Agile Team Leaders Connect
Staying Aligned with your Product Owner, Team Lead, and Scrum Master
Teams anywhere have multiple leaders. Sports teams have a captain that represents players, a head coach to makes the game plan, a general manager who builds the team. Agile teams have a technical leader who represents the developers, a Scrum Master that protects the team and leads Agile practices, and the Product Owner who owns the product and works with stakeholders. The teams that win always share one trait, leaders that are aligned.
You may be asking when and how Agile team leaders should gain alignment. Trying to get alignment in front of the team at one of the traditional Scrum ceremonies will waste the developers time, and frustrate them because their is no clear message. Using a weekly connect with only the leaders is far more effective.
Explain the Purpose and Ideal Outcome
Defining the purpose and desired outcomes of all Agile ceremonies, as well as any meeting, is crucial. Meetings that lack clear objectives end up being mere gatherings without direction. Given that people are busy, especially fellow leaders, aimless meetings can lead to wasted time that could be well spent elsewise.
When setting up the Agile Team Leaders Connect, ensure the meeting invite includes a full description of the connect and its ideal outcome. Include links to the agenda, where you track action items related to the connect, and a shared chat group.
At your first connect, explain to the other leaders the Agile Team Leaders Connect is meant to gain alignment between the three. Remind the other leaders of the separation of duties. Mention anything can be discussed. And remind the other leaders that this is a leader only connect since sensitive items may be discussed.
The ideal output will have the leaders aligned on anything from future Retrospective topics, metrics, direction of the product, priority of technical debt, or anything else related to the Scrum team.
Share an Open Agenda
The Agile Team Leader Connect is an open forum. It is not to be lead by one specific team leader, but for all 3 to bring topics to discuss. When you keep track of these topics in a shareable document, the other leaders will have a general idea of what will be discussed.
A simple shared document online will do. Share a document and ask the other leaders to add topics to the agenda. Keeping track will let you reflect back at what was discussed.
ClickUp has a full suite of tools, including a document editor. Google Docs and Microsoft OneDrive both offer the capability to share documents with controlled access.
Use a Visual Kanban Board
Just like the team’s work, tracking action items, and ideas on a Kanban board will keep leaders focused and organized. When a discussion leads to an action item, add it to the Kanban board and prioritize it against the other items.
Setup the board like any Kanban board. Have “To-Do”, “In-Progress”, “Done”, and any other columns you may want to add. Drag the action items through the lanes, and discuss the board at each connect.
Using a Kanban board will let you track what your leadership team finished. Keeping track of even small items will give you a source to look back on if you as leaders are ever ask what have you done to improve the team.
You can also use the Kanban board as a roadmap. Layout ideas of what improvements the team needs and action items on how to get to those improvements.
ClickUp has a whole suite of free tools including Agile boards, whiteboards, document editor and more. Trello is also a great tool you can use. Trello is free and can integrate right into Jira.
Schedule Weekly and Close to Sprint End
Agile ceremonies are scheduled at certain times to get the maximum benefit. For example, to set the tone and plan for the work day ahead, the Daily Scrum Stand-up is the first ceremony of the day. The Agile Team Leaders Connect is the same.
The Agile Team Leaders Connect is a weekly ceremony. For teams that follow two week Sprints, this connect that takes place mid-sprint, it will allow the team’s leaders to discuss ongoing Sprint items, if there is a need to pivot, or experiments taken place.
For the Agile Team Leaders Connect that takes place in the second week of the Sprint, it will allow the leaders to discuss how the Sprint went, prioritize stories for the team, and what to align on when it comes to Retrospective topics to discuss.
Timing the Agile Team Leaders Connect at specific times ensures everyone is aligned at key times.
Gather only the Leaders of the Team
One of the key ideas of Agile is MVP, minimal viable product. The idea of MVP should be applied to ceremonies too. Having only the leaders in the Agile Team Leader Connect will allow the leaders to focus on the most pressing issues, or best ideas to improve the team.
Sensitive topics might be on the agenda for this connect. If confidentiality cannot be maintained, it may necessitate scheduling an additional meeting, which would be a waste of time.
Planning future Sprints and priorities may also be discussed. When you have anyone other than the leaders, you will be wasting other’s time. This also applies to leaders above the Agile Team Leaders. Decisions related to the team and their processes are made at the team level, having a Sr. Leader in this connect will remove any autonomy the Agile team may have.
Conclusion
The Agile Team Leaders Connect will ensure you are aligned with your fellow team’s leaders. Strong Agile teams have strong leadership. Gaining alignment with the Agile Team Leaders is key to achieving strong leadership. When Agile team members know that the Technical Leader, Product Owner, and Scrum Master are aligned, the team will be confident in the direction of the team.
Share some ways you keep alignment with your fellow leaders in the comments.
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