Coaching Agile Teams: A Companion for ScrumMasters, Agile Coaches, and Project Managers in Transition

by Adkins Lyssa

Envision Invite the highest-ranking person you can find to paint for the team a vision of the product to be created by them. This person’s opinion matters to the team. It’s someone they want to impress and who has a vested interest in the product because the company has conferred formal authorization to this person to achieve company goals. More than likely, this person sponsors, or pays for, the project. The one holding the purse strings has great influence. Use it. Prep this person to speak about the importance of the project at two levels: company and personal. It’s useful to know how this high-ranking manager expects the product to impact the company. It’s better still to know why the product and the business impact are important to the person. This gives the team something more real to grip than the cold, lifeless bullet list of expected improvements. The high-ranking manager delivers the vision and leaves. The product owner takes that vision and, if needed, fleshes out the details of the high-level objectives, turning them into tangible goals for the team. At this point, revisit the “What’s in it for the company?” and “What’s in it for the world?” goal statements. If needed, update them now that the team has more firsthand information. Or, avoid the update, and wait to fill in these goal statements until this point in the start-up session. Sometimes, hearing the vision gives the team enough of a glimpse into the work ahead to get going. Other times, they need more to...