3 tiny red flags that could mean you’re doing it all wrong

1. A daily email is sent about what happened at morning Stand Up

This is an innocent action. It feels good. Something happened at this meeting. We didn’t waste time. People’s actions are now in writing. Stuff is happening.

And sometimes you really do have to send out the email on some “Agile” projects. Because you know your product owner and team members are not 100% committed to using JIRA or whatever tool that provides transparency.

Yes, it can be annoying to track your time and sub tasks. This is the principle.

In Ken Blanchard’s management-psychology-slash-folk-story book “Gung Ho”, a new factory manager is shown the ancient secrets behind one department’s consistent success among a forest of failures.

One of these lessons is called “The Spirit of the Beaver”.

Each beaver can make their own decisions about how to achieve the common goal. Progress is transparent.

In the book the guru takes the new manager to the site of beavers building a dam. He asks: Does each beaver know how close the dam is to being completed? Do you see one beaver grabbing a stick that was placed by another beaver in order to put it in their own favorite spot? Do you see a dam manager beaver telling each beaver how to cut the dam trees?

If you’re sending out emails about what happened at daily Stand Up then maybe others can’t really see the dam. Maybe others need training on how to use the dam tools so everyone can gauge their own dam progress for the sprint’s dam goal? If you need to know what people did each day… then you should attend Stand Up. If you need to know if everything is on track then look at the damn Burndown. ;)

This a link to Ken Blanchard’s book “Gung Ho: How to turn on the people in any organization”