Dreams or goals?

I have recently had a conversation with my wife about plans, future and… dreams.
In one moment she interrupted me gently and asked:

Honey, how can you talk about dreams?”

I was confused and probably she noticed that, because before I said anything she explained what she had on her mind:

You’ve got no dreams, you’ve got goals.”

Improve. Measure. Celebrate!

You need to know what challenges are waiting for you. What you will have to face in near future. The hard part is to put everyone on the same page, to create common understanding of each aspect of the problem. That’s why it is so important to name the problem. To confirm that each person who wants to be involved in the solution is aware of every known characteristic, every information that can be important.

When risks and opportunities are listed, when everyone knows where they want to go, when the goal is shared, there are still things that have to be done before you get down to solving problems and taking opportunities.

The issues you don’t want to do…

The issue is waiting. For the person that will complete it. And this person is you. You know that priority is high. You know the issue must be solved. That is the required step that needs to be taken before you have a chance to proceed further with other things.
You try to convince yourself to start. And you’re failing. There’s so many other things that can be done. You let them keep you busy. To be your excuse.


You know the feeling? You know this passivity? Unfortunately I cannot help you with the feeling, but I’ve got a piece of advice that may help you to move on.
List all things that have to be done to complete the issue.
Sounds easy, doesn’t it? But I heard once that the simplest solution are often the best one.

Improvements or complains – choose one

Sprint retrospective meeting is a time when all team members can share what they are happy about, what bothers them, what is worth being taken a deeper look at and what can be or already is problematic. It is a really good idea to practice doing those meetings even if you are not doing Scrum and have no Sprints at all.
You just have to agree for some period of time after which meeting will be provided.

Sprint retrospectives give you a possibility to blurt out everything what’s on your mind. Dedicated time makes it comfortable. You are not looking at your computer. You are not in a rush because of “another meeting is in five minutes”. It’s scheduled, it’s planned and this is time for your Team.

Yeah, not completely. And to be honest, when you are starting to think about those meetings in this way in the same moment you are starting to do malfunction retrospectives. Why is that?

Take one thing at a time

A while back I wrote that if you want to make improvements or fix something, you should start with the easiest thing, because it allows you to gain team's trust and increase confidence of team members. It will also prove them that it's OK to try and, in some cases, to fail.
Thanks to this you increase your and your team members’ chances to succeed with more complex and problematic issues in the future.

But there’s more things which can help you to achieve a success and increase quality of communication.

It's all about differences... or not?

definition of good team

It's not easy to create a good team. It's even hard to find one definition of a good team which would be accepted by everyone. I think the reason is simple - there are many solutions to each problem and the problem can be solved in a satisfying way by good teams working differently, teams consisting of people with various personalities.

good time for something easy...

I'm pretty active person or at least I'm trying to be. I have this luck that everything what I'm doing give me some kind of joy. I'm happy when I can spent a time playing with my daughter, when she doesn't stop asking "why this?", "why that?". I appreciate all of those moments when I can talk hours with my wife, arguing or laughing. I'm feeling great at my work, where I have opportunities to work with great people, solve nontrivial problems and have an impact on many things around me. I love those moments when I can sit for a moment and focus on my hobbies or other interests.

The essence of leadership

For some people leader is someone who have a control over the team, who decides and sets the right directions.

For some people leader isn't so important role at all, well, just some guy with something he called soft skills, guy who want to do nothing, take no responsibility and get money for this.

For other leader is just another name for project manager or a titile for a developer who started to earn more money.

In many cases you aren't become a leader, because someone notice that you will be good as a leader or that you have traits of the great leader. In many cases is just another step on career ladder.

Do you have a time for thinking?

Some time ago one of friend of mine told me that he have a problem with people who doesn't want to take any responsibility. He told me that he continuously encourages them to share their opinions, make comments and even argue with him, but somehow he still fails.
We had a short, but constructive conversation this day. We formulate a few questions which would be helpful with finding a solution and we decide to get back to this topic in next week.

Unfortunately we had to reschedule it and we met again after two weeks.
I was prepared very well to the conversation and I eagerly waiting for what my friend will share with me.
It was pretty unexpected when I heard that he have had no time to thing about our questions.

I know that nowadays it's not so easy to find a free time which can be intended for thinking, but if we would think about solutions for our own problems is rather like an investment, not a waste of precious time.

