to-get-the-best-of-the-virtual-learning-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19014","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18707,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:58","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:58","post_content":"\n

Most of us would have read about the recent\nransomware hit on Colonial pipeline, one of the largest oil pipelines in the\nUS. They had to temporarily halt all the operations, it impacted some of the\ncompany\u2019s IT system and suffered a huge loss. It took almost a week to bring\nback the services and back to normal. During this unprecedented time, as we\nwere all working from home, Organization was worried about securing the\napplications, Infrastructure, etc. Cybersecurity has been slowly gaining focus\nand these kinds of attacks make serious attention.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the past 3 months, as an agile coach, I am involved in coaching a team that is developing a highly critical application that is also the backbone of the business deals. This application had to be super secure and if this application gets hit, it can have a huge impact on the organization in terms of finance, brand, and assets, data, etc. Hence, we had to explore how to integrate agile development practices and Cybersecurity practices. There have been some thoughts that agile, with its frequent releases, introduces vulnerability in the system and sometimes not recommended as a development approach for high critical application.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In the past, Cybersecurity teams usually get involved in the tail end and now with frequent releases, ways of working and processes need to be tailored. There were few practices that we got started which I will be sharing in this blog. Would love to hear from you; your stories and experiments in this area.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cybersecurity by definition is Computer\nsecurity, cybersecurity or information technology security (IT security) is the\nprotection of computer systems<\/a> and networks<\/a> from information disclosure, theft of or damage to\ntheir hardware<\/a>, software<\/a>, or electronic data<\/a>,\nas well as from the disruption<\/a> or misdirection<\/a> of the services they provide. In the past, the role\nof security was isolated to a specific team in the final stage of development.\nThat wasn\u2019t as problematic when development cycles lasted months or even years,\nbut those days are over. Effective agile development ensures rapid and frequent\ndevelopment cycles (sometimes weeks or days), but outdated security practices\ncan make the application more vulnerable to attacks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      There have been some doubts about Agile development methodologies and how it lends to Cybersecurity practices. But with self-organizing and cross-functional teams, agile enables different skill sets to work as a team to deliver good quality and secure software.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is how we got started with the process, and practices to integrate cybersecurity practices in agile development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.     Shift- Left:<\/strong>  Having\nexperts \/Cybersecurity personnel at the initial stage not at the end state; not\nto build systems of today. They were able to determine the risk tolerance of\nthe application and conduct risk\/benefit analysis. What amount of security\ncontrols are required for this application and threat modeling exercises? What\nkind of testing required during the sprints and have them integrated with the\ntesting and DevOps plan? It also underscores the need to help developers code\nwith security in mind, a process that involves security teams sharing\nvisibility, feedback, and insights on known threats. Based on the analysis and\nplan, all our developers were trained on the security protocols, processes and\ntools required. One of the important factors to keep in mind is the balance of\ncybersecurity activities with other activities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Hacker as persona:<\/strong> We introduced Hacker as a persona for the application as a next step. By building these personas<\/strong>, we worked out the best defense against certain types of attacks and predict when they might next occur. It helps us to understand the motivation and plan for countermeasures, prioritize defense. This persona was included as one of the users in the identified features of the application and which then was elaborated during the requirements and backlog grooming session. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Tools and Automation<\/strong>: There are quite a several tools available now in the cybersecurity domain. Once the cybersecurity process\/tests are identified, we find that most of our tasks were repetitive and manual. We started looking for ways to automate as Automating repeated tasks is key to DevSecOps since running manual security checks in the pipeline can be time-intensive. Some of these tasks can be automated, such as monitoring intrusion detection systems to search for threats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the major learning in this experimentation is that Shift left does not mean moving all the cybersecurity-related processes, practices, ways of working, and tools from the tail end to the initial stage of development. There had to be a balanced approach and what is required differs from application to application. But bringing this security mindset to all the team members helped a lot in bringing the balanced approach of security and frequent release cycles that was much needed for our application.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Agile and Cybersecurity - How to get started","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-and-cybersecurity-how-to-get-started","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18707","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18715,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:41","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:41","post_content":"\n

Harshita is a scrum master for a team. With the Covid situation across India, the team has been dull and in a very somber state. As a scrum master, she could understand and relate to the situation that the team has been going through. At an organization level, there has been a lot of Employee assistance programs. But she is confused about whether it is ok to have the team be like this or does she need to do something?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution:<\/strong> Here are few things that I would recommend she start with <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Status \/ Smiley images in the communication and collaboration tool.  We have asked team members to add this and this helps others in the team to understand the emotional state of each and every one.  It was quite beneficial and set the stage for everyone in the meetings and interaction.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Standup meetings or team meetings \u2013 First 5 min or 10 min is used for check-in and free-flow conversation. This helped team members to know what\u2019s happening, vent out some of their feelings and help each other as need. If it\u2019s a large team, use some of the survey tools to do check-in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Informal group chat\/gathering or 1:1 with each other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am sure most coaches, leaders are thinking about this and doing something to help their teams in these trying times. Let me know what are those things that you are doing.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #248 \u2013 Sensitivity during these(covid) times","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-248-sensitivity-during-thesecovid-times","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18715","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17712,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:47:04","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:17:04","post_content":"\n

Pravin has been coaching the development team for a few months on the implementation of Scrum. There were a lot of improvement ideas and opportunities that he and his team gathered for the Product team, operation teams during the retrospective. When he tried speaking to them to understand their processes and see if he can do something about it, he was told that the scrum master scope is for the IT development team and the operation teams are not part of it.  He was very excited when he read the new scrum guide and understood that the scrum master role is expanded. Will this help him to remove the obstacle of end to end coaching of the team? If not, what else can he do? Are there any suggestions or solutions that you would recommend?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suggested Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum master role definition and One product team from the scrum guide is a good starting point. Pravin can use the guide to drive the essence of one team delivering product starting from definition to support, roll out, and also point that it is from the industry best practice. In addition to that, it would be good for him to quantify the problem that he had gathered with the data; for ex the resolution time of the incident (end to end), new requirements from the operation team. Along with that, he can do an End to End process mapping w.r.t product delivery and facilitate a discussion with the relevant stakeholders. Most of the time, the problem would be due to organization design ie. Silos between the operation team, product team, and development team, and this might take a longer discussion to solve. <\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #224 - Scrum Master role in the Operations\/Support world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-224-scrum-master-role-in-the-operations-support-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17712","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17698,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:46:28","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:16:28","post_content":"\n

Last week, Scrum celebrated 25 years, and to add to that celebration, a new scrum guide was released. Over the years, Scrum has been implemented across multiple industries and domains and the feedback of its success and failures flowed back into this new Scrum guide. There was a lot of excitement among the agile community for the launch and the agile community was elated with the changes in the Scrum guide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us look at the summary of changes ( from scrum.org articles) in the new scrum guide and then talk about the impact for us (agile community). For more details, you can refer to scrum.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even Less\nPrescriptive<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years,\nthe Scrum Guide started getting a bit more prescriptive. The 2020 version aims\nto bring Scrum back to being a minimally sufficient framework. This was\nachieved by removing the Daily Scrum questions, softening language around PBI\nattributes and retro items in Sprint Backlog, shortening the Sprint\ncancellation section, and much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One Team,\nFocused on One Product<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal was to\neliminate the concept of a separate team within a team that has led to \u201cproxy\u201d\nor \u201cus and them\u201d behavior between the PO and Dev Team. There is now just one\nScrum Team focused on the same objective, with three different sets of accountabilities:\nPO, SM, and Developers (anybody who is working on the sprint increment).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction\nof Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum\nGuide introduces the concept of a Product Goal to provide the focus for the\nScrum Team toward a larger valuable objective. Each Sprint should bring the\nproduct closer to the overall Product Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Home for\nSprint Goal, Definition of Done, and Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides described Sprint Goal and Definition of Done without really giving them\nan identity. They were not quite artifacts but were somewhat attached to\nartifacts. With the addition of Product Goal, the 2020 version provides more\nclarity around this. Each of the three artifacts now contains \u2018commitments\u2019 to\nthem. For the Product Backlog, it is the Product Goal, the Sprint Backlog has\nthe Sprint Goal, and the Increment has the Definition of Done (now without the\nquotes). They exist to bring transparency and focus toward the progress of each\nartifact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-Managing\nover Self-Organizing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides referred to Development Teams (team members who are working on the\nsprint increment) as self-organizing, choosing who and how to do work. With\nmore of a focus on the Scrum Team, the 2020 version emphasizes a self-managing\nScrum Team, that chooses who, how, and what to work on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nSprint Planning Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the\nSprint Planning topics of \u201cWhat\u201d and \u201cHow,\u201d the 2020 Scrum Guide places\nemphasis on a third topic, \u201cWhy.\u201d This third topic refers to the Sprint Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

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\n

c .  Tools <\/strong>\u2013 The other factor that we need to look at is the tools (assessment Questionnaire\/ focus areas). Do we design\/Customize the assessment tools, or do we use the industry standard? If we are doing the assessment for the first time, then I would suggest getting started with the tool that is available at your organization or any industry standard. Customization is required if we are looking at assessing the specific areas for ex, cultural elements such as psychological environment assessment or business results assessment or release. Also, Customization is required when we have a discipline of doing assessment every quarter or so then it is better to vary mode and tool. It is similar to the retrospective that it becomes ineffective <\/p>\n\n\n\n

d. Results and audience<\/strong>: Once we do the assessment and understand the maturity, the team comes up with an improvement plan\/roadmap. It is for the team to act on it.  Most of the time, the results will be shared with the leadership team \/executive team. The leadership team needs to be also engaged so that the reports are consumed correctly and not used as a tool to blame or appraisal system. This factor might not have the impact before the assessment as much as the other 3 factors mentioned above but it creates a safe and trusting environment in the organization.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us know if there are other areas that you\nhave considered or set the stage so that maturity assessments were fun,\nengaging and effective.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Agile Maturity Assessment - How to do it right?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-maturity-assessment-how-to-do-it-right","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:37:49","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:37:49","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19339","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":19344,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-11-08 10:01:16","post_date_gmt":"2021-11-08 04:31:16","post_content":"\n

CHOW 271: Lack of planning - Is Agile the reason?<\/strong>  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kavya is a new project manager in an MNC. The project was asked to run in an agile mode. As in most projects, the Backlog was not detailed and only high-level one-line requirements were available. Business leaders wanted to know what something will cost and what the benefits are before committing to it. Whereas the project team was saying that they cannot do a detailed plan and hence they will not be able to estimate. Kavya was also worried that by doing detailed planning, you will be accused of falling back to the waterfall. What should she do in this case?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution:<\/strong> It\u2019s ok to do some detailed requirements exploration, architecture, and design work upfront, to provide some estimates in hours and dollars, or real dates in addition to points and sprint numbers. \u201cYou can still get the benefits of agile by revisiting requirements and designs in sprint planning, being test-driven, and working with business partners every day,\u201d . Talk to the team and explain Agile is not an excuse not to plan. She can get initial Sprint zero to explore on the requirements so that team can come up with estimates. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #271: Lack of planning and Agile","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-271-lack-of-planning-and-agile","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:38:28","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:38:28","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19344","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":19019,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-08-16 09:07:06","post_date_gmt":"2021-08-16 03:37:06","post_content":"\n

Murugan joined an organization as a Scrum master. One of the teams that he was asked to coach has been in running mode at a fast pace for 2 months already. The team has been doing basic agile practices such as having a time-boxed work commitment, daily standup, and demo to the Product owner and business. However, there have been some issues with respect to requirements and backlog quality, which might impact the tight timelines of that team has. The project is a very important project, and the first release is scheduled in just 2 months of him starting. He started participating in meetings and understanding the domain\/project etc. Within few days, PO escalated that Scrum master is not good and he is not able to fully align with the team, communication skills not good, etc. Murugan had a meeting with the Project manager to understand the issues so that he can improve. Again, after few days, PO escalated that I want the SM to be changed as he thinks that he is not the right fit? Murugan is at loss on how to handle these as he is new to an organization and new to the team. What do you think that as a recommended action to help Murugan?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PO and SM relationship is quite important. Even if there are small conflicts, the Scrum Master and Product Owner must work together to resolve them before they escalate into a full-blown misunderstanding. A supportive relationship with plenty of giving and take is necessary for the health of the team as a whole. As a first step, he should connect with PO to understand the issues as sometimes it could be just misunderstanding or miscommunication. After that, if the issues are something that he can work on, he can come up with a plan of action with concrete timelines. If some of them need organizational intervention, he can reach out to his management and project management of the team to see if he can get help to resolve those issues. Align the Plan of action with the timelines with PO so that they can start working together. <\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW 260: PO overpowering SM","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-260-po-overpowering-sm","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:38:54","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:38:54","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19019","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":19014,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-08-16 08:57:11","post_date_gmt":"2021-08-16 03:27:11","post_content":"\n

The past 2 years have been a roller coaster ride for most\nof us. It gave us opportunities to relearn some of our\nforgotten skills or explore new areas through virtual learning platforms. It is\nnot only individuals re-looking at learning methods but also every organization\nwas also looking at changing their training, onboarding, and workshops to\nvirtual mode. We can see it in the data and the projection for that industry\npublished on the world economic forum page. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.weforum.org\/agenda\/2020\/04\/coronavirus-education-global-covid19-online-digital-learning\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

