← Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: Agile storytelling from the trenches
Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: Agile storytelling from the trenches
Why Success Means Nothing If the Project Doesn't Move the Business Forward — And How Public Commitments Keep You Honest | Mukhtar Kadiri
00:16:38
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- [00:04]
A
Hey there, Agile adventurer, just a quick question. What if, for the price of a fancy coffee or half a pizza, you could unlock over 700 hours of the best agile content on the planet? That's audio, video, E courses, books, presentations, all that you can think of. But you can also join live calls with world class practitioners and hang out in a flame war free and AI slop clean slack with the sharpest minds in the game. Oh, and yes, you get direct access to me, Vasko, your Scrum Master Toolbox podcast. No, this is not a drill. It's this Scrum Master Toolbox membership. And it's your unfair advantage in the agile world. So if you want to know more, go check out scrummastertoolbox.org membership. That's scrummastertoolbox.org Membership. And check out all the goodies we have for you. Do it now. But if you're not doing it now, let's listen to the podcast. Hello everybody. Welcome to our success Thursday. This week we have with us Mukhtar Kadiri. Hey Mukhtar, welcome back.
- [01:19]
B
Hello Vashkuru.
- [01:21]
A
So, Thursday success day here on the podcast and we'll talk about success in a minute. But we also talk about a very important tool that we use to succeed with the teams we work with, and that's the Agile retrospective. Of course, I guess in the PMP world the most common term is probably lessons learned session or post mortem. How, how does the, the PM book call it these days?
- [01:50]
B
It's been a while. I've studied, I got my PMP a long time ago, so. But I think lessons learned, even retrospect, because you know, I think the PMPC is agile as part of the PM umbrella. So retros are fine as well post
- [02:03]
A
mortar, especially these days because PMI acquired the Agile alliance. Right. So let's dive into it. So share with us, Mokhtar, your favorite retrospective format and why.
- [02:17]
B
Yeah, so I'm a big fan of just keeping things simple. So I like the, you know, what worked, what didn't work and next steps. Right. So I, yeah, I just try to keep it simple.
- [02:29]
A
Why do you feel that that simple approach works in the context that you have worked in?
- [02:37]
B
That's a, that's a good question. I mean I know they are like all these different ones, like mad, sad, glad. So number one, I just like simplicity. I think like as human beings the rule of three is just something that, that we human beings just naturally understand, you know, so like, so yeah, I usually like when things are, you know, broken down into Three parts. So. Yeah, and I think, I think the retrospective can also be a very. It's a meeting that can easily go wrong if you don't run it well. So I like to just remove as much complexity, just, you know, just to create a safe space. And. Yeah, and I think just there's also a personal preference where I just like simplicity, you know.
- [03:24]
A
Absolutely. And simplicity also allows us to focus on the actual content of the conversation. Right. But one thing that I, I want to explore with you, because simplicity is there to provide some sort of benefit. Right. Like whatever that benefit is, if it is, because it's easier to explain, it's easier to get started, it's easier to document, it's faster to get to an outcome, whatever that might be. One of the core aspects of the retrospectives is productive conversations. Right. Like we have a conversation about something we care about, whatever that is, whether it was an incident or a sprint or a whole project or whatever, or a customer interaction, whatever that might be. And then we want an outcome, like an improvement, something we learn from. And that happens through conversation. So in your experience, how does this simple rule of three style retrospective lead to better, more insightful and therefore also more consequential conversations?
- [04:30]
B
Yeah, that's a good question. So I think. Yeah, and I'm thinking out loud with you here. So I don't know if it's necessarily just the structure. So I think number one, it's easy for people just to sort of know the map. Right. Okay, this is where we're going to go. There are three parts to this entire meeting. So I think it's nice to just have that map easily as opposed to like a six point agenda. So there is that. But I think you can also have that simple structure and have a terrible retrospective. So I think really what's important is making sure that everybody feels safe at the very beginning. So that's really critical. And I know there are some exercises that you can do, like icebreakers and all of that, but there are many retros that I've done without icebreakers. Right. But once there is underlying trust, you know, that allows people to be able to be able to open up. And a lot of times trust is not necessarily built in the retro. Like trust is built before the retro. Right. Again, going back to the one on ones. Right. So. And then, you know, coming in and maybe just level setting, because a lot of times people are joining your meeting after another meeting. Right. So you never know what headspace that they're in. Right. So maybe just reiterating like, okay, you know, there is no, there are no wrong answers. This is just, you know, whatever you do just to make everybody feel okay, then you do that. So in my experience, to answer your question, not to have a very productive conversation, I think how you facilitate the meeting is really very important. Even things like tone of voice, even things like making sure that everybody participates so we have a moment of introspection where everybody just puts things down on a postage so that you can hear both quiet voices and loud voices. So how you facilitate actually matters more. And even this brings a good point. Like for retros, I never go into retros binding like I prepare for retros because if you run a bad retro, you could do damage to team morale and your project. Right. You know, because you can just. Oh yeah, you know, let's just knock this agile ceremony out of the. But if you don't do it well, you can end up damaging your project. So you want to make sure that you prepare for the retro and then you come in and you are really facilitating it. How do I want to put it? Because there are different types of facilitation you can just facilitate. Well, okay, I'm running this meeting and I just want to see to the end. But there is the active facilitation, looking at who is not saying what, encouraging quieter voices to. So that is really what creates a productive conversation, is the facilitation.
