WATCH the Board (Redux 2015)

Agile & lean teams perform a daily stand up meeting to bring energy and coordination to the day's work.  During this short meeting, an agile leader (ScrumMaster, Project Manager, Tech lead, Coach, etc.) should ensure the team highlights the important points around the current work—but it is often difficult to articulate and probe every aspect to every card in flight on the team board.

Programs and projects in enterprise portfolios place leads over multiple teams or work streams and those leads have a similar need to decide a confidence over their areas of responsibility during quick conversations with other team leads.  

While all team sizes, % of their involvement, and project complexity levels are not ideal, how can leads possibly be quick on their feet to consider the critical aspects of each card, team, or project? When I was in these situations, I needed a mnemonic acronym to make me quick on my feet.

The search for the right acronym started in practices I use with my teams:  information radiating, continuous improvement, and collaboration.  The resulting technique emphasizes good practices, process, collaboration, and accountability.  The result is something I call the WATCH the Board technique.  (For the first vision of this technique, see the 2013 post of WATCH The Board)

Described below, the technique can be used during a team's daily stand-up, conversation with project leads or team members, or observation of project information radiators.

The WATCH the Board Technique

The technique follows two steps:

1. Preparation (optional)
2.  WATCH the board (consider the questions)

1.  Preparation

This optional step prepares you for the stand-up or other project meeting where you consider the questions to ask before the conversation starts.  While not always possible (hallway conversations do occur), preparing for a conversation greatly increases your ability to be fast on your feet.

For a stand-up meeting, prepare by WATCHing each card on the board and noting which areas to ensure are covered during the stand-up.  You will find noting the specific statements you should hear from individuals helps with accountability and quickly articulating important aspects to keep the project on track. Preparing before a stand-up also reduces stress or tension between the need to quickly end the meeting and getting the highest priority issues raised.

2. WATCH the Board

WATCHing the board steps you through a series of questions in priority order using the word, watch as a guide.  Each letter in WATCH represents valuable components to a development project and can be expanded upon as needed.  As the conversation starts, the lead can internally cycle through the letters of WATCH one after another to look for answers or spark critical questions (occurring in a matter of seconds).  Externally, the lead can call out the questions individually as needed.  Each card (work package on a team board or project of work in an enterprise portfolio) can be watched at its own applicable level.  Note:  If WATCHing a daily stand-up, the preparation step helps greatly.

W
Who, What, When, Where, WIP.
Who is working on the card? Where is the card? Where should it be? Where did it come from? What is the WIP limit?

Detail
These clarifying questions let us blend agile and lean techniques and practices by considering both people and process.  Who begins a people thread and narrows in on responsibility.  Where begins a process thread and identifies a state the card is in—and allows discussion of where the card is or where it should be (based on the process).  Cards should come from a prioritized list and represent part of the highest priority set of work.  Noting a card in process that came from a lower set of priority may be a concern a lead should question more.

Questioning the WIP limit makes sure the person, team, or project adheres to its process flow policy and priority.  Leads should ensure the team has the capacity and predictability to perform work at the right quality level, and can respond timely to changes as necessary.

A

Average time & Accountability
A card this size should take how long?

Detail
Work should relatively match against previous work completed or planned (either individually, as a team, or at an organization level).  If the card is under or over the typical effort required from relative cards, the lead can update internal confidence levels and probe for additional detail as necessary.  Practices to determine the relative effort and duration of cards vary, and this question can ensure the appropriate practices for the card are in place.

In parallel to the relative effort required, accountability for the card becomes visible and options and decisions on priority and changes needed (performance, process, etc.) become the topic of the conversation.

T

Technology & Test
Build ready? Environments ready? Access available? Integration complete? Automation working? Testing started? Testing issues resolved?

Detail
Proving it with working software is a corner stone of software projects, and healthy technology and test practices deliver working software quickly.  The competitive advantage of quickly learning from working software allows the team to focus on the unique business problems and differentiators and less on the common challenges with software development.

With a healthy technology state, the solution can be iterated until the learning and results meet the business need.  Leads can question practices and process that aim toward facilitating iterative development.  Examples include integration environment planning & implementation, access request impediments, capacity, automation, etc. For each card, a build should be available soon.  The people should have access to that build.  The build should be reproducible and confidence in iterative updates to the build should be high. The build should be executable by the team and customer when necessary.

With a healthy test state, the solution is understood, documented, and confidence in the quality level of the build is high.  Leads can question practices and process that aim toward defining the knowledge level of the solution.  Is the individual, team, or project able to define the unique business problem or differentiator goals?  The state of that answer can be determined in parallel by the ability to collaborate on the quality of the solution, find details on required features and if those features are healthy and in which location.

A development line effortlessly collaborating on business needs, with high learning throughput are the goals technology and test can aim toward.

C

Card, Conversation, Confirmation
Are the card details complete? Who are on the tasks? Who was in the conversation? Dates identified? Criteria identified? Does conversation occur as needed?  Are we confirming the solution?  How?  Who is?

Detail
Administrative and process details should remain transparent and minimal enough to escape the need for questioning.  However, when the admin work or process is not acting transparent, we may lose focus time on the solution.  The three Cs questions (inspired by Ron Jefferies’ critical aspects of user stories) will help with process visibility for the card and guide the card back into a good state.

The card represents the requirement and reminds everyone what the work is.  The administrative part of the card likely links to a repository of further information about the work (or may well be noted on the card itself).  Information critical to the process should be complete on the card so that it is crystal clear the work has followed the necessary process and those responsible for the work have committed to its completion.  Examples of critical information:  ID, relative size, category, dates, tasks, assignments, dependencies, acceptance, etc.

The conversation represents the collaboration health of the work.  For example, agile practices emphasize face to face, verbal communication, and critical people left out of that communication could potentially surface as an issue during the next solution demonstration.  Leads should ensure the right parties are involved in solution discussion throughout the card’s progression, and that the conversations can and are happening.

The confirmation represents the completion of the work and its acceptance and approvals.  For example, a solution could be complete & demonstrated but is it sufficient to all relevant areas of the enterprise—has it been formally approved (where is it captured)?  Who needs to approve the work?  Aside from the approvals, acceptance criteria of the solution should be crystal clear.  How is the solution being verified?  Where?  Who is verifying?  What do they need?  Is the goal understood—do we know what has been deprioritized?  Depending on the organization, the confirmation may have fewer or greater parts. 

H

Help.
Who is available to help? What help is needed? Are we stuck? Should this card be returned so team members can help elsewhere?

Detail
There may be a spectrum of collaboration levels required to complete work on projects.  Team members should be able to work independently on tasks (or projects) as well as work with the surrounding and supporting teams and delivery model in place.  For example, team policy may be to attempt to join work on another card before pulling a new card.  Or, a team member may need to engage an expert to help design a component of the solution.

The final letter of WATCH is meant to determine if the current people, process, and technology in place for the card is sufficient or if one or more changes need to occur. 

This is where the team or project works together to find a resolution.  For example, should the team swarm on this highest priority user story so that it will complete in this Sprint?  Do we need a technology expert to assist with this task?  Should we escalate to a supporting team? 

For each question, leads or other team members can search for more specific detail as necessary.  Since WATCH is a guide to help leads articulate additional questions, make sure questioning tracks closely to the guide so as to not stray too far from the critical answers needed.

At the end, you have WATCHED the board!

When the card or project is over, you may have Enhanced Domain knowledge in the business or technology area to which your project contributed and can use this knowledge for future project success