 E-learning Market Value Projected To Reach US$ 660.8\nBillion By 2027 Covering Covid-19 Impact -  The global e-learning\nmarket<\/strong><\/a> is expected to grow at a CAGR of around 15.9%\nfrom 2020 to 2027 and reach the market value of over US$ 660.8 Bn by 2027. (ref\nhttps:\/\/www.globenewswire.com\/news-release\/2021\/05\/20\/2233572\/0\/en\/<\/a>E-learning-Market-Value-Projected-To-Reach-US-660-8-Billion-By-2027-Covering-Covid-19-Impact-Acumen-Research-and-Consulting.html<\/a>)  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 As the industry matures, there have been lots of best\npractices and recommendations shared across to develop the right content and tips on\nhow to engage the participants for trainers. In some organizations, trainers\nare re-trained to adopt this model. Whereas I feel that as a learner, it is up\nto each of us to figure out new ways of learning in the new world that is\npoised to stay. During the past 2 years, I have been on a personal learning\njourney and was using various virtual learning tools, platforms for that\npurpose. Initially, when I started, I fumbled through these learning methods, and sometimes I dropped the course or lectures in-between as they did not fit my\nlearning styles, wasting both my time and money. After few trials, I figured out\nsome practices or tips that are helping me out to get the best out of these\nvirtual learning courses or workshops. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Here are my 2 cents <\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.       Align learning styles<\/strong> - Each of us has different ways in which we grasp things. Some of us love to listen to lectures whereas some of us would love to do experiments to understand concepts. The study shows that there are 7 different learning styles, and they are as listed below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Visual (spatial) Learner -Using pictures, images,\ndiagrams, whiteboards and more helps these types of learners understand\ninformation better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Aural (auditory) Learner -Aural learners are good\nlisteners who normally learn best through verbal presentations like\nlectures and speeches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Verbal (linguistic) Learner -These learners prefer using\nwords, both in speech and writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Physical (kinesthetic) Learner -Getting hands-on is a\nmust for these learners who love to tinker and learn best when they can do\nrather than see or hear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Logical (mathematical) Learner - If there is logic,\nreasoning, and numbers involved, these learners are sure to excel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Social learners favored Social (interpersonal)\nLearner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Solitary (intrapersonal) Learner - These students prefer\nto use self-study and work alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, if I belong to the visual and kinesthetic\nlearner type, then I would prefer classes with more diagrams and more\nexperiments rather than trainers speaking about topics. However, if I am a\nverbal learner, I would love to listen to lectures from experts. Understanding\nour unique learning styles would help us choose courses or methods of learning.\nEither you can look back at the training programs where you enjoyed or do the\nsurvey available on the internet to understand your style. For me, I love working\nin groups hence I choose courses(offline) where there are options to review\nother\u2019s work and connect with the team, which helps in better learning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Keeping Focus and avoiding distractions<\/strong>\u2013One of the major drawbacks of e-learning is the focus or having undivided attention. When we are in class or workshops, we do not open mobile or laptops to check emails or send messages and when we lose focus, we might daydream. However, when we are learning online, laptops or mobile that we use every day for office or for entertainment or for chatting with friends could themselves become distractions. Here are a few tips I followed to keep myself focused during classes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u00b7 Closeout the mails and collaboration channels keep\nmobile of our reach; Keep only course window open <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Set expectations at home that you are in training and not\nto be disturbed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Have video on <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Join a few minutes early and connect with the trainer\n\/facilitator. This also helps you to take on the next steps, such as\ncertification or becoming an expert in that area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 2 min mindful breathing before the class starts (ref\n-https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/mindful-leadership\/resources\/) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7Try out the exercises or case study and submit it \n\nI\nam sure most of you have been using the virtual learning platforms, either in\nyour organization or some preferred platforms to learn and grow in your\ncareers. Hope the above tips shared from my experience are useful. Please share\nyour best practices or tips or any recommendation from your learning journey on\nhow we can get the best out of the virtual learning model.\n\n<\/p>\n","post_title":"Tips to get the best of the virtual learning world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"tips-to-get-the-best-of-the-virtual-learning-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19014","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18707,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:58","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:58","post_content":"\n

Most of us would have read about the recent\nransomware hit on Colonial pipeline, one of the largest oil pipelines in the\nUS. They had to temporarily halt all the operations, it impacted some of the\ncompany\u2019s IT system and suffered a huge loss. It took almost a week to bring\nback the services and back to normal. During this unprecedented time, as we\nwere all working from home, Organization was worried about securing the\napplications, Infrastructure, etc. Cybersecurity has been slowly gaining focus\nand these kinds of attacks make serious attention.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the past 3 months, as an agile coach, I am involved in coaching a team that is developing a highly critical application that is also the backbone of the business deals. This application had to be super secure and if this application gets hit, it can have a huge impact on the organization in terms of finance, brand, and assets, data, etc. Hence, we had to explore how to integrate agile development practices and Cybersecurity practices. There have been some thoughts that agile, with its frequent releases, introduces vulnerability in the system and sometimes not recommended as a development approach for high critical application.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In the past, Cybersecurity teams usually get involved in the tail end and now with frequent releases, ways of working and processes need to be tailored. There were few practices that we got started which I will be sharing in this blog. Would love to hear from you; your stories and experiments in this area.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cybersecurity by definition is Computer\nsecurity, cybersecurity or information technology security (IT security) is the\nprotection of computer systems<\/a> and networks<\/a> from information disclosure, theft of or damage to\ntheir hardware<\/a>, software<\/a>, or electronic data<\/a>,\nas well as from the disruption<\/a> or misdirection<\/a> of the services they provide. In the past, the role\nof security was isolated to a specific team in the final stage of development.\nThat wasn\u2019t as problematic when development cycles lasted months or even years,\nbut those days are over. Effective agile development ensures rapid and frequent\ndevelopment cycles (sometimes weeks or days), but outdated security practices\ncan make the application more vulnerable to attacks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      There have been some doubts about Agile development methodologies and how it lends to Cybersecurity practices. But with self-organizing and cross-functional teams, agile enables different skill sets to work as a team to deliver good quality and secure software.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is how we got started with the process, and practices to integrate cybersecurity practices in agile development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.     Shift- Left:<\/strong>  Having\nexperts \/Cybersecurity personnel at the initial stage not at the end state; not\nto build systems of today. They were able to determine the risk tolerance of\nthe application and conduct risk\/benefit analysis. What amount of security\ncontrols are required for this application and threat modeling exercises? What\nkind of testing required during the sprints and have them integrated with the\ntesting and DevOps plan? It also underscores the need to help developers code\nwith security in mind, a process that involves security teams sharing\nvisibility, feedback, and insights on known threats. Based on the analysis and\nplan, all our developers were trained on the security protocols, processes and\ntools required. One of the important factors to keep in mind is the balance of\ncybersecurity activities with other activities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Hacker as persona:<\/strong> We introduced Hacker as a persona for the application as a next step. By building these personas<\/strong>, we worked out the best defense against certain types of attacks and predict when they might next occur. It helps us to understand the motivation and plan for countermeasures, prioritize defense. This persona was included as one of the users in the identified features of the application and which then was elaborated during the requirements and backlog grooming session. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Tools and Automation<\/strong>: There are quite a several tools available now in the cybersecurity domain. Once the cybersecurity process\/tests are identified, we find that most of our tasks were repetitive and manual. We started looking for ways to automate as Automating repeated tasks is key to DevSecOps since running manual security checks in the pipeline can be time-intensive. Some of these tasks can be automated, such as monitoring intrusion detection systems to search for threats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the major learning in this experimentation is that Shift left does not mean moving all the cybersecurity-related processes, practices, ways of working, and tools from the tail end to the initial stage of development. There had to be a balanced approach and what is required differs from application to application. But bringing this security mindset to all the team members helped a lot in bringing the balanced approach of security and frequent release cycles that was much needed for our application.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Agile and Cybersecurity - How to get started","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-and-cybersecurity-how-to-get-started","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18707","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18715,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:41","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:41","post_content":"\n

Harshita is a scrum master for a team. With the Covid situation across India, the team has been dull and in a very somber state. As a scrum master, she could understand and relate to the situation that the team has been going through. At an organization level, there has been a lot of Employee assistance programs. But she is confused about whether it is ok to have the team be like this or does she need to do something?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution:<\/strong> Here are few things that I would recommend she start with <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Status \/ Smiley images in the communication and collaboration tool.  We have asked team members to add this and this helps others in the team to understand the emotional state of each and every one.  It was quite beneficial and set the stage for everyone in the meetings and interaction.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Standup meetings or team meetings \u2013 First 5 min or 10 min is used for check-in and free-flow conversation. This helped team members to know what\u2019s happening, vent out some of their feelings and help each other as need. If it\u2019s a large team, use some of the survey tools to do check-in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Informal group chat\/gathering or 1:1 with each other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am sure most coaches, leaders are thinking about this and doing something to help their teams in these trying times. Let me know what are those things that you are doing.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #248 \u2013 Sensitivity during these(covid) times","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-248-sensitivity-during-thesecovid-times","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18715","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17712,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:47:04","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:17:04","post_content":"\n

Pravin has been coaching the development team for a few months on the implementation of Scrum. There were a lot of improvement ideas and opportunities that he and his team gathered for the Product team, operation teams during the retrospective. When he tried speaking to them to understand their processes and see if he can do something about it, he was told that the scrum master scope is for the IT development team and the operation teams are not part of it.  He was very excited when he read the new scrum guide and understood that the scrum master role is expanded. Will this help him to remove the obstacle of end to end coaching of the team? If not, what else can he do? Are there any suggestions or solutions that you would recommend?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suggested Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum master role definition and One product team from the scrum guide is a good starting point. Pravin can use the guide to drive the essence of one team delivering product starting from definition to support, roll out, and also point that it is from the industry best practice. In addition to that, it would be good for him to quantify the problem that he had gathered with the data; for ex the resolution time of the incident (end to end), new requirements from the operation team. Along with that, he can do an End to End process mapping w.r.t product delivery and facilitate a discussion with the relevant stakeholders. Most of the time, the problem would be due to organization design ie. Silos between the operation team, product team, and development team, and this might take a longer discussion to solve. <\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #224 - Scrum Master role in the Operations\/Support world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-224-scrum-master-role-in-the-operations-support-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17712","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17698,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:46:28","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:16:28","post_content":"\n

Last week, Scrum celebrated 25 years, and to add to that celebration, a new scrum guide was released. Over the years, Scrum has been implemented across multiple industries and domains and the feedback of its success and failures flowed back into this new Scrum guide. There was a lot of excitement among the agile community for the launch and the agile community was elated with the changes in the Scrum guide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us look at the summary of changes ( from scrum.org articles) in the new scrum guide and then talk about the impact for us (agile community). For more details, you can refer to scrum.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even Less\nPrescriptive<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years,\nthe Scrum Guide started getting a bit more prescriptive. The 2020 version aims\nto bring Scrum back to being a minimally sufficient framework. This was\nachieved by removing the Daily Scrum questions, softening language around PBI\nattributes and retro items in Sprint Backlog, shortening the Sprint\ncancellation section, and much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One Team,\nFocused on One Product<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal was to\neliminate the concept of a separate team within a team that has led to \u201cproxy\u201d\nor \u201cus and them\u201d behavior between the PO and Dev Team. There is now just one\nScrum Team focused on the same objective, with three different sets of accountabilities:\nPO, SM, and Developers (anybody who is working on the sprint increment).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction\nof Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum\nGuide introduces the concept of a Product Goal to provide the focus for the\nScrum Team toward a larger valuable objective. Each Sprint should bring the\nproduct closer to the overall Product Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Home for\nSprint Goal, Definition of Done, and Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides described Sprint Goal and Definition of Done without really giving them\nan identity. They were not quite artifacts but were somewhat attached to\nartifacts. With the addition of Product Goal, the 2020 version provides more\nclarity around this. Each of the three artifacts now contains \u2018commitments\u2019 to\nthem. For the Product Backlog, it is the Product Goal, the Sprint Backlog has\nthe Sprint Goal, and the Increment has the Definition of Done (now without the\nquotes). They exist to bring transparency and focus toward the progress of each\nartifact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-Managing\nover Self-Organizing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides referred to Development Teams (team members who are working on the\nsprint increment) as self-organizing, choosing who and how to do work. With\nmore of a focus on the Scrum Team, the 2020 version emphasizes a self-managing\nScrum Team, that chooses who, how, and what to work on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nSprint Planning Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the\nSprint Planning topics of \u201cWhat\u201d and \u201cHow,\u201d the 2020 Scrum Guide places\nemphasis on a third topic, \u201cWhy.\u201d This third topic refers to the Sprint Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

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b.     Participants of the Assessment:<\/strong>  The second factor that needs to be considered is whom should we include\/invite in the survey or discussions? Obviously, the natural team that comprises PO, Dev, testers, BA, operation team, support team, etc. will be part of the assessment exercise. But should we include role such as architects or Risk assessment team who is not fully committed to the team but contributes to the success of the team? MY suggestion would be to include the contributing roles also as part of the assessment as they influence the teams\u2019\/Portfolio ways of working. From an outside-in perspective, we get valuable feedback. Again, these members should be part of the initial engagement on the assessment objective so that they understand the areas that they can answer and some areas which might be optional for them to assess. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c .  Tools <\/strong>\u2013 The other factor that we need to look at is the tools (assessment Questionnaire\/ focus areas). Do we design\/Customize the assessment tools, or do we use the industry standard? If we are doing the assessment for the first time, then I would suggest getting started with the tool that is available at your organization or any industry standard. Customization is required if we are looking at assessing the specific areas for ex, cultural elements such as psychological environment assessment or business results assessment or release. Also, Customization is required when we have a discipline of doing assessment every quarter or so then it is better to vary mode and tool. It is similar to the retrospective that it becomes ineffective <\/p>\n\n\n\n

d. Results and audience<\/strong>: Once we do the assessment and understand the maturity, the team comes up with an improvement plan\/roadmap. It is for the team to act on it.  Most of the time, the results will be shared with the leadership team \/executive team. The leadership team needs to be also engaged so that the reports are consumed correctly and not used as a tool to blame or appraisal system. This factor might not have the impact before the assessment as much as the other 3 factors mentioned above but it creates a safe and trusting environment in the organization.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us know if there are other areas that you\nhave considered or set the stage so that maturity assessments were fun,\nengaging and effective.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Agile Maturity Assessment - How to do it right?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-maturity-assessment-how-to-do-it-right","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:37:49","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:37:49","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19339","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":19344,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-11-08 10:01:16","post_date_gmt":"2021-11-08 04:31:16","post_content":"\n

