“I don’t care how agile you have become or how well you do Scrum.

It
doesn’t matter how good you are today; if you’re not better next month,
you’re no longer agile. You must always, always, always try to improve.”

Team Building Activities

● Exposing our individual talents- talent show- two truths and a lie. Follow up by
incorporating tasks that cater to these individual talents and or interests
● Magnetic poetry online- http://www.magneticpoetry.com/play.html
● Guess Who Game- card on the forehead game- must guess who- but instead of who-
we can do “what”
○ One week in advanced send out email about things we didn’t like- frustrations
○ Book room with video capabilities
● Letter to yourself- time capsule- to be opened and shared at the next retro- time box to
15 minutes
● What I Like About You!- Go around the team and have each person say something
positive about that team member
● The Getting to Know you Game- Go around the team and discuss topics that focus on
getting to know your team mates on a personal level. Collect and share answers using
infographics, charts or programs like popplet. For our purposes, asking questions about
what individuals’ ultimate aspirations and dreams are most helpful- which will provide
key insights into what intrinsically motivates each member.

Support for Team Building

Succeeding with Agile by Micheal Cohn

Find an igniting purpose. London Business School professor Lynda Gratton uses the
term “hot spot” to refer to a place and time when “working with other people was never more
exciting and exhilarating and when you knew deep in your heart that what you were jointly
achieving was important and purposeful.” For a hot spot to form, you need what she calls
an “igniting purpose” whihc is “something that people find exciting and interesting and worth
engaging with.” An igniting purpose does not have to be as lofty as saving lives. It just has to
be something that excites and interests the team members so that they are anxious to be part of
it.

Tap into existing intrinsic motivation. Beyond seeking a teamwide igniting purpose, you
should also feed team members’ existing motivations. These will differ from team member to
team member, but a project that is structured such that each individual’s unique personal goals
are aligned with project goals will generate the desired commitment.

Help everyone understand their relevance to the goal. No one wants to feel superfluous or
that they are making only ancillary contributions to a project. It is difficult for team members to
fully engage and commit to a project’s goals if they do not feel their contributions are significant.
Product owners are an obvious source for helping everyone feel important and relevant to the
goal, but relevance boosting comments can come from anyone on the team.

Build confidence. While knowing that the challenge before them will not be easy, team
members do want to feel confident that they can achieve it. Confidence doesn’t come from
making the goal easier but from belief in ourselves and our teammates. People enjoy working
with those who boost their confidence. A confident team will commit to almost any goal.
Remember that creating commitment is not a one time effort. Teams needs periodic re-
energizing to renew their commitments both to the project and to each other.

How to Create Team Building Exercises: Benefits of Team Building Exercises

Team building is a way of helping a group of individuals to function as a cohesive unit,
where members are valued, respected, and focused on a common set of goals, says David
Greenberg, founder of www.teambuilding123.com based in Avondale Estates, Georgia. Many
team building exercises can be implemented by you or your management team, while the
more complex exercises should likely be turned over to a third party to implement. Adventure
Associates, Inc. (AAI) in Washington, D.C, facilitates corporate team building adventures
and team building workshops. Ed Tilley, director of AAI says there are few core reasons to
undertake team building exercises such as relationship building, celebrating success, and
practicing team skills.

Relationship Building: According to Tilley, relationship building activities are a great way, for
example, to bring outside salespeople together in one location with office staff to get to know
one another better. Along those same lines team building offers colleagues who work together
every day an opportunity to interact informally and learn more about each other on a personal
level, Tilley says.

Celebrating Success: A kind word never hurt anyone and rewarding your employees for a job
well done on a big project or reaching a company milestone, Tilley says, lets employees know
their hard work is valued.

Practicing Team Skills: These programs enable teams to practice communication skills, learn
and practice decision-making and problem-solving.
In the end, Tilley and Greenberg, agree, your team will have developed a greater awareness
about their ability to problem solve and communicate effectively, get relevant work done, and
make smarter decisions. Managers should communicate an expectation that all employees
should participate in team building activities, but participation should not be mandated in the
employee handbook or in employee contracts.