It's worth to remember that is cheaper to prevent than react.

Activities without a vision leads nowhere

Recently I had great discussion with one of my friends about vision, goal, an idea or however you will call it. We talked why vision is so important, why we need to know how to verbalize it and why we need to share it.

Last "why" leads me to two questions that I asked:
"Do everyone in your team knows the vision that you want to share?"
"Well, it would be great, but... I don't think so."
"Do you know why it's like this?"
"You know, they've got their own visions, ideas and I let them to have it. Thanks to this they can feel free and I believe that helps to avoid micro-management."
"I understand, but let me ask you another question, because I think the problem may be somewhere else. How are you sharing your vision, how often are you doing it?"
"All the time! Through things I'm doing. I think that action is far more important than words."
"Yeah, that's true, but only if everyone knows where they are going."

Sometimes it's worth to lose

I heard once, that the best end of any situation, any action or discussion is when everyone are a winners. I know that it sounds great and for most of us such a positive endings are something that we are dreaming about.
But is it always right? Should we always be focused on winning? Should we always be a winner? Maybe opposite side don't have to be a winner as well? Not because we want to lose or we want to hurt our opponent, no, that's not the reason.
Maybe sometimes win-win situation isn't the best choice? Maybe sometimes it's better to lose, even when we are focused on benefits for both sides?

Start with something easy

Most of people don't like changes, or maybe in different way - they like, but only if changes won't have any impact on their current life and doesn't require additional effort. Unfortunatelly those kind of changes happens rarely, if at all.
It doesn't matter do we talked about improvements, development or solving a problems - if we want to do something, it will always require to move people from their safe zone. Even if we plan to fix an issue, most of people will tell you something like: "yeah, we should fix it, but maybe not now, maybe it's not so important and, to be honest, I get used to it and I can live with this." or: "we shouldn't do anything, because after ... problem will solve itself."

Well, problem won't solve itself, we need to do something to make it happen and if problem affect us somehow, solution also will. We cannot avoid it.
"Living with it" isn't a solution either. Sooner or later you need to handle the problem and if you won't, it will be someone from your team. This is not a solution, this is postponing. The later you start to handle the issue, the more difficult it will be to solve it.

So what to do if you are in situation that is worth to introduce changes/improvements/fixes and you need to convince people to follow you?

If your team already working in culture of continuous improvements then it's easy, you just need to show them reasonable arguments and they will at least try, they will put they effort to check whether the idea is good for them or not.

But what if you are far from it? What if they worked for many years without changes and they just used to this "complain and no action" state? Maybe they already talked about the problem many times and even agreed for solution, but it required lot of work and they just weren't motivated enough to finish it.
Situation like this have more negative impact, because problem still exists and additionaly team is demotivated, they felt they already made steps to solve the problem. It's not important they didn't have strength to endure to the end.

start with something small to succeed fast

When I'm start to work with new team or group of people I always do recognition, try to find the problems, bottlenecks and places for improvements. I also look at all people who would be affected because of potential change or who are affected right now because of existing problem.

When I have all those information, I'm trying to think about solutions for problems (only ideas, without details, just not-binding propositions). But not all of them at once, I'm starting with the easiest one. And the easiest doesn't mean unimportant.

After preparations I'm scheduling a meeting to talk with the team. At first time, we aren't focus on solving any issue, we just talk about them. I heard many times that is no more than waste of time, because on first meeting I don't have plan to get any conclusion, but in my opinion, this allows them to share their's problems with me, we are starting to build relationships and trust.
And this is the reason for this meeting - if I want to help them, they need to know I do care.

On next meeting I present them the list of issues and proposition for improvements. We are prioritizing them and after it's done I'm looking for the most important from the easiest. The one, which requires the lowest amount of effort and time to implement. Why?
If team have wrong experience with doing a changes, you need to prove them that is important and it will pay off. You cannot be another person who will promise everything and will leave them with nothing.
Even if they are eager to do changes, because you are the person who really know how to talk with people and know how to convince them, you still should start with something easy. The less experienced in well done changes team is, the bigger risk for failure. We want to minimize this risk, we need to give them experience, the fastest and shortest way is to start with easy problems.

