Aspiration, explained
We need to make time to agree on the behaviors we want to see.
If your copy is not handy, here’s Chapter 7 from Do Better Work, which is all about this topic.
Examples / Observations
Observation created over 4 years agoKatherine prepared an AMAZING agenda document for our ongoing discovery meetings which, I found super helpful.
If you've ever been in a meeting (heh, that's all of you), you know how easy it is to lose track of the goal and forget the agreements you make. We had this doc staring us in the face the whole time, which really helped keep us on track and encouraged us to take notes and track action items.
Meetings that flow like that - staying on track to meet the goal, and ending with specific action items - make me not hate meetings, and this helped our discovery conversation feel so productive. Thanks, Katherine!
(See a screenshot of the doc below!)
Observation created over 4 years ago"Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth" - Mike Tyson
The skills squad had a plan, we did user testing where we learned what maybe wasn't working or didn't make sense (not as violent as getting punched but you get the idea I hope), and we are adjusting the plan. The challenge is that because we are actively building on the old plan this new plan doesn't really have many artifacts like fleshed out wireframes. We are having conversations with various stakeholders and as a squad and sometimes not everyone from the squad is present during the conversation. This easily leads to confusion and uneasiness that if left to linger can lead to some much larger problems.
Well, this is how about how Carolyn didn't let things linger and brought up in a message to the squad on how she was feeling and how she needed a more clear plan/picture. We, as a squad, immediately started to have a conversation and get clarity and are now in a much better place in terms of alignment. If she hadn't spoken up now, who knows how long we would have went with having misalignment and what troubles our squad could have had down the road.
Thanks Carolyn!
Observation created over 4 years agoFeaturing:Brandon J.We critique, we don't complainWe ask clarifying questionsWe get agreementsCollaborationBrandon joined Practice at a challenging time: we were in the middle of the quarter, just starting on an initiative that hadn't been one of our planned goals and wasn't fully fleshed out. In the midst of that, we didn't take the time to help him understand Practice/our team and squad workflows like we should have.
He handled it all with grace though, not giving us a hard time and constantly looking for ways to make us better. He's brought some ideas to Practice that have helped us work more collaboratively and in my opinion, have helped us all stay better aligned in terms of where we are in the project and what the next steps are.
It's hard to make us better when we don't make it easy for you to get your feet under you, but Brandon did just that. Thanks Brandon!
Observation created almost 5 years agoLast week Tucker owned creating the Epics and Stories for the new Lesson Overview page. He not only busted out 6 Epics and 47 Stories in a matter of days but did it with care and foresight for developers coming on to the project in the future. There are screen shots with the sections highlighted for the specific task and nice breakdowns of what is expected in each one. Nice work!
Observation created almost 5 years agoFeaturing:Brittany H.We put learners firstWe share before we're readyWe ask clarifying questionsWe get agreementsBack-end engineerBrittany has been taking the lead on our Forced Logout acceleration (doing some discovery, determining the best approach from an architecture standpoint, story shaping, delivery, etc.). While planning and working through some discovery, she ran into some roadblocks. She gave context, asked a clear question, and provided potential solutions so folks could easily comment in hopes to gain clarity and move forward in a timely manner (see the below Slack conversations for examples). Keep up all the great work, Brittany 🎉
https://lessonly.slack.com/archives/C97TXG1PW/p1592937599264700
https://lessonly.slack.com/archives/C97TXG1PW/p1592937611265000
Conversations about We get agreements
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