Does Your Team Show Up or Amp Up?

Former NFL Hall of Fame quarterback Kurt Warner’s life story is depicted in the movie “American Underdog: The Kurt Warner Story”. One of the most poignant scenes is when he was cut unceremoniously by the Green Bay Packers. After four years of being undrafted, he finally got his shot with the Green Bay Packers. At his first training camp, he was awestruck that he had finally made it. He was so mesmerized by his surroundings that when he got the opportunity to participate in a training scrimmage, he was surprised and hesitated at the chance. That moment of hesitation and uncertainty was all it took for the coaching staff to cut him. After four years of waiting, when his chance finally came, he was told he wasn’t ready.

Kurt showed up at training camp but he wasn’t ready to amp up.

My takeaways from this story included:

1. When you’re passionate about something, always be ready to take it to the next level.
2. Don’t wait for the perfect conditions – adapt to the moment and learn from it.
3. Don’t question the opportunity, answer it.

When I observe agile teams show up and simply going through the motions of doing agile, I see the same hesitation, uncertainty, and awkwardness in their ceremonies, events, and interactions.

• They show up at their daily scrum, standup or huddle and wait to be asked for their status.
• They show up at their planning sessions and wait for the Product Owner or Manager to elaborate on stakeholder requirements and establish the plan details.
• They show up at stakeholder review meetings and launch into a pre-scripted monologue describing what’s been achieved by the team.
• They often cancel their team retrospectives and when they don’t, they show up to add more wishful ideas to the mountainous backlog of ideas that will never see the light of day.
• They show up as a team during agile ceremonies and events but work on their own as individuals the rest of the time.

How would this look if these same agile teams not only showed up but amped it up?

• The daily scrum, standup or huddle transforms into a spontaneous symphony of give and go between team members. When it ends, the team is energized, synched and ready to burndown the day’s work.
• The one-and-done Product Owner or Manager driven planning sessions become continuous team driven stakeholder engagement and planning streams. Team members learn and know just as much as, if not more than, the Product Owner or Manager on not only what’s most valuable for the stakeholders. But also, why it’s valuable and when it’s needed by the stakeholders. Product backlog items are continuously refined and planned out by the team.
• At stakeholder review meetings, the team goes beyond a one-way demo of what’s been achieved. From one-way monologues to deep dialogues with full transparency and vulnerability. Candid stakeholder feedback is solicited and received. Failures and lessons learned are shared and discussed.
• The one event they never cancel is their team retrospective. Improvement is as deliberate and important as delivery. The retrospective becomes a canvas for the Scrum Master or equivalent to facilitate and guide all team members towards honest sharing, unique insights and collective actions. The retrospective ends with the team members committing and holding themselves accountable to follow through on taking at least one action each before the next retrospective.
• The team and its members choose pairing and mobbing on work items as its preferred way of working and delivering. They actively seek out ways to amp up collaboration and dampen silo tendencies in everything they do.

If Kurt Warner was a member of an agile team, how would he show up?