How to clarify your company’s identity and strategy with a simple process

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I just read this post What is Crisp? – Henrik Kniberg’s blog from my Agile’s guru (just kidding, just loved his “scrum from the trenches” book).

I found it very useful, and a far more better idea rather than scratch you manager’s head finding a good wording for your strategy, then prensenting it to your team, and obtain a “yes why not?” response. The important thing is not to express your own version of strategy (useful only if you’re working alone, and this is never true), but to obtain a realistic and shared expression. And you need others to obtain the two, unless you only want to express some personal utopia. You need other members of the team to obtain a realistic expression, because they are the one whom eventually will make this achieved. And you need them obviously to have a shared vision, and the only way is to make them express it. Of course, as the manager and/or the company’s owner, you’ll give a direction. And if you can’t, it only means that you have work to do (and the strategy meeting is the first chance to do it).

A step forward would be to involve (main) customers and furnishers in this process, maybe in a second step, with some basic questions like : “Why are you working with our company ?”, “What do you love the most working with our company?”, “what do you loath the most working with our company?”. Or even, “Could you resume the top value of the company you work with ?”.

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Daily Scrum : how to (not) waste your productivity

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The daily scrum won’t go perfect every day. It’s an every day struggle beyond perfection. Sometimes team members, sometimes scrum master, and even product owner will screw up the meeting :

  • Some participants are late for the meeting. Yes, believe me, this can happen ! (“Give me your one dollar fine please, we’re going to have some beers at the end of the sprint !”)
  • The meeting turns into a big report to the scrum master / project manager (“Talk to other team members please”)
  • During the scrum meeting two participants (or more) discuss privately. “Hello ! Can you speak to the team please ? Football discussions can occur just after this fifteen minutes scrum”.
  • The meeting turns into a technical discussion about how to resolve an issue. “Discuss this after the meeting !”
  • As a result, the scrum meeting turns into a big and boring daily meeting trying to resolve problems.


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