CHOW 271: Lack of planning - Is Agile the reason?<\/strong>  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kavya is a new project manager in an MNC. The project was asked to run in an agile mode. As in most projects, the Backlog was not detailed and only high-level one-line requirements were available. Business leaders wanted to know what something will cost and what the benefits are before committing to it. Whereas the project team was saying that they cannot do a detailed plan and hence they will not be able to estimate. Kavya was also worried that by doing detailed planning, you will be accused of falling back to the waterfall. What should she do in this case?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution:<\/strong> It\u2019s ok to do some detailed requirements exploration, architecture, and design work upfront, to provide some estimates in hours and dollars, or real dates in addition to points and sprint numbers. \u201cYou can still get the benefits of agile by revisiting requirements and designs in sprint planning, being test-driven, and working with business partners every day,\u201d . Talk to the team and explain Agile is not an excuse not to plan. She can get initial Sprint zero to explore on the requirements so that team can come up with estimates. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #271: Lack of planning and Agile","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-271-lack-of-planning-and-agile","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:38:28","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:38:28","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19344","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":19019,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-08-16 09:07:06","post_date_gmt":"2021-08-16 03:37:06","post_content":"\n

Murugan joined an organization as a Scrum master. One of the teams that he was asked to coach has been in running mode at a fast pace for 2 months already. The team has been doing basic agile practices such as having a time-boxed work commitment, daily standup, and demo to the Product owner and business. However, there have been some issues with respect to requirements and backlog quality, which might impact the tight timelines of that team has. The project is a very important project, and the first release is scheduled in just 2 months of him starting. He started participating in meetings and understanding the domain\/project etc. Within few days, PO escalated that Scrum master is not good and he is not able to fully align with the team, communication skills not good, etc. Murugan had a meeting with the Project manager to understand the issues so that he can improve. Again, after few days, PO escalated that I want the SM to be changed as he thinks that he is not the right fit? Murugan is at loss on how to handle these as he is new to an organization and new to the team. What do you think that as a recommended action to help Murugan?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PO and SM relationship is quite important. Even if there are small conflicts, the Scrum Master and Product Owner must work together to resolve them before they escalate into a full-blown misunderstanding. A supportive relationship with plenty of giving and take is necessary for the health of the team as a whole. As a first step, he should connect with PO to understand the issues as sometimes it could be just misunderstanding or miscommunication. After that, if the issues are something that he can work on, he can come up with a plan of action with concrete timelines. If some of them need organizational intervention, he can reach out to his management and project management of the team to see if he can get help to resolve those issues. Align the Plan of action with the timelines with PO so that they can start working together. <\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW 260: PO overpowering SM","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-260-po-overpowering-sm","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:38:54","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:38:54","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19019","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":19014,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-08-16 08:57:11","post_date_gmt":"2021-08-16 03:27:11","post_content":"\n

The past 2 years have been a roller coaster ride for most\nof us. It gave us opportunities to relearn some of our\nforgotten skills or explore new areas through virtual learning platforms. It is\nnot only individuals re-looking at learning methods but also every organization\nwas also looking at changing their training, onboarding, and workshops to\nvirtual mode. We can see it in the data and the projection for that industry\npublished on the world economic forum page. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.weforum.org\/agenda\/2020\/04\/coronavirus-education-global-covid19-online-digital-learning\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

 E-learning Market Value Projected To Reach US$ 660.8\nBillion By 2027 Covering Covid-19 Impact -  The global e-learning\nmarket<\/strong><\/a> is expected to grow at a CAGR of around 15.9%\nfrom 2020 to 2027 and reach the market value of over US$ 660.8 Bn by 2027. (ref\nhttps:\/\/www.globenewswire.com\/news-release\/2021\/05\/20\/2233572\/0\/en\/<\/a>E-learning-Market-Value-Projected-To-Reach-US-660-8-Billion-By-2027-Covering-Covid-19-Impact-Acumen-Research-and-Consulting.html<\/a>)  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 As the industry matures, there have been lots of best\npractices and recommendations shared across to develop the right content and tips on\nhow to engage the participants for trainers. In some organizations, trainers\nare re-trained to adopt this model. Whereas I feel that as a learner, it is up\nto each of us to figure out new ways of learning in the new world that is\npoised to stay. During the past 2 years, I have been on a personal learning\njourney and was using various virtual learning tools, platforms for that\npurpose. Initially, when I started, I fumbled through these learning methods, and sometimes I dropped the course or lectures in-between as they did not fit my\nlearning styles, wasting both my time and money. After few trials, I figured out\nsome practices or tips that are helping me out to get the best out of these\nvirtual learning courses or workshops. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Here are my 2 cents <\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.       Align learning styles<\/strong> - Each of us has different ways in which we grasp things. Some of us love to listen to lectures whereas some of us would love to do experiments to understand concepts. The study shows that there are 7 different learning styles, and they are as listed below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Visual (spatial) Learner -Using pictures, images,\ndiagrams, whiteboards and more helps these types of learners understand\ninformation better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Aural (auditory) Learner -Aural learners are good\nlisteners who normally learn best through verbal presentations like\nlectures and speeches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Verbal (linguistic) Learner -These learners prefer using\nwords, both in speech and writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Physical (kinesthetic) Learner -Getting hands-on is a\nmust for these learners who love to tinker and learn best when they can do\nrather than see or hear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Logical (mathematical) Learner - If there is logic,\nreasoning, and numbers involved, these learners are sure to excel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Social learners favored Social (interpersonal)\nLearner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Solitary (intrapersonal) Learner - These students prefer\nto use self-study and work alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, if I belong to the visual and kinesthetic\nlearner type, then I would prefer classes with more diagrams and more\nexperiments rather than trainers speaking about topics. However, if I am a\nverbal learner, I would love to listen to lectures from experts. Understanding\nour unique learning styles would help us choose courses or methods of learning.\nEither you can look back at the training programs where you enjoyed or do the\nsurvey available on the internet to understand your style. For me, I love working\nin groups hence I choose courses(offline) where there are options to review\nother\u2019s work and connect with the team, which helps in better learning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Keeping Focus and avoiding distractions<\/strong>\u2013One of the major drawbacks of e-learning is the focus or having undivided attention. When we are in class or workshops, we do not open mobile or laptops to check emails or send messages and when we lose focus, we might daydream. However, when we are learning online, laptops or mobile that we use every day for office or for entertainment or for chatting with friends could themselves become distractions. Here are a few tips I followed to keep myself focused during classes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u00b7 Closeout the mails and collaboration channels keep\nmobile of our reach; Keep only course window open <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Set expectations at home that you are in training and not\nto be disturbed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Have video on <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Join a few minutes early and connect with the trainer\n\/facilitator. This also helps you to take on the next steps, such as\ncertification or becoming an expert in that area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 2 min mindful breathing before the class starts (ref\n-https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/mindful-leadership\/resources\/) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7Try out the exercises or case study and submit it \n\nI\nam sure most of you have been using the virtual learning platforms, either in\nyour organization or some preferred platforms to learn and grow in your\ncareers. Hope the above tips shared from my experience are useful. Please share\nyour best practices or tips or any recommendation from your learning journey on\nhow we can get the best out of the virtual learning model.\n\n<\/p>\n","post_title":"Tips to get the best of the virtual learning world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"tips-to-get-the-best-of-the-virtual-learning-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19014","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18707,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:58","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:58","post_content":"\n

Most of us would have read about the recent\nransomware hit on Colonial pipeline, one of the largest oil pipelines in the\nUS. They had to temporarily halt all the operations, it impacted some of the\ncompany\u2019s IT system and suffered a huge loss. It took almost a week to bring\nback the services and back to normal. During this unprecedented time, as we\nwere all working from home, Organization was worried about securing the\napplications, Infrastructure, etc. Cybersecurity has been slowly gaining focus\nand these kinds of attacks make serious attention.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the past 3 months, as an agile coach, I am involved in coaching a team that is developing a highly critical application that is also the backbone of the business deals. This application had to be super secure and if this application gets hit, it can have a huge impact on the organization in terms of finance, brand, and assets, data, etc. Hence, we had to explore how to integrate agile development practices and Cybersecurity practices. There have been some thoughts that agile, with its frequent releases, introduces vulnerability in the system and sometimes not recommended as a development approach for high critical application.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In the past, Cybersecurity teams usually get involved in the tail end and now with frequent releases, ways of working and processes need to be tailored. There were few practices that we got started which I will be sharing in this blog. Would love to hear from you; your stories and experiments in this area.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cybersecurity by definition is Computer\nsecurity, cybersecurity or information technology security (IT security) is the\nprotection of computer systems<\/a> and networks<\/a> from information disclosure, theft of or damage to\ntheir hardware<\/a>, software<\/a>, or electronic data<\/a>,\nas well as from the disruption<\/a> or misdirection<\/a> of the services they provide. In the past, the role\nof security was isolated to a specific team in the final stage of development.\nThat wasn\u2019t as problematic when development cycles lasted months or even years,\nbut those days are over. Effective agile development ensures rapid and frequent\ndevelopment cycles (sometimes weeks or days), but outdated security practices\ncan make the application more vulnerable to attacks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      There have been some doubts about Agile development methodologies and how it lends to Cybersecurity practices. But with self-organizing and cross-functional teams, agile enables different skill sets to work as a team to deliver good quality and secure software.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is how we got started with the process, and practices to integrate cybersecurity practices in agile development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.     Shift- Left:<\/strong>  Having\nexperts \/Cybersecurity personnel at the initial stage not at the end state; not\nto build systems of today. They were able to determine the risk tolerance of\nthe application and conduct risk\/benefit analysis. What amount of security\ncontrols are required for this application and threat modeling exercises? What\nkind of testing required during the sprints and have them integrated with the\ntesting and DevOps plan? It also underscores the need to help developers code\nwith security in mind, a process that involves security teams sharing\nvisibility, feedback, and insights on known threats. Based on the analysis and\nplan, all our developers were trained on the security protocols, processes and\ntools required. One of the important factors to keep in mind is the balance of\ncybersecurity activities with other activities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Hacker as persona:<\/strong> We introduced Hacker as a persona for the application as a next step. By building these personas<\/strong>, we worked out the best defense against certain types of attacks and predict when they might next occur. It helps us to understand the motivation and plan for countermeasures, prioritize defense. This persona was included as one of the users in the identified features of the application and which then was elaborated during the requirements and backlog grooming session. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Tools and Automation<\/strong>: There are quite a several tools available now in the cybersecurity domain. Once the cybersecurity process\/tests are identified, we find that most of our tasks were repetitive and manual. We started looking for ways to automate as Automating repeated tasks is key to DevSecOps since running manual security checks in the pipeline can be time-intensive. Some of these tasks can be automated, such as monitoring intrusion detection systems to search for threats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the major learning in this experimentation is that Shift left does not mean moving all the cybersecurity-related processes, practices, ways of working, and tools from the tail end to the initial stage of development. There had to be a balanced approach and what is required differs from application to application. But bringing this security mindset to all the team members helped a lot in bringing the balanced approach of security and frequent release cycles that was much needed for our application.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Agile and Cybersecurity - How to get started","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-and-cybersecurity-how-to-get-started","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18707","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18715,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:41","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:41","post_content":"\n

Harshita is a scrum master for a team. With the Covid situation across India, the team has been dull and in a very somber state. As a scrum master, she could understand and relate to the situation that the team has been going through. At an organization level, there has been a lot of Employee assistance programs. But she is confused about whether it is ok to have the team be like this or does she need to do something?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution:<\/strong> Here are few things that I would recommend she start with <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Status \/ Smiley images in the communication and collaboration tool.  We have asked team members to add this and this helps others in the team to understand the emotional state of each and every one.  It was quite beneficial and set the stage for everyone in the meetings and interaction.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Standup meetings or team meetings \u2013 First 5 min or 10 min is used for check-in and free-flow conversation. This helped team members to know what\u2019s happening, vent out some of their feelings and help each other as need. If it\u2019s a large team, use some of the survey tools to do check-in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Informal group chat\/gathering or 1:1 with each other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am sure most coaches, leaders are thinking about this and doing something to help their teams in these trying times. Let me know what are those things that you are doing.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #248 \u2013 Sensitivity during these(covid) times","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-248-sensitivity-during-thesecovid-times","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18715","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17712,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:47:04","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:17:04","post_content":"\n

Pravin has been coaching the development team for a few months on the implementation of Scrum. There were a lot of improvement ideas and opportunities that he and his team gathered for the Product team, operation teams during the retrospective. When he tried speaking to them to understand their processes and see if he can do something about it, he was told that the scrum master scope is for the IT development team and the operation teams are not part of it.  He was very excited when he read the new scrum guide and understood that the scrum master role is expanded. Will this help him to remove the obstacle of end to end coaching of the team? If not, what else can he do? Are there any suggestions or solutions that you would recommend?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suggested Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum master role definition and One product team from the scrum guide is a good starting point. Pravin can use the guide to drive the essence of one team delivering product starting from definition to support, roll out, and also point that it is from the industry best practice. In addition to that, it would be good for him to quantify the problem that he had gathered with the data; for ex the resolution time of the incident (end to end), new requirements from the operation team. Along with that, he can do an End to End process mapping w.r.t product delivery and facilitate a discussion with the relevant stakeholders. Most of the time, the problem would be due to organization design ie. Silos between the operation team, product team, and development team, and this might take a longer discussion to solve. <\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #224 - Scrum Master role in the Operations\/Support world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-224-scrum-master-role-in-the-operations-support-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17712","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17698,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:46:28","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:16:28","post_content":"\n