"The executive must create a culture that fosters the above based on: his/her own behavior,
creating clear expectations; building in the related processes and procedures to foster those
expectations; and holding people accountable for following through," explains Dr. Jackalyn
Sherriton, president of Corporate Management Developers/Health Management Consultants,
Inc. (CMD/HMC) in Hollywood, Florida.

Things to Try

Create a Stop Doing List. "If I think something is going to take me an hour, I give myself 40
minutes. By shrinking your mental deadlines, you work faster and with greater focus. I also
schedule time every week on my calendar for quiet, concentrated PowerTime where I only work
on my most important activities. A “Stop Doing” list is as important as a “To Do” list. A “To Do”
list is easy, you just keep adding to it and the more you have on it, the more important you may
feel. But “Stop Doing” is more difficult because you have to give up some things."

Incorporate Team Building Regularly. After a team has worked together for a few sprints,
shift the emphasis toward relationship building by incorporating more social activities and
shared downtime into the sprints. A team needs to have a sufficient amount of shared
experience before social activities and relationship building can be useful. But when that has
been achieved instilling confidence in the team and creating opportunities to socialize helps the
development of new abilities and allows the team to grow.

Video Conferencing As Much As Possible. Consider having video enabled retrospectives for
your teams that are geographically distributed. Maybe once a week, we step having lunch in a
conference room with our teams in a conference room that has video capabilities. Mike Cohn
notes, “I encourage team members to eat lunches, take breaks and so on in always on video
rooms. The informal chats that naturally took place helped people in multiple offices feel more
like one team.”

Additional Articles and Resources

Topic: Intrinsic Motivation

Tell me if you can relate to the following: You’ve been working for the last few years
with your head down, putting one foot in front of the other, just following the path under
your feet. But you feel that the career path you’re on might not be the right one – that,
somehow, you’ve drifted off course. You know it’s time to take action, but you’re not sure
how.The first step is to shift your perspective: To understand that a career is something that you
create, rather than a pre-existing role that you step into. It takes considerable energy to plan
your own future, but if you don’t figure out what you want to become, someone else will define
it for you. Hunter S. Thompson said it best: “A man who procrastinates in his choosing will
inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance.” Don’t be that man!

If you don’t figure out what you want to become, someone else will define it for you.

In my own career as a Creative Director and public speaker, I have met many talented and
extraordinary people. I have always been in awe of the passionate ones, who use their skills with
confidence, who surround themselves with an atmosphere of inspiration, and who find true
meaning in what they do.

These qualities – the ones that make for a fulfilling career – can be distilled down into 4 main
categories, or “pillars,” as I like to call them. They are: Meaning, Atmosphere, Passion, and Skills
– aka M.A.P.S., a career compass to help point you in the right direction.

Here’s how the process works:

1. MEANING
Why are you here? (And I don’t mean at this website.) What drives you to get up every morning?
What makes you feel hopeful about the future? This is what really matters to you. Make a list
of your purposes, or goals in life. Start with a sentence like: “The reason I work is to…” and fill
in the blank. Some possible answers are, “…continue learning,” or, “…get to know amazing,
talented people that expand my worldview.” When you are done, rank your list with the most
important purpose at the top.

2. ATMOSPHERE
Where do you see yourself? Close your eyes and imagine your ideal work environment. Is it high
energy or relaxed? Who are you working with? Or are you working alone? Be specific. What does
your workspace look like? Are you working at home, in a shared space? Write it all down. Your
surroundings directly affect how you feel. They can inspire you and keep your energy up, or they
can drain you of all ambition. When you are finished with your list, prioritize it with the most
important elements at the top.

3. PASSIONS
Make a list of the things you absolutely love. These are the things you can’t get enough of. Think
of things you love to experience (beautiful architecture, vintage wine) as well as things you like
to create (furniture designs, electronic music). Hopefully you will have a long list. When you are
finished, restructure your list with the items you are most passionate about at the top to those
you are least passionate about at the bottom.

4. SKILLS
What you are good at? Write a list of your proficiencies, including specific tasks (copyediting)
and social skills (good at motivating others). Remember that these don’t have to be things you
like to do, just things you are capable of. If you get stuck, try asking friends, family, and co-
workers what your skill sets are. You might be surprised to hear what they come up with. Once
you have at least 10 skills, re-write them in order of importance, with your greatest strengths at
the top.