- [07:13]
A
Absolutely. I think that's a great addition to the point. It's not only the simple method or simple structure, but it is also the quality of the conversations. Through the facilitation, we are able to perform. Right. And we of course do these retrospectives because we want our projects to succeed and our teams to succeed and ourselves to succeed. And you come here both with experience as a Scrum master as well as a project manager. So let's take those two perspectives together and share with us. Mukhtar, how do you define success for yourself?
- [07:49]
B
Yeah, so I think. Yeah, that's a good question. So success for myself is usually success for the project. You know, I don't know if this is. Yeah, this might be a bit of a tangent, but I'm the kind of person that when I, when I, when I'm leading a project, like I give you my. Like I'm emotionally invested, I think about the project. That's why like after a project finishes, I need time just to just recoup. I can't just start the next project. So some people. So you know, like when things don't go well, like it affects Me, you know, emotionally as well. I, I know, yeah, I've tried to separate, but, you know, so that's, that's just the way I am. Like I'm fully invested in the project. So to answer your question, like, what does success. So success for me when I'm leading a project, is the project being successful and what does that mean? So I think if you're not careful with success, you can deliver a project, but the project will really not do much for the business. And I think there are lots of projects I use. Okay, we finish on time and everything. But what value has it brought? So I think it's defining what will be beneficial to the business. I know there's not always a straight line, but you want to make sure that you articulate that before you start a project. What value? Because projects don't exist in a vacuum. Right. So that's one thing that I would say now, of course, you can now break that down. And the way I also think about metrics success criteria is that you can break that down. There are three buckets. There is like, okay, maybe the product slash business metrics and then you have the project management metrics, slash KPIs, and then you have the, the software slash system metrics, right? So an example product business. All right, we want to make sure that we increase NPS or you know, weekly active usage daily, you know, what have you. Or we want to, you know, we want to be able to break into this market, increase revenue. So like, that falls in the first bucket business product metrics and then the second metrics, which is project management metrics. So I think this also includes the agile metrics like velocity, your burn up, burn down, and if you want to add risk score, all of these things that have to do with the mechanics of driving this thing forward. So that's the project management metrics and then the last one is the software system metric. So I bucket things like platform metrics, availability, memory, transactions per second, like, you know, the things that actually show you the health. So I think again, going back to the rule of three, I think a lot of times I'm able to define metrics that will be relevant to my projects in these three buckets.
- [10:51]
A
Very good. And when you think about these metrics for the success of the project, how do you go about setting up your own system to track those? Because one thing is to know, okay, these metrics I care about and I want to make, make sure I track them. But then how do you keep yourself accountable to yourself, not necessarily even to others but to yourself, that, yeah, I am actually doing the work to surface these metrics, to somehow have productive conversations, maybe bring them to the one on ones or presenting them to the stakeholders. How do you define your own kind of, let's call it, personal process of self accountability towards that definition of success?
- [11:31]
B
Yeah, no, that's a good one. And so for me, I know I'm very, very driven by like, I'm the kind of person that I like to make commitments publicly because that forces me to be accountable, right? So at the very beginning I'll be like, okay, I'm gonna be giving. Expect status updates for me every week, right? And expect these kind of updates from me, one to one to the steering committee, one to leadership, one to, you know, so I think just doing that, like making that commitment and then making sure that I do that every week, like that, number one, that forces me to ensure that I, I understand the story of the project because I see, I see like a project is one big story and it's, it's a story every week, right? So because there are lots of things going on, but you need to be able to articulate that story at the end of the week and say, okay, this is where the project is at. This is the story, right? So in. To do that, you need to be able to look at all your metrics, wherever they are, and then interpret and then surface what is relevant to your stakeholders. So for me, like that's how I keep myself accountable.
- [12:40]
A
That's kind of a great wrapper on this also, because the story also implies that we have been able to build that story for ourselves, that we are able to narrate, to make sense of what happened during that week, which is a great kind of self check, right? Like if I can't make sense of the data that I have, there's something I'm missing and then I can go and fetch it or search for it if I don't know where to fetch it.
- [13:08]
B
So just on that point, Vasco, because I know like sometimes I feel like status report, like this is so administrative. But I realized that like in order for me to do status report, that makes sense, I need to have a solid understanding. And sometimes before you actually get to the start, like there are other things that you need to do. It keeps you accountable and it also challenges you to make sense. And there's a lot of legwork that you need to do sometimes. So you can actually get that report because you can do a startup report where it's like, okay, I just send something, is more clerical, but you need to be able to articulate the narrative that's going on. And yeah, so I just wanted to add that point. It's not just sending out a startup report, it's understanding what goes into what goes into it.
- [13:56]
A
I really like that because status report can feel like you just said, very bureaucratic. But if we put it together with our understanding and how we bring it together to that status report, then it forces us to be accountable to ourselves through the accountability to others as well. So great point. Thank you for sharing that, Mukhtar.
- [14:16]
B
I know for sure.
- [14:22]
A
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