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.

How can I, as a Scrum Master, supercharge my facilitation?

Retrospectives, planning sessions, vision workshops, we are continuously helping teams learn about how to collaborate in practice! In this Actionable Agile Tools book, Jeff Campbell shares some of the tools he’s learned over a decade of coaching Agile Teams. The pragmatic coaching book you need, right now! Buy Actionable Agile Tools on Amazon, or directly from the author, and supercharge your facilitation toolbox!

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.

SPECIAL XMAS BONUS: The Joy of Agility, looking at Business Agility with Joshua Kerievsky

As Joshua started to research his book, he discovered many stories of people applying the principles and ideas behind agility to their lives, and their businesses. The Joy Of Agility is a book that collects those stories and explains what agility is really about. And it’s not about Scrum, or any other process framework. 

Joshua starts by telling us a story of a young Richard Branson who, having been left stranded on an airport, came up with an idea to get to his destination while helping other fellow passengers who had also been left stranded. This is a story of a person being resourceful in the face of adversity. Being resourceful is one of those aspects of agility that we often don’t discuss, but is – as Joshua puts it – at the core of Agility.

The art of perfecting your act

Continue reading SPECIAL XMAS BONUS: The Joy of Agility, looking at Business Agility with Joshua Kerievsky

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