Last week, Scrum celebrated 25 years, and to add to that celebration, a new scrum guide was released. Over the years, Scrum has been implemented across multiple industries and domains and the feedback of its success and failures flowed back into this new Scrum guide. There was a lot of excitement among the agile community for the launch and the agile community was elated with the changes in the Scrum guide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us look at the summary of changes ( from scrum.org articles) in the new scrum guide and then talk about the impact for us (agile community). For more details, you can refer to scrum.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even Less\nPrescriptive<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years,\nthe Scrum Guide started getting a bit more prescriptive. The 2020 version aims\nto bring Scrum back to being a minimally sufficient framework. This was\nachieved by removing the Daily Scrum questions, softening language around PBI\nattributes and retro items in Sprint Backlog, shortening the Sprint\ncancellation section, and much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One Team,\nFocused on One Product<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal was to\neliminate the concept of a separate team within a team that has led to \u201cproxy\u201d\nor \u201cus and them\u201d behavior between the PO and Dev Team. There is now just one\nScrum Team focused on the same objective, with three different sets of accountabilities:\nPO, SM, and Developers (anybody who is working on the sprint increment).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction\nof Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum\nGuide introduces the concept of a Product Goal to provide the focus for the\nScrum Team toward a larger valuable objective. Each Sprint should bring the\nproduct closer to the overall Product Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Home for\nSprint Goal, Definition of Done, and Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides described Sprint Goal and Definition of Done without really giving them\nan identity. They were not quite artifacts but were somewhat attached to\nartifacts. With the addition of Product Goal, the 2020 version provides more\nclarity around this. Each of the three artifacts now contains \u2018commitments\u2019 to\nthem. For the Product Backlog, it is the Product Goal, the Sprint Backlog has\nthe Sprint Goal, and the Increment has the Definition of Done (now without the\nquotes). They exist to bring transparency and focus toward the progress of each\nartifact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-Managing\nover Self-Organizing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides referred to Development Teams (team members who are working on the\nsprint increment) as self-organizing, choosing who and how to do work. With\nmore of a focus on the Scrum Team, the 2020 version emphasizes a self-managing\nScrum Team, that chooses who, how, and what to work on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nSprint Planning Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the\nSprint Planning topics of \u201cWhat\u201d and \u201cHow,\u201d the 2020 Scrum Guide places\nemphasis on a third topic, \u201cWhy.\u201d This third topic refers to the Sprint Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

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a. Identifying the mode of assessment:<\/strong> The mode of assessment (discussion or survey or workshop) is one of the most important factors for an effective assessment.  When do we do a survey or when do we do a discussion\/workshop with the teams to assess the maturity of agile practices? Some of the factors that influence the mode are team size, the number of teams in a portfolio, and team stage (ex: Tuckman's stages of group development- Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing). For instance, if my team is in Forming stage or the Storming stage, then the team might not be open or have the courage to correctly assess the maturity in the discussion mode, and hence doing a survey would be recommended. But before launching the survey, team engagement in explaining the intent, purpose, and how the results will be used is required so that the team understands the questions, how to assess each question, and what ranking means. On the other hand, if the team is in the performing stage or we are assessing at the portfolio level where we would like to understand maturity not only at the team practices but also some of the inter-related practices, then survey might be the right choice of assessment mode. Even then, as discussed earlier, engaging with the team will really be beneficial in getting the right results. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b.     Participants of the Assessment:<\/strong>  The second factor that needs to be considered is whom should we include\/invite in the survey or discussions? Obviously, the natural team that comprises PO, Dev, testers, BA, operation team, support team, etc. will be part of the assessment exercise. But should we include role such as architects or Risk assessment team who is not fully committed to the team but contributes to the success of the team? MY suggestion would be to include the contributing roles also as part of the assessment as they influence the teams\u2019\/Portfolio ways of working. From an outside-in perspective, we get valuable feedback. Again, these members should be part of the initial engagement on the assessment objective so that they understand the areas that they can answer and some areas which might be optional for them to assess. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c .  Tools <\/strong>\u2013 The other factor that we need to look at is the tools (assessment Questionnaire\/ focus areas). Do we design\/Customize the assessment tools, or do we use the industry standard? If we are doing the assessment for the first time, then I would suggest getting started with the tool that is available at your organization or any industry standard. Customization is required if we are looking at assessing the specific areas for ex, cultural elements such as psychological environment assessment or business results assessment or release. Also, Customization is required when we have a discipline of doing assessment every quarter or so then it is better to vary mode and tool. It is similar to the retrospective that it becomes ineffective <\/p>\n\n\n\n

d. Results and audience<\/strong>: Once we do the assessment and understand the maturity, the team comes up with an improvement plan\/roadmap. It is for the team to act on it.  Most of the time, the results will be shared with the leadership team \/executive team. The leadership team needs to be also engaged so that the reports are consumed correctly and not used as a tool to blame or appraisal system. This factor might not have the impact before the assessment as much as the other 3 factors mentioned above but it creates a safe and trusting environment in the organization.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us know if there are other areas that you\nhave considered or set the stage so that maturity assessments were fun,\nengaging and effective.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Agile Maturity Assessment - How to do it right?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-maturity-assessment-how-to-do-it-right","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:37:49","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:37:49","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19339","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":19344,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-11-08 10:01:16","post_date_gmt":"2021-11-08 04:31:16","post_content":"\n

CHOW 271: Lack of planning - Is Agile the reason?<\/strong>  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kavya is a new project manager in an MNC. The project was asked to run in an agile mode. As in most projects, the Backlog was not detailed and only high-level one-line requirements were available. Business leaders wanted to know what something will cost and what the benefits are before committing to it. Whereas the project team was saying that they cannot do a detailed plan and hence they will not be able to estimate. Kavya was also worried that by doing detailed planning, you will be accused of falling back to the waterfall. What should she do in this case?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution:<\/strong> It\u2019s ok to do some detailed requirements exploration, architecture, and design work upfront, to provide some estimates in hours and dollars, or real dates in addition to points and sprint numbers. \u201cYou can still get the benefits of agile by revisiting requirements and designs in sprint planning, being test-driven, and working with business partners every day,\u201d . Talk to the team and explain Agile is not an excuse not to plan. She can get initial Sprint zero to explore on the requirements so that team can come up with estimates. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #271: Lack of planning and Agile","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-271-lack-of-planning-and-agile","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:38:28","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:38:28","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19344","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":19019,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-08-16 09:07:06","post_date_gmt":"2021-08-16 03:37:06","post_content":"\n

Murugan joined an organization as a Scrum master. One of the teams that he was asked to coach has been in running mode at a fast pace for 2 months already. The team has been doing basic agile practices such as having a time-boxed work commitment, daily standup, and demo to the Product owner and business. However, there have been some issues with respect to requirements and backlog quality, which might impact the tight timelines of that team has. The project is a very important project, and the first release is scheduled in just 2 months of him starting. He started participating in meetings and understanding the domain\/project etc. Within few days, PO escalated that Scrum master is not good and he is not able to fully align with the team, communication skills not good, etc. Murugan had a meeting with the Project manager to understand the issues so that he can improve. Again, after few days, PO escalated that I want the SM to be changed as he thinks that he is not the right fit? Murugan is at loss on how to handle these as he is new to an organization and new to the team. What do you think that as a recommended action to help Murugan?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PO and SM relationship is quite important. Even if there are small conflicts, the Scrum Master and Product Owner must work together to resolve them before they escalate into a full-blown misunderstanding. A supportive relationship with plenty of giving and take is necessary for the health of the team as a whole. As a first step, he should connect with PO to understand the issues as sometimes it could be just misunderstanding or miscommunication. After that, if the issues are something that he can work on, he can come up with a plan of action with concrete timelines. If some of them need organizational intervention, he can reach out to his management and project management of the team to see if he can get help to resolve those issues. Align the Plan of action with the timelines with PO so that they can start working together. <\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW 260: PO overpowering SM","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-260-po-overpowering-sm","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:38:54","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:38:54","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19019","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":19014,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-08-16 08:57:11","post_date_gmt":"2021-08-16 03:27:11","post_content":"\n

The past 2 years have been a roller coaster ride for most\nof us. It gave us opportunities to relearn some of our\nforgotten skills or explore new areas through virtual learning platforms. It is\nnot only individuals re-looking at learning methods but also every organization\nwas also looking at changing their training, onboarding, and workshops to\nvirtual mode. We can see it in the data and the projection for that industry\npublished on the world economic forum page. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.weforum.org\/agenda\/2020\/04\/coronavirus-education-global-covid19-online-digital-learning\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

 E-learning Market Value Projected To Reach US$ 660.8\nBillion By 2027 Covering Covid-19 Impact -  The global e-learning\nmarket<\/strong><\/a> is expected to grow at a CAGR of around 15.9%\nfrom 2020 to 2027 and reach the market value of over US$ 660.8 Bn by 2027. (ref\nhttps:\/\/www.globenewswire.com\/news-release\/2021\/05\/20\/2233572\/0\/en\/<\/a>E-learning-Market-Value-Projected-To-Reach-US-660-8-Billion-By-2027-Covering-Covid-19-Impact-Acumen-Research-and-Consulting.html<\/a>)  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 As the industry matures, there have been lots of best\npractices and recommendations shared across to develop the right content and tips on\nhow to engage the participants for trainers. In some organizations, trainers\nare re-trained to adopt this model. Whereas I feel that as a learner, it is up\nto each of us to figure out new ways of learning in the new world that is\npoised to stay. During the past 2 years, I have been on a personal learning\njourney and was using various virtual learning tools, platforms for that\npurpose. Initially, when I started, I fumbled through these learning methods, and sometimes I dropped the course or lectures in-between as they did not fit my\nlearning styles, wasting both my time and money. After few trials, I figured out\nsome practices or tips that are helping me out to get the best out of these\nvirtual learning courses or workshops. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Here are my 2 cents <\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.       Align learning styles<\/strong> - Each of us has different ways in which we grasp things. Some of us love to listen to lectures whereas some of us would love to do experiments to understand concepts. The study shows that there are 7 different learning styles, and they are as listed below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Visual (spatial) Learner -Using pictures, images,\ndiagrams, whiteboards and more helps these types of learners understand\ninformation better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Aural (auditory) Learner -Aural learners are good\nlisteners who normally learn best through verbal presentations like\nlectures and speeches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Verbal (linguistic) Learner -These learners prefer using\nwords, both in speech and writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Physical (kinesthetic) Learner -Getting hands-on is a\nmust for these learners who love to tinker and learn best when they can do\nrather than see or hear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Logical (mathematical) Learner - If there is logic,\nreasoning, and numbers involved, these learners are sure to excel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Social learners favored Social (interpersonal)\nLearner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Solitary (intrapersonal) Learner - These students prefer\nto use self-study and work alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, if I belong to the visual and kinesthetic\nlearner type, then I would prefer classes with more diagrams and more\nexperiments rather than trainers speaking about topics. However, if I am a\nverbal learner, I would love to listen to lectures from experts. Understanding\nour unique learning styles would help us choose courses or methods of learning.\nEither you can look back at the training programs where you enjoyed or do the\nsurvey available on the internet to understand your style. For me, I love working\nin groups hence I choose courses(offline) where there are options to review\nother\u2019s work and connect with the team, which helps in better learning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Keeping Focus and avoiding distractions<\/strong>\u2013One of the major drawbacks of e-learning is the focus or having undivided attention. When we are in class or workshops, we do not open mobile or laptops to check emails or send messages and when we lose focus, we might daydream. However, when we are learning online, laptops or mobile that we use every day for office or for entertainment or for chatting with friends could themselves become distractions. Here are a few tips I followed to keep myself focused during classes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u00b7 Closeout the mails and collaboration channels keep\nmobile of our reach; Keep only course window open <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Set expectations at home that you are in training and not\nto be disturbed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Have video on <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Join a few minutes early and connect with the trainer\n\/facilitator. This also helps you to take on the next steps, such as\ncertification or becoming an expert in that area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 2 min mindful breathing before the class starts (ref\n-https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/mindful-leadership\/resources\/) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7Try out the exercises or case study and submit it \n\nI\nam sure most of you have been using the virtual learning platforms, either in\nyour organization or some preferred platforms to learn and grow in your\ncareers. Hope the above tips shared from my experience are useful. Please share\nyour best practices or tips or any recommendation from your learning journey on\nhow we can get the best out of the virtual learning model.\n\n<\/p>\n","post_title":"Tips to get the best of the virtual learning world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"tips-to-get-the-best-of-the-virtual-learning-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19014","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18707,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:58","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:58","post_content":"\n

