Jakob Wolman
Great teams will focus on delivering value — fast. They deliver small chunks of value, often and with little overhead. I have seen software dev teams practice this, and it delighted both team members and customers receiving the value. Really great teams will introduce team members to this way of working by having them deliver something into production during their first week.
Starting a new job as an agile coach I decided to try this method. I set out to deliver value as quickly as possible, at least within my first week. This forced me to go looking for opportunities to help out. Value goggles on!
I was welcomed by a great team of coaches. They quickly helped me navigate in this large organisation (almost 20 000 people) that I have joined. I got to team up with a fellow coach that knew the organisation well, and join him during the first weeks. My first, small, opportunity came already the first day visiting a team. I got to help out answering the question “should we estimate the size of subtasks” (No, and I managed to plant the seed of Cynefin and #NoEstimates).
The second day I got to join a workshop with a team that are starting their agile journey. I got to take the backseat, but still jumped at the opportunity of helping out, supporting the process and the team. At the end of the workshop I found out that one of the participants was preparing a retrospect for the next day, and was looking for a good way to facilitate. Together we managed to create a set of good retrospect questions, and I got the opportunity to facilitate part of the retrospect.
Ending my first week I conclude that I was able to deliver value, several times, during my first week. Not only by output, but judging from the reaction of the people I helped.
I loved looking for opportunities, and the reaction I got when helping out on my first week that I could have spent plowing through e-learning modules and reading documentation. I am happy to have joined an organisation that allows me to move this fast. I challenge everyone else joining a new team to make sure you deliver value, already during the first week, and then keep doing it, every wek.
I can’t wait to see what I will be able to accomplish next week.