➡️ 3 Strategies For Planning You're Probably Not Using

Hey Reader,

By now you probably had a couple of sprint planning or maybe even releases done this year and you’re maybe faced with the reality that your team still doesn’t seem to finish all the work they plan. Just like last year!

It’s possible to be plagued by this carry over, and this is an insidious problem, as I talked about in the latest YouTube live (link below).

But I wanted to talk to you about three strategies around planning that are very specific and were not discussed in the Mini-Class.

Many times, you will be tempted to search for a better planning technique on how to split stories, or how to do some significant math around story points, or maybe a new prioritization technique… which all have their place. But I’m thinking of something else. I’m inviting you to notice and fix issues that are more on the human side of things. Here they are:

🔹 ISSUE 1: That one person everybody follows.

Maybe she’s a senior architect and everybody feels tempted to always go after what she says. But somehow, she’s constantly underestimating the issues, probably given her level of knowledge. But your team is comprised of many more people, with a higher probability of tackling those pieces of work that the architect or senior person!

💡 STRATEGY: If that’s a pattern you are noticing, one very simple approach is to start a pool of anonymous ideas. You can either have people asynchronously feed solutions for specific user stories or problems in a way that nobody (maybe not even you!) can know who did it.

This works even synchronously, during the planning session, as you can collect the post-its and read out loud and write them on the whiteboard in your own handwriting, maybe even using a few different words, so that at best only the owner knows it’s their idea.

While not the only way, depersonalization is always a good strategy to park all sorts of biases, both pro and against an idea.

🔹 ISSUE 2: “We’ve got this” syndrome.

Don’t we love when our teams simply don’t shy away and jump into solving a problem? Highly proactive, positive… and never considering what could wrong!

Maybe they list possible pitfall’s, but they don’t actually plan with those in mind. They keep thinking it’s gonna take only 5 days to do that work, when possibly it won’t be finished this sprint unless they make sure certain things are taken care of.

💡 STRATEGY: One of the best ways of dealing with this, although by no means the only solution, is to objectively be the negative person in the room or partner up with a usual suspect who is always skeptical or critical.

Not to simply criticize and break down the happy bubble of “we’ve got this”. Rather, to build a more solid solution. You can always ask about how they will achieve the goal if the capacity is reduced or if they don’t have access to a certain technology, but I find it best that either you are knowledgeable in the scope of the problem or you partner with someone who is so that you can be very specific in breaking the solution down.

I love me some TRIZ, but I’ve seen teams who engage too lightly in it. And for the sake of robustness, specificity is key, even if it’s brought by the facilitator!

That actually brings me to the final one:

🔹 ISSUE 3: Answer the WRONG questions.

Yes, there is such a thing as RIGHT and WRONG questions in context. or at least BETTER questions.

💡 STRATEGY: One amazing thing to know is that our beautiful brains try to answer any question we ask it. How cool is that? The problem is that it means that we better phrase it in a way that is really helpful!

📘 In a totally non-tech way, I’ve seen a study where they were collecting results from psychologists and psychotherapists that anonymized clients in which these clients asked themselves reasons to stay in their marriage and other clients asked themselves reasons to get out of it.

So, people’s brain generated answers… and people acted on it. Those looking for reasons to stay married… remained married! As for the group who wanted out… they also got what they wanted!

Ask the questions worth answering!

So what about our tech team? Well, help them get to the root of the problem with better questions. Let's look at one Q:

Q: What would you do if the third-party library does not work?

This is a very open question, and it even allows for the answer “we won’t be able to finish it on time”.

While obviously a true possibility, it’s not desired that they simply won’t’ finish for now. And what is essential here? Is it to have this library added at any cost or to finish something else? If the latter, you could ask:

Q: How can we still put it on the next release even if we don’t have the third-party library integrated?

Q: Which parts of this library can we integrate, nonetheless?

Q: What do we already know that is tricky about this library? How might we bypass it? What is an alternative solution?

Which are much better questions to put their brains to work within the constraints they are given.

Some people think constraints are a bad thing, but they can actually bring about creativity and resourcefulness. And if anything, they always force you to separate what could from what must.

What are your thoughts on these issues and the insights?

Anything you’re willing to try soon?

If you do, let me know!

From the blog

In the latest mini-class I’ve talked about why carry over should be ruthlessly dealt with, and what are the 7 things it might be signaling about the team health. It is always more than just “being late” or “it will be done when it will be done”.

You can read it here or go straight to the video in our YouTube channel.

And remember, we'll be having monthly live mini-classes, every 1st Wednesday of the month!

Stay curious, stay agile!

Cheers,