***

Now take a good look at your prioritized lists; this is your new career M.A.P.S. (Meaning,
Atmosphere, Passions, Skills). Does your current job pay off on the top few of each pillar? Ask
yourself some tough questions:
● Are you utilizing your best skills?
● Are you exercising your main passions?

● Are you working in an atmosphere that is conducive to your creativity?

● Are you getting something meaningful from your job?

These are tough questions, and it might be valuable to go over them and the results with a
close friend, a trusted manager, or a life coach.

Most people have never done this exercise and are surprised by how far off the M.A.P.S. they
have let their careers take them. But before you quit your day job, consider the following:

1. You can supplement your current job with a project that brings the top
qualities in your pillars to bear. Hugh MacLeod, author of Ignore Everybody and 39
other keys to creativity emphatically states in #7: Keep your day job. Sex and cash are in
direct competition, he says. So do the sexy, passionate stuff you love on the side, and earn a
living to support it.

2. You can attempt to course correct your current job. Talk to your manager or
human resources person about how you can incorporate some of your new awareness into
your current position. Or perhaps create a new position for yourself within the company. I
know Tech Developers who have become Art Directors, and Art Directors who have become
Strategists. A good company will recognize your passions and want to put your best skills to
work.

If you still feel the need to look for something new, remember M.A.P.S. at your next
interview. Ask about the things that matter to you, because you are interviewing them as
much as they are interviewing you. It’s your life and you have to work for it. Happy hunting!
--

How Does It Work For You?

What role has finding your passion played in your career development? How do you marry
doing meaningful work with paying the rent?

--
Jason Theodor is a creative director, speaker, and consultant who specializes in problem
solving for online brands and individuals. You can follow him on Twitter @jted.

What motivates us to do great work? It’s an age-old question. But the age-old answers –
rewards, recognition, money, stability – no longer seem to suffice. As we’ve shifted to a
knowledge-based economy, it turns out that what drives us has shifted, too.
Recent research reveals that when creative thinking is part and parcel of your job description,
external motivation just doesn’t work. The year-end bonus, the promotion, the basic dangled
carrot approach – these things don’t inspire better performance.

What really gets creatives fired up is, well, ourselves. That is, intrinsic motivation. If we can
imagine an achievement, see ourselves progressing toward that goal, and understand that we
are gaining new skills and knowledge, we will be driven to do great work.

In a recent post, science writer Jonah Lehrer cites an interesting study about “self-talk” – the
running commentary we always have going on in our heads. Fifty-three undergraduate students
were divided into two groups and then challenged to solve anagrams:

“The first group was told to prepare for an anagram-solving task by thinking, for one minute,
about whether they would work on anagrams. This is the ‘Will I?’ condition, which the scientists
refer to as the ‘interrogative form of self-talk’. The second group, in contrast, was told to
spend one minute thinking that they would work on anagrams. This is the ‘I Will’ condition, or
the ‘declarative form of self-talk’. Both groups were then given ten minutes to solve as many
anagrams as possible.”

Contrary to what you might expect, the “Will I?” group solved significantly more puzzles. The
uncertainty created by the question, allowed the students to decide to challenge themselves,
and then excel. Lehrer sums it up:

“Subsequent experiments by the scientists suggested that the power of the ‘Will I?’ condition
resides in its ability to elicit intrinsic motivation. (We are intrinsically motivated when we are
doing an activity for ourselves, because we enjoy it. In contrast, extrinsic motivation occurs
when we're doing something for a paycheck or any ‘extrinsic’ reward.) By interrogating
ourselves, we set up a well-defined challenge that we can master. And it is this desire for
personal fulfillment - being able to tell ourselves that we solved the anagrams - that actually
motivates us to keep on trying.”

