Start With A Tasting Menu

Recently, my son took us out to Lucie, a Toronto haute cuisine restaurant to celebrate my birthday. My wife and I aren’t the “fine dining” types but our son wanted to treat us to something special for my birthday. 

Coincidentally, we had just binge watched the first three season’s of FX’s The Bear. And so, “Yes chef”, we had an inkling of what to expect during our fine dining experience.

We decided on the “Tasting Menu” so that we could sample everything on the menu that night.

As each dish was presented at our table, we first ‘saw’ the beauty and precision with which each dish was plated. Each was like a piece of art meant to be admired rather than eaten.

Next, we ‘heard’ from the maître d’ as he, to my wife’s chagrin, hovered over each dish to provide chef notes and commentary.

Then, we finally had a chance to dig in and ‘taste’ each dish! It was a fun and delicious experience that made the show, “The Bear” real for us.

In my work as an Agile Coach, I often facilitate training and workshops on Agile practices such as User Story Writing and Backlog Management.

My facilitation approach includes two fundamental concepts that I’ve come to value more and more over the years:

1. “Experience first, then explain” (source: Mike Burrows)
2. “Don’t rob them of the struggle” (source: Drew Goddard)

I’ve discovered that blending the concept of a “Tasting Menu” with these two concepts results in a deeper and more personal learning experience for the students:

• Learning that resonates with their personal reality 
• Learning that can be immediately applied to and tested on their real work before they even leave the classroom

As an example, I end my User Story Writing training with a workshop called “A Taste of <your team’s> Backlog” inspired by restaurant tasting menus and local foodie festivals. Here’s an outline of the workshop:

1. A team shows their product backlog in Microsoft’s ADO (or equivalent software development tool)
2. Students look for “What work item types are represented in the backlog?”
3. Students pick an example Epic that includes at least 1 feature and 1 user story and then discuss:
   • How aligned is each work item type with its template?
   • What can be done to improve the clarity of the work item types?
   • What’s the expected delivery time for each work item type?
4. Students pick one of the work item types from the example that is a candidate for story splitting and then discuss:
   • In what ways can the work item type be split?

This workshop works well with one team and even better with multiple teams.

Not only do students get to taste their own product backlogs or a variety of different backlogs if multiple teams are participating, they also:

• Experience their learning on something they’re already familiar with.
• Struggle to improve what they originally developed based on an explanation of what ‘good’ looks like.

Just like I left Lucie with a deeper appreciation of fine dining, students leaving this Backlog Tasting workshop have a real personalized appreciation of what a ‘good’ backlog looks, sounds and tastes like 😋.