(Just enough) Order out of Chaos

I recently ran a retrospective with one of my teams, for a 14-week Agile pilot project. We had a few extra minutes before lunch, so I tried an optional exercise I had on my agenda: Please draw a picture of how you feel about the Pilot. It could be realistic or completely abstract.

Now, this team had had the usual Scrum rollout trials, but also a few good surprises: some things had gone far better than they'd anticipated. Some of their main concerns had been job satisfaction and earning respect within the organization. At the point that we did the retrospective, the team acknowledged that they were in a bit of a slide back into old bad habits, which didn't worry me (I know they'll pull out of it), but it did concern them.





So I was pleased and surprised with Val's drawing: if I can help many people feel this way about their work, I will have had a valuable and rewarding career. We didn't talk much about what the drawings meant, so I leave you to draw your conclusions, as I did mine :-)

By the way: the team nominated Val to be their next ScrumMaster. Her optimism seems to be contagious!

Tags:

• Agile Scrum Retrospectives