Cycle time Archives - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Rayyan Karim: Measuring Success in Agile, Why Story Points Don’t Always Tell the Full Agile Story

In this episode, Rayyan discusses two main categories for measuring performance in organizations: hard and fast business results and effectiveness. The first indicator for effectiveness is happy people who can be themselves, which Rayyan refers to as “Shiny Happy People.” Rayyan suggests that instead of focusing on story points, teams should focus on cycle and lead time and examine the variation in the system to determine how to remove it. He recommends conducting team surveys or squad health checks over time and paying attention to how people talk at retrospectives. Additionally, Rayyan suggests setting up one-on-one meetings with team members to get a better understanding of how they are showing up for retrospectives.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: The Squad Health Check retro benefits

In this episode, Rayyan discusses his favorite agile retrospective format, which is the Squad Health Check. He mentions that while the Sailboat retro is the most commonly used, he prefers the Squad Health Check as it quickly gets everyone on the same page and can be used in larger teams and teams of teams. Rayyan notes that the Health Check is short, focused, and highly adaptable, and it gives a good understanding of where the teams are. He also gives tips to adapt it to the program or team you are working with and to remove the “neutral” option.

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About Rayyan Karim

Rayyan is and Agile Coach & Trainer and the founder of Design Your Future with presence in the UK and the UAE. Rayyan is known for supporting leading executives of FTSE100 and NASDAQ corporations to create transformational results quickly.

You can link with Rayyan Karim on LinkedIn and connect with Rayyan Karim on Twitter.

Johannes Lindman: Success Metrics for Scrum Masters. Monitoring Flow, Happiness, and Health

Johannes believes that a Scrum Master is successful when they can leave a team and feel confident that the team is on a good trajectory. One of the best indicators of this is when the team wants to try alternating the Scrum Master role among themselves. Johannes emphasizes the importance of investing a lot of time in teaching and mentoring the team at the beginning. He also likes to track metrics such as team happiness and health, lead time, cycle time, and the number of dependencies and the size of tasks. He recommends using the team health check exercise to assess team health.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: Learning Matrix (with Kudos session)

In this segment, Johannes talks about his favorite Agile retrospective format, the Learning Matrix. He emphasizes the importance of starting with a Kudos session, which involves sharing kind thoughts about the other people in the team. Johannes believes that this opens up more creativity and positivity in the session, and it’s the key to the success of the format.

By starting from a good point in the session with the Kudos session, the team can feel more motivated and energized to tackle the issues at hand. Johannes also recommends using Kudos to boost creativity when the team is feeling stuck. Overall, the Learning Matrix with the Kudos section is an effective way to facilitate retrospectives and create a positive team dynamic.

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About Johannes Lindman

Despite many years of experience Johannes still learns new things every day in order to stay relevant. This aligns with his curiosity on life and people.

You can link with Johannes Lindman on LinkedIn.

Maximilian Dazer: Agile team morale as an indicator of Scrum Master success

Team morale is Max’s focus when it comes to measuring his success as a Scrum Master. He asks a few specific questions which he describes in this episode, and then evaluates the team’s answer to a survey he sends the team members during the Sprint. Max also likes to use some flow metrics (e.g. Cycle time) to reflect on how the team is evolving, as well as help the team select the improvements to put in practice.

In this episode, we refer to Cycle time, and Cycle time scatter plot.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: Scrum Values Retrospective

Max prefers to prepare his retrospectives based on the events of the preceding Sprint. However, he has a format he likes to run with all of his teams, and even at regular intervals. The Scrum Values retrospective is about helping the team reflect on how they grow, and evolve as Agile teams by creating a conversation on how they want to apply the Scrum values as defined in the Scrum Guide.

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About Maximilian Dazer

Maximilian’s goal is to drive change from the bottom. For every team he creates a vision and tries to get them on board to pursue the change together. Maximilian wants to free people from the micromanagement-hell version of “scrum”.

You can link with Maximilian Dazer on LinkedIn.