In his latest book, Drive, author Daniel Pink debunks the power of external motivators, and
expands on the intrinsic motivators that inspire us to do great work. Using research from a study
out of MIT, Pink argues that traditional rewards – external motivators like a year-end bonus
– only elicit better performance from people doing rote tasks. But once the barest amount of
brainpower is required, higher financial rewards fail to produce better work. In fact, they actually
inspire worse performance.
For creative thinkers, Pink identifies three key motivators: autonomy (self-directed work),
mastery (getting better at stuff), and purpose (serving a greater vision). All three are intrinsic
motivators. Even a purpose, which can seem like an external motivator, will be internalized if
you truly believe in it.

A recent Harvard study further reinforces the power of intrinsic motivation. After tracking 1200
knowledge workers, Teresa M. Amabile and Steven J. Kramer found that the # 1 motivator
for the employees was progress – the feeling that they were moving forward and achieving a
greater goal. They write:

“On days when workers have the sense they’re making headway in their jobs, or when they
receive support that helps them overcome obstacles, their emotions are most positive and
their drive to succeed is at its peak. On days when they feel they are spinning their wheels
or encountering roadblocks to meaningful accomplishment, their moods and motivation are
lowest.”

As creative thinkers, we want to make progress, and we want to move big ideas forward. So, it's
no surprise that the best motivator is being empowered to take action.

When it comes to recommendations for creative leaders, Amabile and Kramer don’t mince
words: “Scrupulously avoid impeding progress by changing goals autocratically, being
indecisive, or holding up resources.” In short, give your team members what they need to thrive,
and then get out of the way.

Topic: Culture

“It took me more than 53 years to understand that culture isn’t just important, it is
everything.” -Lou Gerstner

In the coming decade, software and product teams must provide the critically needed innovative
approaches to organizations throughout the world. The visual metaphors and practical, hands-
on ideas in these posts will give executives, managers, and engineers ways to speed up this
evolution. Starting on Monday.

To make and maintain a culture of innovation requires a team to consider that task as a
part of their work, complementary to, and as important as, the commercial task. Work on
the culture must go forward during the workday. We’ll suggest, for example, that you include
a warm up as part of the daily stand up. The team leader will lead this at first, but when it has
become part of the routine, leadership will rotate among the group. Team members who learn a
new exercise somewhere else will bring that to the stand up. You won’t tack this on to the day
as something extra: it’s central.
As well, on analogy with the public schools, an executive or team leader might propose in-
service learning requirements. Normally schools don’t require that teachers take specific
courses. They demand instead a required number of course hours per year or other interval.
Such courses include learning new techniques applicable to the work at hand; but, more
important, they can be general—education rather than training.

Google is only the most well known of modern corporations to suggest that workers
spend up to 20% of their work time on personal projects. Google encourages personal
projects that have no readily discernible connection to current work, and imposes no
requirement that such projects result in marketable outcomes. Now and then, of course, they
do. And they’re a main reason why the competition has such a problem keeping up with Google.
Not even Google knows what the next thing will be. More important, they serve as practice in
innovation: people discover and refine their skills in a no-stress situation. They are free to
be wildly creative.

In colleges and universities a similar situation obtains, though with considerable pressure
attached at certain times in a professor’s career. We mean the custom called “Publish or
Perish!” To achieve tenure or to be eligible for promotion, a teacher must make a contribution to
the field. Mostly this means publishing the results of research.

Some places, Harvard Business School among them, grant tenure only to men and women
who have achieved an international reputation within one or more fields. While this requirement
weighs heavily on young faculty, the purpose is clear: research offers faculty an opportunity to
practice the skills they teach.

More important, though less observable, accumulation of knowledge beyond what’s needed
for tomorrow’s class supports a career after the initial thrill of teaching wears off and interest
wanes. Of course these are ongoing programs; they have their true effect over the long term, as
they become embedded in the company tradition and in an individual’s sense of work.

But, you say, “How do we have time to do this?”

Turns out that a reasonable amount of time spent in these pursuits increases productivity. When
Frederick Taylor began his time and motion studies of workers shoveling coal at the steel mill,
they balked at his requirement that they take breaks on a schedule he devised. They were
paid for piece work, and feared that Taylor’s breaks were a management device to reduce their
paychecks. Taylor insisted, and the workers discovered to their amazement, that their pay went
up noticeably.

This notion of pay for story points has not caught on in the software field.

