Agile Notes (No. 7)

Every week, on Fridays, I will send out an email highlighting a concept relating to Agile/Scrum/Continuous Improvement. Here we go…..

We are continuing with some notes from The ART of Avoiding a Train Wreck by Em Campbell-Pretty and Adrienne L. Wilson. ART is short for Agile Release Train and is a concept from Scaled Agile.

Have you ever joined a new team and struggled with getting to know them? Ever been to a small conference or training and needed an ice breaker? Its hard, right? How can you possibly retain it all in one “let’s go around the table/call and introduce ourselves?” It losses its impact in a hurry. Let me go one step further….how well do you know the teammates you have been working with for the last 5 years?

Em and Adrienne introduce two concepts: Llewellyn Falco’s Speed Meet and Jurgen Appelo’s Personal Maps. Lets focus on the Personal Map. From page 215:

I am seriously thinking about using my own Personal Map on my Linkedin page. There are so many ways you can use this tool. Have everyone on the team fill out a map and then circulate around the team. Have everyone fill one out but have them work with a different team mate on each of the main sections: home, education, work, etc…Get everyone together and fill them out a section at a time - or get everyone together and have each person talk to the main sections but everyone on the team has to fill out a Map on the speaker!

Does your team have a collaboration space? Post everyone’s Maps. Schedule time to update them. Did someone get married? Have a baby? Get a new certification? Travel somewhere exciting? Have an update party. Instead of putting a slide up showing the people that had birthdays this month, show a Personal Map, show updated Personal Maps.

They remind me of baseball cards. (I’m old, we used to collect baseball cards.) Or Pokemon cards. A small piece of card board that tells your story. Actually, I really like that idea - Personal Map cards for everyone that you could hand out like business cards!

Here’s a link to a video from Jurgen Appelo talking about Personal Maps.

PLEASE, feel free to comment about other ways we could use Personal Maps to develop relationships within our teams.

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