Most of us would have read about the recent\nransomware hit on Colonial pipeline, one of the largest oil pipelines in the\nUS. They had to temporarily halt all the operations, it impacted some of the\ncompany\u2019s IT system and suffered a huge loss. It took almost a week to bring\nback the services and back to normal. During this unprecedented time, as we\nwere all working from home, Organization was worried about securing the\napplications, Infrastructure, etc. Cybersecurity has been slowly gaining focus\nand these kinds of attacks make serious attention.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the past 3 months, as an agile coach, I am involved in coaching a team that is developing a highly critical application that is also the backbone of the business deals. This application had to be super secure and if this application gets hit, it can have a huge impact on the organization in terms of finance, brand, and assets, data, etc. Hence, we had to explore how to integrate agile development practices and Cybersecurity practices. There have been some thoughts that agile, with its frequent releases, introduces vulnerability in the system and sometimes not recommended as a development approach for high critical application.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In the past, Cybersecurity teams usually get involved in the tail end and now with frequent releases, ways of working and processes need to be tailored. There were few practices that we got started which I will be sharing in this blog. Would love to hear from you; your stories and experiments in this area.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cybersecurity by definition is Computer\nsecurity, cybersecurity or information technology security (IT security) is the\nprotection of computer systems<\/a> and networks<\/a> from information disclosure, theft of or damage to\ntheir hardware<\/a>, software<\/a>, or electronic data<\/a>,\nas well as from the disruption<\/a> or misdirection<\/a> of the services they provide. In the past, the role\nof security was isolated to a specific team in the final stage of development.\nThat wasn\u2019t as problematic when development cycles lasted months or even years,\nbut those days are over. Effective agile development ensures rapid and frequent\ndevelopment cycles (sometimes weeks or days), but outdated security practices\ncan make the application more vulnerable to attacks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      There have been some doubts about Agile development methodologies and how it lends to Cybersecurity practices. But with self-organizing and cross-functional teams, agile enables different skill sets to work as a team to deliver good quality and secure software.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is how we got started with the process, and practices to integrate cybersecurity practices in agile development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.     Shift- Left:<\/strong>  Having\nexperts \/Cybersecurity personnel at the initial stage not at the end state; not\nto build systems of today. They were able to determine the risk tolerance of\nthe application and conduct risk\/benefit analysis. What amount of security\ncontrols are required for this application and threat modeling exercises? What\nkind of testing required during the sprints and have them integrated with the\ntesting and DevOps plan? It also underscores the need to help developers code\nwith security in mind, a process that involves security teams sharing\nvisibility, feedback, and insights on known threats. Based on the analysis and\nplan, all our developers were trained on the security protocols, processes and\ntools required. One of the important factors to keep in mind is the balance of\ncybersecurity activities with other activities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Hacker as persona:<\/strong> We introduced Hacker as a persona for the application as a next step. By building these personas<\/strong>, we worked out the best defense against certain types of attacks and predict when they might next occur. It helps us to understand the motivation and plan for countermeasures, prioritize defense. This persona was included as one of the users in the identified features of the application and which then was elaborated during the requirements and backlog grooming session. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Tools and Automation<\/strong>: There are quite a several tools available now in the cybersecurity domain. Once the cybersecurity process\/tests are identified, we find that most of our tasks were repetitive and manual. We started looking for ways to automate as Automating repeated tasks is key to DevSecOps since running manual security checks in the pipeline can be time-intensive. Some of these tasks can be automated, such as monitoring intrusion detection systems to search for threats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the major learning in this experimentation is that Shift left does not mean moving all the cybersecurity-related processes, practices, ways of working, and tools from the tail end to the initial stage of development. There had to be a balanced approach and what is required differs from application to application. But bringing this security mindset to all the team members helped a lot in bringing the balanced approach of security and frequent release cycles that was much needed for our application.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Agile and Cybersecurity - How to get started","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-and-cybersecurity-how-to-get-started","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18707","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18715,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:41","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:41","post_content":"\n

Harshita is a scrum master for a team. With the Covid situation across India, the team has been dull and in a very somber state. As a scrum master, she could understand and relate to the situation that the team has been going through. At an organization level, there has been a lot of Employee assistance programs. But she is confused about whether it is ok to have the team be like this or does she need to do something?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution:<\/strong> Here are few things that I would recommend she start with <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Status \/ Smiley images in the communication and collaboration tool.  We have asked team members to add this and this helps others in the team to understand the emotional state of each and every one.  It was quite beneficial and set the stage for everyone in the meetings and interaction.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Standup meetings or team meetings \u2013 First 5 min or 10 min is used for check-in and free-flow conversation. This helped team members to know what\u2019s happening, vent out some of their feelings and help each other as need. If it\u2019s a large team, use some of the survey tools to do check-in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Informal group chat\/gathering or 1:1 with each other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am sure most coaches, leaders are thinking about this and doing something to help their teams in these trying times. Let me know what are those things that you are doing.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #248 \u2013 Sensitivity during these(covid) times","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-248-sensitivity-during-thesecovid-times","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18715","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17712,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:47:04","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:17:04","post_content":"\n

Pravin has been coaching the development team for a few months on the implementation of Scrum. There were a lot of improvement ideas and opportunities that he and his team gathered for the Product team, operation teams during the retrospective. When he tried speaking to them to understand their processes and see if he can do something about it, he was told that the scrum master scope is for the IT development team and the operation teams are not part of it.  He was very excited when he read the new scrum guide and understood that the scrum master role is expanded. Will this help him to remove the obstacle of end to end coaching of the team? If not, what else can he do? Are there any suggestions or solutions that you would recommend?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suggested Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum master role definition and One product team from the scrum guide is a good starting point. Pravin can use the guide to drive the essence of one team delivering product starting from definition to support, roll out, and also point that it is from the industry best practice. In addition to that, it would be good for him to quantify the problem that he had gathered with the data; for ex the resolution time of the incident (end to end), new requirements from the operation team. Along with that, he can do an End to End process mapping w.r.t product delivery and facilitate a discussion with the relevant stakeholders. Most of the time, the problem would be due to organization design ie. Silos between the operation team, product team, and development team, and this might take a longer discussion to solve. <\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #224 - Scrum Master role in the Operations\/Support world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-224-scrum-master-role-in-the-operations-support-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17712","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17698,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:46:28","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:16:28","post_content":"\n

Last week, Scrum celebrated 25 years, and to add to that celebration, a new scrum guide was released. Over the years, Scrum has been implemented across multiple industries and domains and the feedback of its success and failures flowed back into this new Scrum guide. There was a lot of excitement among the agile community for the launch and the agile community was elated with the changes in the Scrum guide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us look at the summary of changes ( from scrum.org articles) in the new scrum guide and then talk about the impact for us (agile community). For more details, you can refer to scrum.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even Less\nPrescriptive<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years,\nthe Scrum Guide started getting a bit more prescriptive. The 2020 version aims\nto bring Scrum back to being a minimally sufficient framework. This was\nachieved by removing the Daily Scrum questions, softening language around PBI\nattributes and retro items in Sprint Backlog, shortening the Sprint\ncancellation section, and much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One Team,\nFocused on One Product<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal was to\neliminate the concept of a separate team within a team that has led to \u201cproxy\u201d\nor \u201cus and them\u201d behavior between the PO and Dev Team. There is now just one\nScrum Team focused on the same objective, with three different sets of accountabilities:\nPO, SM, and Developers (anybody who is working on the sprint increment).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction\nof Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum\nGuide introduces the concept of a Product Goal to provide the focus for the\nScrum Team toward a larger valuable objective. Each Sprint should bring the\nproduct closer to the overall Product Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Home for\nSprint Goal, Definition of Done, and Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides described Sprint Goal and Definition of Done without really giving them\nan identity. They were not quite artifacts but were somewhat attached to\nartifacts. With the addition of Product Goal, the 2020 version provides more\nclarity around this. Each of the three artifacts now contains \u2018commitments\u2019 to\nthem. For the Product Backlog, it is the Product Goal, the Sprint Backlog has\nthe Sprint Goal, and the Increment has the Definition of Done (now without the\nquotes). They exist to bring transparency and focus toward the progress of each\nartifact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-Managing\nover Self-Organizing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides referred to Development Teams (team members who are working on the\nsprint increment) as self-organizing, choosing who and how to do work. With\nmore of a focus on the Scrum Team, the 2020 version emphasizes a self-managing\nScrum Team, that chooses who, how, and what to work on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nSprint Planning Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the\nSprint Planning topics of \u201cWhat\u201d and \u201cHow,\u201d the 2020 Scrum Guide places\nemphasis on a third topic, \u201cWhy.\u201d This third topic refers to the Sprint Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

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Factors to consider<\/span><\/strong>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Identifying the mode of assessment:<\/strong> The mode of assessment (discussion or survey or workshop) is one of the most important factors for an effective assessment.  When do we do a survey or when do we do a discussion\/workshop with the teams to assess the maturity of agile practices? Some of the factors that influence the mode are team size, the number of teams in a portfolio, and team stage (ex: Tuckman's stages of group development- Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing). For instance, if my team is in Forming stage or the Storming stage, then the team might not be open or have the courage to correctly assess the maturity in the discussion mode, and hence doing a survey would be recommended. But before launching the survey, team engagement in explaining the intent, purpose, and how the results will be used is required so that the team understands the questions, how to assess each question, and what ranking means. On the other hand, if the team is in the performing stage or we are assessing at the portfolio level where we would like to understand maturity not only at the team practices but also some of the inter-related practices, then survey might be the right choice of assessment mode. Even then, as discussed earlier, engaging with the team will really be beneficial in getting the right results. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b.     Participants of the Assessment:<\/strong>  The second factor that needs to be considered is whom should we include\/invite in the survey or discussions? Obviously, the natural team that comprises PO, Dev, testers, BA, operation team, support team, etc. will be part of the assessment exercise. But should we include role such as architects or Risk assessment team who is not fully committed to the team but contributes to the success of the team? MY suggestion would be to include the contributing roles also as part of the assessment as they influence the teams\u2019\/Portfolio ways of working. From an outside-in perspective, we get valuable feedback. Again, these members should be part of the initial engagement on the assessment objective so that they understand the areas that they can answer and some areas which might be optional for them to assess. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c .  Tools <\/strong>\u2013 The other factor that we need to look at is the tools (assessment Questionnaire\/ focus areas). Do we design\/Customize the assessment tools, or do we use the industry standard? If we are doing the assessment for the first time, then I would suggest getting started with the tool that is available at your organization or any industry standard. Customization is required if we are looking at assessing the specific areas for ex, cultural elements such as psychological environment assessment or business results assessment or release. Also, Customization is required when we have a discipline of doing assessment every quarter or so then it is better to vary mode and tool. It is similar to the retrospective that it becomes ineffective <\/p>\n\n\n\n

d. Results and audience<\/strong>: Once we do the assessment and understand the maturity, the team comes up with an improvement plan\/roadmap. It is for the team to act on it.  Most of the time, the results will be shared with the leadership team \/executive team. The leadership team needs to be also engaged so that the reports are consumed correctly and not used as a tool to blame or appraisal system. This factor might not have the impact before the assessment as much as the other 3 factors mentioned above but it creates a safe and trusting environment in the organization.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us know if there are other areas that you\nhave considered or set the stage so that maturity assessments were fun,\nengaging and effective.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Agile Maturity Assessment - How to do it right?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-maturity-assessment-how-to-do-it-right","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:37:49","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:37:49","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19339","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":19344,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-11-08 10:01:16","post_date_gmt":"2021-11-08 04:31:16","post_content":"\n

CHOW 271: Lack of planning - Is Agile the reason?<\/strong>  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kavya is a new project manager in an MNC. The project was asked to run in an agile mode. As in most projects, the Backlog was not detailed and only high-level one-line requirements were available. Business leaders wanted to know what something will cost and what the benefits are before committing to it. Whereas the project team was saying that they cannot do a detailed plan and hence they will not be able to estimate. Kavya was also worried that by doing detailed planning, you will be accused of falling back to the waterfall. What should she do in this case?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution:<\/strong> It\u2019s ok to do some detailed requirements exploration, architecture, and design work upfront, to provide some estimates in hours and dollars, or real dates in addition to points and sprint numbers. \u201cYou can still get the benefits of agile by revisiting requirements and designs in sprint planning, being test-driven, and working with business partners every day,\u201d . Talk to the team and explain Agile is not an excuse not to plan. She can get initial Sprint zero to explore on the requirements so that team can come up with estimates. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #271: Lack of planning and Agile","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-271-lack-of-planning-and-agile","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:38:28","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:38:28","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19344","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":19019,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-08-16 09:07:06","post_date_gmt":"2021-08-16 03:37:06","post_content":"\n

Murugan joined an organization as a Scrum master. One of the teams that he was asked to coach has been in running mode at a fast pace for 2 months already. The team has been doing basic agile practices such as having a time-boxed work commitment, daily standup, and demo to the Product owner and business. However, there have been some issues with respect to requirements and backlog quality, which might impact the tight timelines of that team has. The project is a very important project, and the first release is scheduled in just 2 months of him starting. He started participating in meetings and understanding the domain\/project etc. Within few days, PO escalated that Scrum master is not good and he is not able to fully align with the team, communication skills not good, etc. Murugan had a meeting with the Project manager to understand the issues so that he can improve. Again, after few days, PO escalated that I want the SM to be changed as he thinks that he is not the right fit? Murugan is at loss on how to handle these as he is new to an organization and new to the team. What do you think that as a recommended action to help Murugan?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PO and SM relationship is quite important. Even if there are small conflicts, the Scrum Master and Product Owner must work together to resolve them before they escalate into a full-blown misunderstanding. A supportive relationship with plenty of giving and take is necessary for the health of the team as a whole. As a first step, he should connect with PO to understand the issues as sometimes it could be just misunderstanding or miscommunication. After that, if the issues are something that he can work on, he can come up with a plan of action with concrete timelines. If some of them need organizational intervention, he can reach out to his management and project management of the team to see if he can get help to resolve those issues. Align the Plan of action with the timelines with PO so that they can start working together. <\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW 260: PO overpowering SM","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-260-po-overpowering-sm","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:38:54","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:38:54","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19019","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":19014,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-08-16 08:57:11","post_date_gmt":"2021-08-16 03:27:11","post_content":"\n

The past 2 years have been a roller coaster ride for most\nof us. It gave us opportunities to relearn some of our\nforgotten skills or explore new areas through virtual learning platforms. It is\nnot only individuals re-looking at learning methods but also every organization\nwas also looking at changing their training, onboarding, and workshops to\nvirtual mode. We can see it in the data and the projection for that industry\npublished on the world economic forum page. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.weforum.org\/agenda\/2020\/04\/coronavirus-education-global-covid19-online-digital-learning\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

