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How to assess state of Agility and to ensure that everyone else has the same understanding of what it means to be Agile

Last post 08:13 pm May 2, 2022 by Priy Tr
12 replies
12:03 pm September 16, 2021

What will be the approach we should choose and Tools and techniques we should  plan to use when joining any new organisation as Scrum master. How we validate that we are successful as Scrum Master , which metrices we can use to measure success of scrum master 


05:33 pm September 16, 2021

I'd start with assessing whether the product you are creating actually adds value to the stakeholders and how to improve, before assessing any state of agility. 


05:40 pm September 16, 2021

Thanks Sander, since the scrum master is new to the organization then how to assess state of Agility and to ensure that everyone else has the same understanding of what it means to be Agile,

Need to understand the approach and the tools and technique we should plan to use


06:23 pm September 16, 2021

Why would you plan what tools and techniques you should be using when you join a new organization? Why would you not start with observation to understand the current way of working, the tools and techniques the teams are currently using, how the team members interact with each other, how the team interacts with stakeholders, and what kind of barriers or impediments exist that are preventing the team from achieving their objectives?

I'd think that a period of observation will help you to work with the team to identify the most important problems to solve. Based on what those problems are, you can find tools and techniques to solve them as well as metrics to determine if changes are having the intended impacts.


06:32 pm September 16, 2021

When the team succeeds you succeed, when the team fails you fail.

Before we get to the team however, I'd be curious to know how the organization as a whole determines whether it is succeeding or failing. What is the assessment of this right now?


08:34 am September 17, 2021

to ensure that everyone else has the same understanding of what it means to be Agile

Facilitate a session to gather data from them to know whats their understanding of agile and reasoning behind it. That could be starting point.


11:31 am September 17, 2021

Thanks Ian and Thomas, Related to this question "Why would you plan what tools and techniques you should be using when you join a new organization? "

Tools and techniques are needed to assess the understanding of the team agility. 

Observation is the key point, but suppose if the scrum master wanted to understand what is the knowledge base of the team members on agile then how to assess it, for which we need some tools and techniques.


08:21 pm September 17, 2021

Tools:

  • Voice
  • Eyes
  • Brain

Techniques:

  • Talk
  • Observe
  • Interact
  • Think
  • Analyze

Knowledge of agility is something that you can determine via a formula.  It is something that you have to intuit via interaction.  


05:08 pm September 18, 2021

Thanks Danile.


05:08 pm September 18, 2021

Thanks Daniel


03:24 pm September 20, 2021

This is what I get for typing a response from my phone.  The following had a typo.

Knowledge of agility is something that you can determine via a formula.  It is something that you have to intuit via interaction.  

Should be Knowledge of agility is NOT something that you can determine via a formula.  It is something that you have to intuit via interaction.  


05:37 pm September 20, 2021

How we validate that we are successful as Scrum Master , which metrices we can use to measure success of scrum master 

As a Scrum Master new to the organization, I would first take a baseline of the Scrum Team(s) I am serving over the first few Sprints. Here are some general areas and examples that would interest me:

  • Knowledge of Scrum, use of the Scrum values
  • Team Happiness (we used employee Net Promotor Score at one company)
  • Value Delivery (is it consistent? Sprint Goal met? at least one valuable Done Increment?) Check out scrum.org/ebm
  • Time to market (lead/cycle time, WIP) 
  • Quality (escaped defects, tech debt metrics)
  • Self-management ability 
  • Number of Improvements Made (coming from Sprint Retrospectives)

Once a baseline is established you could look at the above trends over time. This is not meant to be a Scorecard to assess other Scrum Masters, the idea is for you o reflect on your accountability for the effectiveness of the Scrum Team.

All the best,

 

Chris


08:13 pm May 2, 2022

Thanks Chris and Daniel for ypur input. 


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