Many folks in the Agile community would argue that Agile is all about culture change. As you
know, we do not see Enterprise Agile adoption as solely about anything. For most teams it
starts out as a process change, runs headlong into weak testing technology and then confronts
some major cultural elements as the scaling or replicating come into play.

Our Flow-Pull-Innovate approach can be mapped into a state transition diagram that blends
changes on all these fronts. It is our experience that teams neither have nor take time to
appreciate these cultural items until they have shown some improvement. At this point, it
becomes easier and paramount to reinvest some of these gains into continuing the journey.
This can be in the form of slack time, schedule time for innovation, or new infrastructure in
building, testing, or planning.

Now once teams get to the benefits of pull at a program level, the focus of adoption needs to
move towards organizational culture. I believe the transition from traditional to Agile, involves
quite a shift in infrastructure, methods and guiding ideas. The awareness for the changes in
Guiding Ideas seems to come primarily from bottom-up adoption or occasionally from a new
senior level executive who was brought into drive change.

Making changes of the magnitude we’ll suggest won’t be fast and easy. If you want to move
fast, you’ll want to get help. This can be tricky. Consultants are typically a quick-fix; this won’t do
in the long-term, but they can help with a push. However, a culture lasts, and work to create and
maintain it should last as well. The consultant’s techniques stop lasting all too soon. We suggest
that you find ways to learn about companies and teams that can become role models. This can
be difficult. You’ll need to take time to build ongoing relationships of trust and reciprocity.

You can also consult people who routinely work in a culture of innovation. These include (but
aren’t limited to) three groups.
(1) Actors make a new thing each night they perform the play, and their rehearsal processes are
a compendium of good ideas for innovative agile teams.
(2) Theatre directors are a great source of method and lore for team leaders in an innovative
culture. They every day address the difficulty of supervising men and women who have
skills that they do not. They can’t bark out orders, but must find ways to encourage constant
innovation.
(3) Painters (not house painters) in their work interact with an emerging form, the key element
of collaboration, as they create a new and unique thing each time they make a picture. They
can be especially persuasive and helpful on the question of replication: since they can’t do it
(Every painting they make is new and unique, even if they try to copy themselves.), they have
developed views and attitudes that software development teams and their leaders can use to
advantage.
We remember a teacher who told his classes, “The way to improve your writing is to apply the
seat of your pants to the seat of your chair.” The way to get started is to get started. Make the
commitment. This can be a top down or bottom up movement, but support from above is key to
a good beginning and to ongoing success. The budget for subsequent projects should include
time and funds for preparation and team building of the kind we’ve described. Team leaders
and managers should commit to constant reinforcement of the aim, and to vigorous
support of performance by individuals and particular teams.
Topic: Scrum Core Values

Scrum Core Values

I believe these should be posted somewhere for everyone on the team to see. It's very easy for
them to lose sight of them otherwise.

Commitment
● Be willing to commit to a goal
● Support & encourage commitment
● The team has the authority to decide how to do the work it has selected

Focus
● Do your job
● Focus all of your efforts and skills on doing the work that you’ve committed to doing
● Don't worry about anything else
● Once you're focused, all of your time is spent looking for and trying solutions to bring
order to the problems

Openness
● Keep everything about the project visible to everyone
● Scrum removes the ability to dissemble
● Responsibilities are clear, authority is allocated, and everything is visible
● Scrum counters interference; No one is allowed to add work to a Sprint once it is
underway
● It’s better to produce something than it is to pursue many alternatives, please everyone,
and produce nothing

Respect
● Individuals are shaped by their background and their experiences
● Respect the different people who comprise a team
● The team adjusts and adapts to meet its commitments for a Sprint:
● (1) Who does what is up to the team
● (2) The team commits as a whole and sinks or swims together
● Do your best, remember everyone else is doing his/her best, and help your teammates

Courage
● Have the courage to commit, to act, to be open, and to expect respect
● It requires courage to act differently; Courage to see find out that the environment
will support these values; Courage to be willing to find out that relying on one’s own
judgment is acceptable – even admirable
● Courage is having the guts, the determination, to do the best you can
● Courage is the stubbornness not to give up, but to figure out how to meet commitment