Skip Navigation

September 2014

Collaboration

Why are we standing?

A few months ago as I stopped to check in on a team during their daily scrum and I saw something really interesting happen.  This team was co-located in a team room and were all sitting around a large conference table working collaboratively.  There were two large whiteboards on two walls of the team room and one wall held a large scrum board.

When it was time for the daily scrum one member of the team said, “It’s time for the scrum,” and started making open handed stand up motions to everyone encouraging them to rise from their seats for the “stand up” meeting.

The team all rose from their chairs and stood in position looking at one another and proceeded to answer “the three questions” diligently reporting the status of the work they were responsible for completing.

Pushing the Limits

Pushing the Limits

This is Mark.  He challenges me.  He confronts me.  He inspires me.  I think he is amazing.  Mark doesn’t do things because someone like me who claims to know a bit about agile says so.  He looks at the world from every perspective. I love this about him because he forces me to think deeper than I’ve ever had to in many areas.  He stretches me as a coach and forces me to keep growing.

Definition of Done was an area where Mark really inspired me to dig deep.  This was his concern …

“I hear and see people teaching Definition of Done like it is a checklist of all the things a team has to do in order for a user story to be done.  I think this undermines ownership of quality code by the team because the checklist becomes a crutch and an excuse to be mediocre.  It causes people to say things like, ‘Well it meets the definition of done,’ when they know that the code still isn’t as good as it could be.  It develops the attitude of, ‘Oh well, it wasn’t on the list so I don’t have to do it.’”