 E-learning Market Value Projected To Reach US$ 660.8\nBillion By 2027 Covering Covid-19 Impact -  The global e-learning\nmarket<\/strong><\/a> is expected to grow at a CAGR of around 15.9%\nfrom 2020 to 2027 and reach the market value of over US$ 660.8 Bn by 2027. (ref\nhttps:\/\/www.globenewswire.com\/news-release\/2021\/05\/20\/2233572\/0\/en\/<\/a>E-learning-Market-Value-Projected-To-Reach-US-660-8-Billion-By-2027-Covering-Covid-19-Impact-Acumen-Research-and-Consulting.html<\/a>)  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 As the industry matures, there have been lots of best\npractices and recommendations shared across to develop the right content and tips on\nhow to engage the participants for trainers. In some organizations, trainers\nare re-trained to adopt this model. Whereas I feel that as a learner, it is up\nto each of us to figure out new ways of learning in the new world that is\npoised to stay. During the past 2 years, I have been on a personal learning\njourney and was using various virtual learning tools, platforms for that\npurpose. Initially, when I started, I fumbled through these learning methods, and sometimes I dropped the course or lectures in-between as they did not fit my\nlearning styles, wasting both my time and money. After few trials, I figured out\nsome practices or tips that are helping me out to get the best out of these\nvirtual learning courses or workshops. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Here are my 2 cents <\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.       Align learning styles<\/strong> - Each of us has different ways in which we grasp things. Some of us love to listen to lectures whereas some of us would love to do experiments to understand concepts. The study shows that there are 7 different learning styles, and they are as listed below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Visual (spatial) Learner -Using pictures, images,\ndiagrams, whiteboards and more helps these types of learners understand\ninformation better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Aural (auditory) Learner -Aural learners are good\nlisteners who normally learn best through verbal presentations like\nlectures and speeches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Verbal (linguistic) Learner -These learners prefer using\nwords, both in speech and writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Physical (kinesthetic) Learner -Getting hands-on is a\nmust for these learners who love to tinker and learn best when they can do\nrather than see or hear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Logical (mathematical) Learner - If there is logic,\nreasoning, and numbers involved, these learners are sure to excel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Social learners favored Social (interpersonal)\nLearner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Solitary (intrapersonal) Learner - These students prefer\nto use self-study and work alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, if I belong to the visual and kinesthetic\nlearner type, then I would prefer classes with more diagrams and more\nexperiments rather than trainers speaking about topics. However, if I am a\nverbal learner, I would love to listen to lectures from experts. Understanding\nour unique learning styles would help us choose courses or methods of learning.\nEither you can look back at the training programs where you enjoyed or do the\nsurvey available on the internet to understand your style. For me, I love working\nin groups hence I choose courses(offline) where there are options to review\nother\u2019s work and connect with the team, which helps in better learning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Keeping Focus and avoiding distractions<\/strong>\u2013One of the major drawbacks of e-learning is the focus or having undivided attention. When we are in class or workshops, we do not open mobile or laptops to check emails or send messages and when we lose focus, we might daydream. However, when we are learning online, laptops or mobile that we use every day for office or for entertainment or for chatting with friends could themselves become distractions. Here are a few tips I followed to keep myself focused during classes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u00b7 Closeout the mails and collaboration channels keep\nmobile of our reach; Keep only course window open <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Set expectations at home that you are in training and not\nto be disturbed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Have video on <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Join a few minutes early and connect with the trainer\n\/facilitator. This also helps you to take on the next steps, such as\ncertification or becoming an expert in that area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 2 min mindful breathing before the class starts (ref\n-https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/mindful-leadership\/resources\/) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7Try out the exercises or case study and submit it \n\nI\nam sure most of you have been using the virtual learning platforms, either in\nyour organization or some preferred platforms to learn and grow in your\ncareers. Hope the above tips shared from my experience are useful. Please share\nyour best practices or tips or any recommendation from your learning journey on\nhow we can get the best out of the virtual learning model.\n\n<\/p>\n","post_title":"Tips to get the best of the virtual learning world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"tips-to-get-the-best-of-the-virtual-learning-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19014","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18707,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:58","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:58","post_content":"\n

Most of us would have read about the recent\nransomware hit on Colonial pipeline, one of the largest oil pipelines in the\nUS. They had to temporarily halt all the operations, it impacted some of the\ncompany\u2019s IT system and suffered a huge loss. It took almost a week to bring\nback the services and back to normal. During this unprecedented time, as we\nwere all working from home, Organization was worried about securing the\napplications, Infrastructure, etc. Cybersecurity has been slowly gaining focus\nand these kinds of attacks make serious attention.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the past 3 months, as an agile coach, I am involved in coaching a team that is developing a highly critical application that is also the backbone of the business deals. This application had to be super secure and if this application gets hit, it can have a huge impact on the organization in terms of finance, brand, and assets, data, etc. Hence, we had to explore how to integrate agile development practices and Cybersecurity practices. There have been some thoughts that agile, with its frequent releases, introduces vulnerability in the system and sometimes not recommended as a development approach for high critical application.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In the past, Cybersecurity teams usually get involved in the tail end and now with frequent releases, ways of working and processes need to be tailored. There were few practices that we got started which I will be sharing in this blog. Would love to hear from you; your stories and experiments in this area.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cybersecurity by definition is Computer\nsecurity, cybersecurity or information technology security (IT security) is the\nprotection of computer systems<\/a> and networks<\/a> from information disclosure, theft of or damage to\ntheir hardware<\/a>, software<\/a>, or electronic data<\/a>,\nas well as from the disruption<\/a> or misdirection<\/a> of the services they provide. In the past, the role\nof security was isolated to a specific team in the final stage of development.\nThat wasn\u2019t as problematic when development cycles lasted months or even years,\nbut those days are over. Effective agile development ensures rapid and frequent\ndevelopment cycles (sometimes weeks or days), but outdated security practices\ncan make the application more vulnerable to attacks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      There have been some doubts about Agile development methodologies and how it lends to Cybersecurity practices. But with self-organizing and cross-functional teams, agile enables different skill sets to work as a team to deliver good quality and secure software.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is how we got started with the process, and practices to integrate cybersecurity practices in agile development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.     Shift- Left:<\/strong>  Having\nexperts \/Cybersecurity personnel at the initial stage not at the end state; not\nto build systems of today. They were able to determine the risk tolerance of\nthe application and conduct risk\/benefit analysis. What amount of security\ncontrols are required for this application and threat modeling exercises? What\nkind of testing required during the sprints and have them integrated with the\ntesting and DevOps plan? It also underscores the need to help developers code\nwith security in mind, a process that involves security teams sharing\nvisibility, feedback, and insights on known threats. Based on the analysis and\nplan, all our developers were trained on the security protocols, processes and\ntools required. One of the important factors to keep in mind is the balance of\ncybersecurity activities with other activities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Hacker as persona:<\/strong> We introduced Hacker as a persona for the application as a next step. By building these personas<\/strong>, we worked out the best defense against certain types of attacks and predict when they might next occur. It helps us to understand the motivation and plan for countermeasures, prioritize defense. This persona was included as one of the users in the identified features of the application and which then was elaborated during the requirements and backlog grooming session. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Tools and Automation<\/strong>: There are quite a several tools available now in the cybersecurity domain. Once the cybersecurity process\/tests are identified, we find that most of our tasks were repetitive and manual. We started looking for ways to automate as Automating repeated tasks is key to DevSecOps since running manual security checks in the pipeline can be time-intensive. Some of these tasks can be automated, such as monitoring intrusion detection systems to search for threats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the major learning in this experimentation is that Shift left does not mean moving all the cybersecurity-related processes, practices, ways of working, and tools from the tail end to the initial stage of development. There had to be a balanced approach and what is required differs from application to application. But bringing this security mindset to all the team members helped a lot in bringing the balanced approach of security and frequent release cycles that was much needed for our application.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Agile and Cybersecurity - How to get started","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-and-cybersecurity-how-to-get-started","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18707","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18715,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:41","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:41","post_content":"\n

Harshita is a scrum master for a team. With the Covid situation across India, the team has been dull and in a very somber state. As a scrum master, she could understand and relate to the situation that the team has been going through. At an organization level, there has been a lot of Employee assistance programs. But she is confused about whether it is ok to have the team be like this or does she need to do something?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution:<\/strong> Here are few things that I would recommend she start with <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Status \/ Smiley images in the communication and collaboration tool.  We have asked team members to add this and this helps others in the team to understand the emotional state of each and every one.  It was quite beneficial and set the stage for everyone in the meetings and interaction.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Standup meetings or team meetings \u2013 First 5 min or 10 min is used for check-in and free-flow conversation. This helped team members to know what\u2019s happening, vent out some of their feelings and help each other as need. If it\u2019s a large team, use some of the survey tools to do check-in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Informal group chat\/gathering or 1:1 with each other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am sure most coaches, leaders are thinking about this and doing something to help their teams in these trying times. Let me know what are those things that you are doing.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #248 \u2013 Sensitivity during these(covid) times","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-248-sensitivity-during-thesecovid-times","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18715","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17712,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:47:04","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:17:04","post_content":"\n

Pravin has been coaching the development team for a few months on the implementation of Scrum. There were a lot of improvement ideas and opportunities that he and his team gathered for the Product team, operation teams during the retrospective. When he tried speaking to them to understand their processes and see if he can do something about it, he was told that the scrum master scope is for the IT development team and the operation teams are not part of it.  He was very excited when he read the new scrum guide and understood that the scrum master role is expanded. Will this help him to remove the obstacle of end to end coaching of the team? If not, what else can he do? Are there any suggestions or solutions that you would recommend?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suggested Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum master role definition and One product team from the scrum guide is a good starting point. Pravin can use the guide to drive the essence of one team delivering product starting from definition to support, roll out, and also point that it is from the industry best practice. In addition to that, it would be good for him to quantify the problem that he had gathered with the data; for ex the resolution time of the incident (end to end), new requirements from the operation team. Along with that, he can do an End to End process mapping w.r.t product delivery and facilitate a discussion with the relevant stakeholders. Most of the time, the problem would be due to organization design ie. Silos between the operation team, product team, and development team, and this might take a longer discussion to solve. <\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #224 - Scrum Master role in the Operations\/Support world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-224-scrum-master-role-in-the-operations-support-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17712","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17698,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:46:28","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:16:28","post_content":"\n

Last week, Scrum celebrated 25 years, and to add to that celebration, a new scrum guide was released. Over the years, Scrum has been implemented across multiple industries and domains and the feedback of its success and failures flowed back into this new Scrum guide. There was a lot of excitement among the agile community for the launch and the agile community was elated with the changes in the Scrum guide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us look at the summary of changes ( from scrum.org articles) in the new scrum guide and then talk about the impact for us (agile community). For more details, you can refer to scrum.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even Less\nPrescriptive<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years,\nthe Scrum Guide started getting a bit more prescriptive. The 2020 version aims\nto bring Scrum back to being a minimally sufficient framework. This was\nachieved by removing the Daily Scrum questions, softening language around PBI\nattributes and retro items in Sprint Backlog, shortening the Sprint\ncancellation section, and much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One Team,\nFocused on One Product<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal was to\neliminate the concept of a separate team within a team that has led to \u201cproxy\u201d\nor \u201cus and them\u201d behavior between the PO and Dev Team. There is now just one\nScrum Team focused on the same objective, with three different sets of accountabilities:\nPO, SM, and Developers (anybody who is working on the sprint increment).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction\nof Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum\nGuide introduces the concept of a Product Goal to provide the focus for the\nScrum Team toward a larger valuable objective. Each Sprint should bring the\nproduct closer to the overall Product Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Home for\nSprint Goal, Definition of Done, and Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides described Sprint Goal and Definition of Done without really giving them\nan identity. They were not quite artifacts but were somewhat attached to\nartifacts. With the addition of Product Goal, the 2020 version provides more\nclarity around this. Each of the three artifacts now contains \u2018commitments\u2019 to\nthem. For the Product Backlog, it is the Product Goal, the Sprint Backlog has\nthe Sprint Goal, and the Increment has the Definition of Done (now without the\nquotes). They exist to bring transparency and focus toward the progress of each\nartifact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-Managing\nover Self-Organizing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides referred to Development Teams (team members who are working on the\nsprint increment) as self-organizing, choosing who and how to do work. With\nmore of a focus on the Scrum Team, the 2020 version emphasizes a self-managing\nScrum Team, that chooses who, how, and what to work on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nSprint Planning Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the\nSprint Planning topics of \u201cWhat\u201d and \u201cHow,\u201d the 2020 Scrum Guide places\nemphasis on a third topic, \u201cWhy.\u201d This third topic refers to the Sprint Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