The more things you will solve/improve, the most experienced team will become, the more effort and time they would dedicate to implement it. If they will see the results, they would be more open for further changes.
Each success will prove them that it's worth to invest their strenghts to achieve the goal, they will decide for longer term changes without fear and with motivation.
They will trust you, so it won't require as much effort from you as on the begining to convince them for next step.

Start with something small and you will achieve great things.

What defines a good meeting?

From today I've started to work with leader of second team in my project on introducing a few improvements in their work. Of course, it will require many changes, each change needs to be accepted by whole team, we need to show them, that is worth to try, that it make sense. We need to talk, discuss and even argue. And perferct place for such an activities are meetings.

But before we will start, I need to face with one great challenge - I need to convince them, there is value with doing meetings at all. They got many bad experiences with those kind of activities, they participated in boring meetings, in meetings, that was for them just a waste of time, they doesn't like interruptors, they want to work, work efficient and they're treating almost all meetings like a break from real work.

What can I say? It's great when people want to work and doesn't like those horrible moments when they need to do something else. But we need to make improvements to work in more efficient way, we need to remove impediements to do better all things, that we want to do as best as we can. If we want to, we need to schedule a meeting to discuss all ideas and propositions of potential solutions, we need to prepare a plan and each teammate should know and accept it.
That's why all team members should participate on the meeting.

If we want to convince people that meetings aren't just a waste of their time, each meeting needs to bring value for them, needs to show them how important it was to done it. Each meeting needs to be good. And what defines good meetings?

what achievement is?

Recently in company, where I work, we tryied to introduce new ways of people evaluation. I don't want to go into details, today I want to write down my thoughts on one word, which occurs on each meeting. The word is - achievement.

I noticed that we are using this word on those meetings in so many different contexts, so I proposed, that we should firstly define what achievement is, before we will go further in this discussion. Everyone agreed and each of us had to bring proposition of this definition on next meeting.

I thought about this definition, I even had my own propositions and just few hours before the meeting I sit down and asked myself - what we're trying to do? We want to define word which is already defined? We want to invent a circle once again?

ladies, wall and sprints

improvements in team in progress

I recetly put our's sprint backlog on the wall. It's more readable, it requires no additional effort to know what is going on and you are always up to date. I wrote more about this here. We are still using reguar tools to manage sprints, but wall is used not for managing purpose, but for visualization. And from what I can see, everyone likes this idea.

The wall was only a first step to increase motivation in team and identification with product, that we are delivering. There are lot more in my head and I will definitely share everything just after I will have any observations.

Recently we startet to do meetings, which main purpose is to know our's customer better, to know what they want to get and to know what we need to beware. I need to admit, that I see many positive aspects of them and after few more meetings I'll describe how it works in our team.

Don't let yourself for time wasting

A few years ago I really hated when I had to participate in meetings. It wasn't important what topics were discussed on those meetings, it wasn't important who was there, I just found all of them time and strength consuming. For a long time I thought that meetings are useless activity and there are many others things which can be done instead, far more important things. I even could spend my time on such a "cool" activities as cutting a layout or writing a documentation. There also weren't too interesting activities, but at least I found them somehow useful, there was value in it.
And meetings? Useless conversations and almost always without any conclusions. And even if we made decision, it was, sooner or later, changed. Probably on the different meeting.

It was really hard times.

Use your wall

In my current project we're using Jira to track the progress in project, to storing backlog items and so on. And after few years I need to admit that is really great tool, at least is perfect for ours needs.

Ok, it's almost perfect - it's completely unrelated with motivation in our team.
Why I think so? Because we're looking at it only when one of us needs to do something there. Team members moves issues from one column to the other, product owner sorts backlog whenever there is a need, we are adding notes, attachments or we made clarification for the issues and many other things, but all of those are activities related with project life cycle. Not with motivation.

sometimes it's better to let go...

when your work is what you love...

Personally I'm someone who can't work for 100 percent, it's impossible for me. Why? Because I always giving even more, I just really like what I'm doing. I always looking for new, better solution, I must improve my skills, increase my knowledge etc. It's just stronger than me.

And, as I notice, in IT this is common approach. We, developers, managers, designers, love what we are doing, this is our passion, this is not only 8 hours work, this is something more. We love challenges, we love problems, bugs, because these are the things, which gives us opportunity to test ourselves, to verify our skills and learn something new.
This attitude continues until we're motivated. And here comes the problem...