In this scenario we try to define a common goal for the team, and steps to achieve it. It’s a good idea to do this exercise at the beginning of a new project, or when team is formed. It’s also a good idea to repeat it from time to time, to check if team is still on track with established goals. By identyfing key components of goal state, team naturally gravitates towards discussion about current state, and what can be done to improve it, which is the point of this exercise.

Time and place

  • Around 1 hour long
  • Room to sit in circle

Participants

  • Group of interest
  • Moderator

Prerequisites

  • Team members have defined team goals
  • Team members understand requirements for empirical process

Room and items needed

  • Room with U-shaped or round table
  • Flipchart & markers
  • Post-its & pens

Scenario description

5 mins - Set the stage - Explain meeting goals to the Team

  • Let’s hold on for a second and think about how our would would look like in its ideal state.
  • Use flipchart to draw imaginary path to excellence symbolized by literal path toward Sun on top

    5 mins - Idea generation

  • on post-it write your wishes, as specific as possible, how would you like for your work to be like
  • when finished team stick their ideas to flipchart

    20 mins - Defining Improvement Backlog

  • sort and possibly group results into categories
  • first priority evaluation - sort by count of duplicated ideas
  • for each idea generated - evaluation #1:
    • What is the common understanding of the idea? All agree?
    • What value would that bring us? (Low, Medium, High)
    • Sort on flipchart - most valuable near bottom, less urgent higher near sun
  • What new ideas came during discussion? Write them down too!

    20 min - Backlog refinement

  • analyze first 2 or 3 ideas, starting from most valuable
    • What is current situation that hold us back from ideal state?
    • What improvement actions can we try to get closet to ideal state?
    • What would be first three steps to make that change happen?
  • Categorize effort needed to implement discussed actions - Small, Medium, Large, Extra Large
    • General rule-of-thumb would be small is something we could change with good discipline and plan in few months, large would we something that either needs a lot more time or requires to convince other people to participate or is complicated
  • For small actions with medium or high value assign responsible person - these are low-hanging fruits - assign shorter timebox to them
  • For each of remaining actions (medium, large, extra large):
    • define responsible person from the Team that shall “make working group”
    • be point of contact and “most interested person” on given action
    • set deadline for making follow-up meeting, gathering neccessary participants to refine idea on broader forum
  • Don’t overburden whole team with actions or working groups

    10 mins - Define Review Date and next steps

  • Define one plane to store actions and their status in transparent way
  • Define follow-up meeting for Backlog refinement
  • Thank everyone for participation
  • Gather feedback on concluded event