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With yearend approaching, most of the\norganization or the team, or each of us are trying to rewind, assess,\nunderstand how the year went, and start planning for 2022. One of the tools\nthat most agile coaches and scrum masters use is Agile maturity assessment. An agile assessment allows you to evaluate how teams\nor even organizations are doing in their transformation journey and how far are\nwe along in our goals. The\nagile assessment helps to reveal \u2018how agile\u2019 our organization or team is. It is\nuseful to guide and accelerate Agile transformation as well as team\nimprovements to reach our strategic objectives and results. It is also an\ninvaluable mechanism to set the scene for organizational change, communicate\nyour transformation strategy, and benchmark and measure progress. But if\nit\u2019s not done properly, it could backfire. In this blog, let\u2019s understand how\nthe scene can be set or prerequisites or factors that need to be considered for\neffective agile maturity assessment, fun, engaging and also getting desired results. Note: I will not be comparing tools that are available in\nthe market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Factors to consider<\/span><\/strong>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Identifying the mode of assessment:<\/strong> The mode of assessment (discussion or survey or workshop) is one of the most important factors for an effective assessment.  When do we do a survey or when do we do a discussion\/workshop with the teams to assess the maturity of agile practices? Some of the factors that influence the mode are team size, the number of teams in a portfolio, and team stage (ex: Tuckman's stages of group development- Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing). For instance, if my team is in Forming stage or the Storming stage, then the team might not be open or have the courage to correctly assess the maturity in the discussion mode, and hence doing a survey would be recommended. But before launching the survey, team engagement in explaining the intent, purpose, and how the results will be used is required so that the team understands the questions, how to assess each question, and what ranking means. On the other hand, if the team is in the performing stage or we are assessing at the portfolio level where we would like to understand maturity not only at the team practices but also some of the inter-related practices, then survey might be the right choice of assessment mode. Even then, as discussed earlier, engaging with the team will really be beneficial in getting the right results. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b.     Participants of the Assessment:<\/strong>  The second factor that needs to be considered is whom should we include\/invite in the survey or discussions? Obviously, the natural team that comprises PO, Dev, testers, BA, operation team, support team, etc. will be part of the assessment exercise. But should we include role such as architects or Risk assessment team who is not fully committed to the team but contributes to the success of the team? MY suggestion would be to include the contributing roles also as part of the assessment as they influence the teams\u2019\/Portfolio ways of working. From an outside-in perspective, we get valuable feedback. Again, these members should be part of the initial engagement on the assessment objective so that they understand the areas that they can answer and some areas which might be optional for them to assess. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c .  Tools <\/strong>\u2013 The other factor that we need to look at is the tools (assessment Questionnaire\/ focus areas). Do we design\/Customize the assessment tools, or do we use the industry standard? If we are doing the assessment for the first time, then I would suggest getting started with the tool that is available at your organization or any industry standard. Customization is required if we are looking at assessing the specific areas for ex, cultural elements such as psychological environment assessment or business results assessment or release. Also, Customization is required when we have a discipline of doing assessment every quarter or so then it is better to vary mode and tool. It is similar to the retrospective that it becomes ineffective <\/p>\n\n\n\n

d. Results and audience<\/strong>: Once we do the assessment and understand the maturity, the team comes up with an improvement plan\/roadmap. It is for the team to act on it.  Most of the time, the results will be shared with the leadership team \/executive team. The leadership team needs to be also engaged so that the reports are consumed correctly and not used as a tool to blame or appraisal system. This factor might not have the impact before the assessment as much as the other 3 factors mentioned above but it creates a safe and trusting environment in the organization.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us know if there are other areas that you\nhave considered or set the stage so that maturity assessments were fun,\nengaging and effective.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Agile Maturity Assessment - How to do it right?","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-maturity-assessment-how-to-do-it-right","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:37:49","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:37:49","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19339","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":19344,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-11-08 10:01:16","post_date_gmt":"2021-11-08 04:31:16","post_content":"\n

CHOW 271: Lack of planning - Is Agile the reason?<\/strong>  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kavya is a new project manager in an MNC. The project was asked to run in an agile mode. As in most projects, the Backlog was not detailed and only high-level one-line requirements were available. Business leaders wanted to know what something will cost and what the benefits are before committing to it. Whereas the project team was saying that they cannot do a detailed plan and hence they will not be able to estimate. Kavya was also worried that by doing detailed planning, you will be accused of falling back to the waterfall. What should she do in this case?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution:<\/strong> It\u2019s ok to do some detailed requirements exploration, architecture, and design work upfront, to provide some estimates in hours and dollars, or real dates in addition to points and sprint numbers. \u201cYou can still get the benefits of agile by revisiting requirements and designs in sprint planning, being test-driven, and working with business partners every day,\u201d . Talk to the team and explain Agile is not an excuse not to plan. She can get initial Sprint zero to explore on the requirements so that team can come up with estimates. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #271: Lack of planning and Agile","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-271-lack-of-planning-and-agile","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:38:28","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:38:28","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19344","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":19019,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-08-16 09:07:06","post_date_gmt":"2021-08-16 03:37:06","post_content":"\n

Murugan joined an organization as a Scrum master. One of the teams that he was asked to coach has been in running mode at a fast pace for 2 months already. The team has been doing basic agile practices such as having a time-boxed work commitment, daily standup, and demo to the Product owner and business. However, there have been some issues with respect to requirements and backlog quality, which might impact the tight timelines of that team has. The project is a very important project, and the first release is scheduled in just 2 months of him starting. He started participating in meetings and understanding the domain\/project etc. Within few days, PO escalated that Scrum master is not good and he is not able to fully align with the team, communication skills not good, etc. Murugan had a meeting with the Project manager to understand the issues so that he can improve. Again, after few days, PO escalated that I want the SM to be changed as he thinks that he is not the right fit? Murugan is at loss on how to handle these as he is new to an organization and new to the team. What do you think that as a recommended action to help Murugan?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PO and SM relationship is quite important. Even if there are small conflicts, the Scrum Master and Product Owner must work together to resolve them before they escalate into a full-blown misunderstanding. A supportive relationship with plenty of giving and take is necessary for the health of the team as a whole. As a first step, he should connect with PO to understand the issues as sometimes it could be just misunderstanding or miscommunication. After that, if the issues are something that he can work on, he can come up with a plan of action with concrete timelines. If some of them need organizational intervention, he can reach out to his management and project management of the team to see if he can get help to resolve those issues. Align the Plan of action with the timelines with PO so that they can start working together. <\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW 260: PO overpowering SM","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-260-po-overpowering-sm","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:38:54","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:38:54","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19019","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":19014,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-08-16 08:57:11","post_date_gmt":"2021-08-16 03:27:11","post_content":"\n

The past 2 years have been a roller coaster ride for most\nof us. It gave us opportunities to relearn some of our\nforgotten skills or explore new areas through virtual learning platforms. It is\nnot only individuals re-looking at learning methods but also every organization\nwas also looking at changing their training, onboarding, and workshops to\nvirtual mode. We can see it in the data and the projection for that industry\npublished on the world economic forum page. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.weforum.org\/agenda\/2020\/04\/coronavirus-education-global-covid19-online-digital-learning\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

 E-learning Market Value Projected To Reach US$ 660.8\nBillion By 2027 Covering Covid-19 Impact -  The global e-learning\nmarket<\/strong><\/a> is expected to grow at a CAGR of around 15.9%\nfrom 2020 to 2027 and reach the market value of over US$ 660.8 Bn by 2027. (ref\nhttps:\/\/www.globenewswire.com\/news-release\/2021\/05\/20\/2233572\/0\/en\/<\/a>E-learning-Market-Value-Projected-To-Reach-US-660-8-Billion-By-2027-Covering-Covid-19-Impact-Acumen-Research-and-Consulting.html<\/a>)  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 As the industry matures, there have been lots of best\npractices and recommendations shared across to develop the right content and tips on\nhow to engage the participants for trainers. In some organizations, trainers\nare re-trained to adopt this model. Whereas I feel that as a learner, it is up\nto each of us to figure out new ways of learning in the new world that is\npoised to stay. During the past 2 years, I have been on a personal learning\njourney and was using various virtual learning tools, platforms for that\npurpose. Initially, when I started, I fumbled through these learning methods, and sometimes I dropped the course or lectures in-between as they did not fit my\nlearning styles, wasting both my time and money. After few trials, I figured out\nsome practices or tips that are helping me out to get the best out of these\nvirtual learning courses or workshops. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Here are my 2 cents <\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.       Align learning styles<\/strong> - Each of us has different ways in which we grasp things. Some of us love to listen to lectures whereas some of us would love to do experiments to understand concepts. The study shows that there are 7 different learning styles, and they are as listed below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Visual (spatial) Learner -Using pictures, images,\ndiagrams, whiteboards and more helps these types of learners understand\ninformation better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Aural (auditory) Learner -Aural learners are good\nlisteners who normally learn best through verbal presentations like\nlectures and speeches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Verbal (linguistic) Learner -These learners prefer using\nwords, both in speech and writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Physical (kinesthetic) Learner -Getting hands-on is a\nmust for these learners who love to tinker and learn best when they can do\nrather than see or hear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Logical (mathematical) Learner - If there is logic,\nreasoning, and numbers involved, these learners are sure to excel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Social learners favored Social (interpersonal)\nLearner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Solitary (intrapersonal) Learner - These students prefer\nto use self-study and work alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, if I belong to the visual and kinesthetic\nlearner type, then I would prefer classes with more diagrams and more\nexperiments rather than trainers speaking about topics. However, if I am a\nverbal learner, I would love to listen to lectures from experts. Understanding\nour unique learning styles would help us choose courses or methods of learning.\nEither you can look back at the training programs where you enjoyed or do the\nsurvey available on the internet to understand your style. For me, I love working\nin groups hence I choose courses(offline) where there are options to review\nother\u2019s work and connect with the team, which helps in better learning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Keeping Focus and avoiding distractions<\/strong>\u2013One of the major drawbacks of e-learning is the focus or having undivided attention. When we are in class or workshops, we do not open mobile or laptops to check emails or send messages and when we lose focus, we might daydream. However, when we are learning online, laptops or mobile that we use every day for office or for entertainment or for chatting with friends could themselves become distractions. Here are a few tips I followed to keep myself focused during classes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u00b7 Closeout the mails and collaboration channels keep\nmobile of our reach; Keep only course window open <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Set expectations at home that you are in training and not\nto be disturbed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Have video on <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 Join a few minutes early and connect with the trainer\n\/facilitator. This also helps you to take on the next steps, such as\ncertification or becoming an expert in that area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7 2 min mindful breathing before the class starts (ref\n-https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/mindful-leadership\/resources\/) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7Try out the exercises or case study and submit it \n\nI\nam sure most of you have been using the virtual learning platforms, either in\nyour organization or some preferred platforms to learn and grow in your\ncareers. Hope the above tips shared from my experience are useful. Please share\nyour best practices or tips or any recommendation from your learning journey on\nhow we can get the best out of the virtual learning model.\n\n<\/p>\n","post_title":"Tips to get the best of the virtual learning world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"tips-to-get-the-best-of-the-virtual-learning-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:21","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19014","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18707,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:58","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:58","post_content":"\n

Most of us would have read about the recent\nransomware hit on Colonial pipeline, one of the largest oil pipelines in the\nUS. They had to temporarily halt all the operations, it impacted some of the\ncompany\u2019s IT system and suffered a huge loss. It took almost a week to bring\nback the services and back to normal. During this unprecedented time, as we\nwere all working from home, Organization was worried about securing the\napplications, Infrastructure, etc. Cybersecurity has been slowly gaining focus\nand these kinds of attacks make serious attention.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the past 3 months, as an agile coach, I am involved in coaching a team that is developing a highly critical application that is also the backbone of the business deals. This application had to be super secure and if this application gets hit, it can have a huge impact on the organization in terms of finance, brand, and assets, data, etc. Hence, we had to explore how to integrate agile development practices and Cybersecurity practices. There have been some thoughts that agile, with its frequent releases, introduces vulnerability in the system and sometimes not recommended as a development approach for high critical application.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In the past, Cybersecurity teams usually get involved in the tail end and now with frequent releases, ways of working and processes need to be tailored. There were few practices that we got started which I will be sharing in this blog. Would love to hear from you; your stories and experiments in this area.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cybersecurity by definition is Computer\nsecurity, cybersecurity or information technology security (IT security) is the\nprotection of computer systems<\/a> and networks<\/a> from information disclosure, theft of or damage to\ntheir hardware<\/a>, software<\/a>, or electronic data<\/a>,\nas well as from the disruption<\/a> or misdirection<\/a> of the services they provide. In the past, the role\nof security was isolated to a specific team in the final stage of development.\nThat wasn\u2019t as problematic when development cycles lasted months or even years,\nbut those days are over. Effective agile development ensures rapid and frequent\ndevelopment cycles (sometimes weeks or days), but outdated security practices\ncan make the application more vulnerable to attacks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      There have been some doubts about Agile development methodologies and how it lends to Cybersecurity practices. But with self-organizing and cross-functional teams, agile enables different skill sets to work as a team to deliver good quality and secure software.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is how we got started with the process, and practices to integrate cybersecurity practices in agile development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.     Shift- Left:<\/strong>  Having\nexperts \/Cybersecurity personnel at the initial stage not at the end state; not\nto build systems of today. They were able to determine the risk tolerance of\nthe application and conduct risk\/benefit analysis. What amount of security\ncontrols are required for this application and threat modeling exercises? What\nkind of testing required during the sprints and have them integrated with the\ntesting and DevOps plan? It also underscores the need to help developers code\nwith security in mind, a process that involves security teams sharing\nvisibility, feedback, and insights on known threats. Based on the analysis and\nplan, all our developers were trained on the security protocols, processes and\ntools required. One of the important factors to keep in mind is the balance of\ncybersecurity activities with other activities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Hacker as persona:<\/strong> We introduced Hacker as a persona for the application as a next step. By building these personas<\/strong>, we worked out the best defense against certain types of attacks and predict when they might next occur. It helps us to understand the motivation and plan for countermeasures, prioritize defense. This persona was included as one of the users in the identified features of the application and which then was elaborated during the requirements and backlog grooming session. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Tools and Automation<\/strong>: There are quite a several tools available now in the cybersecurity domain. Once the cybersecurity process\/tests are identified, we find that most of our tasks were repetitive and manual. We started looking for ways to automate as Automating repeated tasks is key to DevSecOps since running manual security checks in the pipeline can be time-intensive. Some of these tasks can be automated, such as monitoring intrusion detection systems to search for threats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the major learning in this experimentation is that Shift left does not mean moving all the cybersecurity-related processes, practices, ways of working, and tools from the tail end to the initial stage of development. There had to be a balanced approach and what is required differs from application to application. But bringing this security mindset to all the team members helped a lot in bringing the balanced approach of security and frequent release cycles that was much needed for our application.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Agile and Cybersecurity - How to get started","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"agile-and-cybersecurity-how-to-get-started","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:39:44","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18707","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18715,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2021-05-23 16:23:41","post_date_gmt":"2021-05-23 10:53:41","post_content":"\n

Harshita is a scrum master for a team. With the Covid situation across India, the team has been dull and in a very somber state. As a scrum master, she could understand and relate to the situation that the team has been going through. At an organization level, there has been a lot of Employee assistance programs. But she is confused about whether it is ok to have the team be like this or does she need to do something?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution:<\/strong> Here are few things that I would recommend she start with <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Status \/ Smiley images in the communication and collaboration tool.  We have asked team members to add this and this helps others in the team to understand the emotional state of each and every one.  It was quite beneficial and set the stage for everyone in the meetings and interaction.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Standup meetings or team meetings \u2013 First 5 min or 10 min is used for check-in and free-flow conversation. This helped team members to know what\u2019s happening, vent out some of their feelings and help each other as need. If it\u2019s a large team, use some of the survey tools to do check-in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Informal group chat\/gathering or 1:1 with each other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am sure most coaches, leaders are thinking about this and doing something to help their teams in these trying times. Let me know what are those things that you are doing.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #248 \u2013 Sensitivity during these(covid) times","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-248-sensitivity-during-thesecovid-times","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:08","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18715","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17712,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:47:04","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:17:04","post_content":"\n

Pravin has been coaching the development team for a few months on the implementation of Scrum. There were a lot of improvement ideas and opportunities that he and his team gathered for the Product team, operation teams during the retrospective. When he tried speaking to them to understand their processes and see if he can do something about it, he was told that the scrum master scope is for the IT development team and the operation teams are not part of it.  He was very excited when he read the new scrum guide and understood that the scrum master role is expanded. Will this help him to remove the obstacle of end to end coaching of the team? If not, what else can he do? Are there any suggestions or solutions that you would recommend?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suggested Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum master role definition and One product team from the scrum guide is a good starting point. Pravin can use the guide to drive the essence of one team delivering product starting from definition to support, roll out, and also point that it is from the industry best practice. In addition to that, it would be good for him to quantify the problem that he had gathered with the data; for ex the resolution time of the incident (end to end), new requirements from the operation team. Along with that, he can do an End to End process mapping w.r.t product delivery and facilitate a discussion with the relevant stakeholders. Most of the time, the problem would be due to organization design ie. Silos between the operation team, product team, and development team, and this might take a longer discussion to solve. <\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #224 - Scrum Master role in the Operations\/Support world","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-224-scrum-master-role-in-the-operations-support-world","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:30","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17712","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":17698,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-11-29 09:46:28","post_date_gmt":"2020-11-29 04:16:28","post_content":"\n

Last week, Scrum celebrated 25 years, and to add to that celebration, a new scrum guide was released. Over the years, Scrum has been implemented across multiple industries and domains and the feedback of its success and failures flowed back into this new Scrum guide. There was a lot of excitement among the agile community for the launch and the agile community was elated with the changes in the Scrum guide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us look at the summary of changes ( from scrum.org articles) in the new scrum guide and then talk about the impact for us (agile community). For more details, you can refer to scrum.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even Less\nPrescriptive<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years,\nthe Scrum Guide started getting a bit more prescriptive. The 2020 version aims\nto bring Scrum back to being a minimally sufficient framework. This was\nachieved by removing the Daily Scrum questions, softening language around PBI\nattributes and retro items in Sprint Backlog, shortening the Sprint\ncancellation section, and much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One Team,\nFocused on One Product<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal was to\neliminate the concept of a separate team within a team that has led to \u201cproxy\u201d\nor \u201cus and them\u201d behavior between the PO and Dev Team. There is now just one\nScrum Team focused on the same objective, with three different sets of accountabilities:\nPO, SM, and Developers (anybody who is working on the sprint increment).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction\nof Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum\nGuide introduces the concept of a Product Goal to provide the focus for the\nScrum Team toward a larger valuable objective. Each Sprint should bring the\nproduct closer to the overall Product Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Home for\nSprint Goal, Definition of Done, and Product Goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides described Sprint Goal and Definition of Done without really giving them\nan identity. They were not quite artifacts but were somewhat attached to\nartifacts. With the addition of Product Goal, the 2020 version provides more\nclarity around this. Each of the three artifacts now contains \u2018commitments\u2019 to\nthem. For the Product Backlog, it is the Product Goal, the Sprint Backlog has\nthe Sprint Goal, and the Increment has the Definition of Done (now without the\nquotes). They exist to bring transparency and focus toward the progress of each\nartifact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self-Managing\nover Self-Organizing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Scrum\nGuides referred to Development Teams (team members who are working on the\nsprint increment) as self-organizing, choosing who and how to do work. With\nmore of a focus on the Scrum Team, the 2020 version emphasizes a self-managing\nScrum Team, that chooses who, how, and what to work on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nSprint Planning Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the\nSprint Planning topics of \u201cWhat\u201d and \u201cHow,\u201d the 2020 Scrum Guide places\nemphasis on a third topic, \u201cWhy.\u201d This third topic refers to the Sprint Goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall\nSimplification of Language for a Wider Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2020 Scrum Guide places an emphasis on eliminating redundant and complex statements and removing any remaining inference to IT work (e.g. testing, system, design, requirement, etc). The Scrum Guide is now less than 13 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can we get started? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrum is a\nframework and it has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In fact, the scrum guide has become leaner to\nfocus more on the essence and to highlight the importance of values and agile\nprinciples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to highlight a few areas where we could get started immediately in this blog and I would love to hear from you on what you liked and what you did not like, where will you get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Scrum master role: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this Scrum guide (as shown in the clip), SM is called out as the accountable person for Scrum team effectiveness and to make sure they define the process, implement tools, coach the team( End to end role) to deliver the goals successfully. This is a powerful change and it will help to redefine their role with more clarity and power. Sometimes in some organizations, the scrum master\u2019s role was misunderstood and was treated as a person who just blocks the meeting calendar, rooms, sends action items, update Jira etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scrum guide also has expanded the scrum master role to the organization level. It has explicitly called out the role to lead, train, and coach the teams, stakeholders across the organization. Most of the time, the scrum master role was constrained within teams even though the previous guide intent was not that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges that I see is that there are agile coaches in every organization and usually their roles are defined to coach multiple teams and organization level. With this new definition, we might need to relook at the roles in the agile groups of an organization such as Agile Coach, Scrum master, etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Less Prescriptive: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  <\/strong>  One of the key highlights of this scrum guide is that it is less prescriptive but retaining the essence of scrum values. Three questions that were mentioned as a guideline to use in the stand-up meeting and team size restrictions were removed from the guide. Over time, these guidelines were considered as the mandate and resulted in compliance-driven agile implementation. These compliances driven did not help with the results that the business wanted and created an unsuccessful transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>As a scrum team (Not a development team, as per the new guide as it was creating silos among the developers, testers and also to accommodate the implementation of a scrum in non-IT teams), it allows us to figure out how to implement those practices\/concepts which will aid the teams to success. Other key changes are Product goal, Scrum team, and Self-managed teams, which are as important as the two changes that I have highlighted but might need organization structure changes and acceptance for us to roll out. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this all-new?\nNo, Scrum is still a framework, its principles and values are the same.\nSometimes it was misunderstood, and this version is making it explicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you on what you liked, what you did not like, where will you get started after reading the new scrum guide 2020. Also, anything that would have liked to see in the Scrum guide but is not still there. <\/p>\n","post_title":"Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"scrum-guide-2020-how-to-get-started-with-it","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:40:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=17698","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"1","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15142,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:35:38","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:05:38","post_content":"\n

Most of the IT organizations are onboarding their new joinees remotely. It is one of the most critical activities for any organization. The process of assimilating a new joinee includes imbibing the new org culture, getting to know people, and feeling that \"I am able to contribute\" quickly. It reduces new employee Anxiety and results in happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many articles, blogs, and videos give you a list of activities to get people onboarded remotely. But how these activities are done, what cultural traits that can be demonstrated in these activities make a significant impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Fortunately, I had an opportunity to engage in consulting projects in 2 different organizations. I was onboarded into both the organizations remotely, like many other organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share a few tips that helped me get onboard and engage quickly, understand, and navigate the org structure to get things done for some standard onboarding practices. I want to highlight a few tips that could help new joiners in understanding Organization culture during the remote onboarding process, which would have been done otherwise in F2F onboarding. Listed below are five standard practices and some tips in each area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.   Introduction to each of the teammates individually. <\/strong>The practice's objective is to help understand the team members and get engaged to work as a natural team. Here are some nuances that can be done in just the introduction meeting that will help new joiner enjoying the process and getting engaged faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Each team member set up GTKY (Getting to know you) meeting with me rather than expecting the newbie to set up a meeting. Each of these meetings made me feel welcome, and I felt like a valuable team member. Also, I will not be making a mistake of missing meeting a team member, thereby alienating a colleague. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. All meetings were done via video and helped me put a face to each team member I had a GTKY meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

c. GTKY meeting was not just to introduce yourself w.r.t experience, role, and work. They made it personal and shared some own backgrounds, such as kids, hobbies, and how COVID is treating them. This also helped me to connect with people quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Have virtual coffee sessions \/Lunch sessions<\/strong>: This practice's objective <\/strong>is to create a fun environment\/ water cooler moment that would have been in the office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Not make it artificial and not to do it just because it is a best practice. Let it be natural and do not use this session to do surveys etc. In one instance, the team was mandated to attend virtual coffee sessions, and it was not a fun moment for the team anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.   Set expectations and communication channels<\/strong>: This practice aims to understand how the team communicates and some essential values to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Usage of acronyms and Lingos: Set the expectation that they need to explain the abbreviation whenever they use it. As a new joiner to the organization, it takes a lot of time to understand the jargon and acronyms established in the org. During my onboarding, we created a rule that whenever team members use new acronyms, they have to sing in the next meeting. (we could use any other fun activities) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Set clear communication channels and protocols. Some example, in some organizations, every meeting might require a presentation, and, in some cases, they do not like it. Another example is being online during a specific part of the day to help collaboration among team members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Organization Culture: <\/strong>The onboarding process is the biosphere in which you cultivate and nurture company culture, and it is not a one-time activity to demonstrate the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Onboarding was considered a series of events and was planned to integrate us into cultural and social fibers. For ex, we were given a set of tasks such as \"Meet someone in an operational team,\" which was out of project scope or participate in the social gathering, etc. These tasks had organization core values imbibed and helped us see the values of an organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Showcase the culture: Keep talking about it and connecting it with actions. For example, one of the organizations shared the board meeting notes to the entire organization demonstrating the culture of transparency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Meet leaders in their teams \/cross-functional teams.<\/strong> Leadership's role in helping new hires feel at home, valued and can make or break an employee's decision to stay long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a. Leaders were given training for remote onboarding, and it was called out explicitly as part of the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

b. Leaders allocated a few hours a day for the new joiners to ping them and ask questions about the organization. All of us could feel that we are valued and support from the leaders in achieving our goals <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the tips seem so small, and you might be wondering if it does help. We sometimes underestimate the influence of little things and to fix big things; we need to start small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to hear from you about your experiences in onboarding, a new team member. How do we onboard freshers who might need a lot of hand-holding compared to an experienced resource? Share your journey and comments at https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/<\/a>. Happy reading! <\/p>\n","post_title":"Five tips for remote onboarding","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"five-tips-for-remote-onboarding","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-10-04 08:42:05","post_modified_gmt":"2024-10-04 03:12:05","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15142","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":15150,"post_author":"29","post_date":"2020-07-14 08:33:30","post_date_gmt":"2020-07-14 03:03:30","post_content":"\n

Payel is a Scrum master and has been coaching a team for almost three months. She has been able to implement agile practices and do it well, mostly. In Retrospective meetings, she was able to get people to talk about what went well and what did not go well. But most of the feedback was around technical stuff such as the UAT environment was not ready. Even though it is a great start, she could not get people to open up on sensitive issues that have been hampering the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was told that the group is not feeling safe, and hence they are not opening up in the retrospective. She was recommended to share some vulnerable moments in the meetings and ask if they would like to volunteer. Now she has a slot called \u201c \u00f6ops\u201d moment where team members can share their oops moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been sharing oops moments, but still, she cannot get them open up. Sometimes she feels that she is the only one talking. What are some tips that we can recommend to Payel to create a safe environment for the team? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solution for CHOW 197: <\/strong> Creating a safety net <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychological safety is a vast topic, and there might be various ways to get there with enough patience. But the likelihood that people will jump onto these tactics without leadership \u2018going first\u2019 is dramatically low. Here is what I would propose to Payel - <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get leaders to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) over-communicate the vision and our (target)-culture<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) supplying lively examples of behavior that promote this culture through anecdotes (storytelling).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Combine those with whatever tactics\/incentives we choose and celebrate the individuals who are applying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4) Have a few first-followers<\/a>, who are briefed before the session to showcase the \u2018right\u2019 behavior as \u2018culture champions\u2019 and celebrate\/reward them accordingly<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #199 - Creating Safe environment for your team","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-197-safe-environment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 14:41:29","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=15150","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};

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Savitha K

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Agile Maturity Assessment – How to do it right?

by Savitha K

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CHOW #271: Lack of planning and Agile

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CHOW 260: PO overpowering SM

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Personal Growth

Tips to get the best of the virtual learning world

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Agile

Agile and Cybersecurity – How to get started

by Savitha K

May 23, 2021

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CHOW #248 – Sensitivity during these(covid) times

by Savitha K

May 23, 2021

Chow

CHOW #224 – Scrum Master role in the Operations/Support world

by Savitha K

November 29, 2020

Agile

Scrum Guide 2020 & how to get started with it

by Savitha K

November 29, 2020

Coaching

Five tips for remote onboarding

by Savitha K

July 14, 2020

Chow

CHOW #199 – Creating Safe environment for your team

by Savitha K

July 14, 2020

Page 1 of 3 1 2 3 Next

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