Why ‘THE HOW’ we do things are very important to scrum teams performance

Asking Questions is a Key Coaching Skill. Why is it important for a personal coach to ask questions?

We want our coaches to get to know and trust themselves and act in alignment with who they are.
So we listen, reflect and help them get the all-important helicopter view of their behavior and lives.
We help them dream, envision, set goals, brainstorm, and plan actions.”

In the coaching of agile teams, this place of the coach also exists. We listen, ask lots of questions,
help the team live in peace with their position in the organization, and understand why they are doing what they are doing and how to improve it from there.

But with a big difference. As agile coaches, we lead many areas of knowledge within the organization,
and the connection between them in practice is essential to our ability to build a fast and high-quality product line.
We are responsible for developing the practice on the assembly line just as we are responsible for developing the
mindset of the people on the assembly line and training them for worldviews that hold the same assembly line.

For example, we will coach them to understand that we are all in the same boat,
developers can’t celebrate the completion, while OPS people stay up all night to get the software up and running.
For example, we pass on the culture of constant and continuous improvement, working in small parts, and much more.
We encounter different professionals and are committed to helping them understand how and what they do connects to the system we motivate to produce better.

An essential part of our work is working with a team comprising various professionals,
from front-end and back-end people, QA people and designers, ops people, and others. These people are practical.
They need a “how.” They required us to place the “how” in a respectable place.

Our goal as coaches is to understand when and how to put the ‘how’ in place but never forget it.
Once it’s there, there are countless ways to grow the practice and refine it.
But we won’t have “improved to excellence” practice without the “how” being clear.

Coaches often talk about coaches who must lead the team and believe that they lead the team with questions and that the team will find a solution that fits their way.
Sometimes I feel it’s too much.
I also see much frustration in teams from coaches who do not know the world of the teams and their specific how and bring solutions at the theory level without connection to the “how.
” I’ve experienced coaches who instruct excellently but have difficulty taking an example from the coaches’ world,
such as Backlog Item, and showing them in their engineering world “how” to bring it into something we can work with in the end. READY story.

As agile coaches, we should know in detail the various practices of the various professionals on the production line.
Remember, we are coaching working teams performing practical work (same as athletes, they need to learn the move and improve from there).
This is their language, and you need to state the how.

So it is clear to everyone that there must be a balance between the “why” and the “how.”

The “how” is essential for the team’s development; after all, these people have to carry out software development, testing, etc.,
and most are efficient people. They need to touch on how to build the dream we want.
How, for example, is it correct to transfer software between developer and QA? How to do brunches that will bring flexibility.
How is it accurate to produce a daily standup meeting where the information is clear and effective? What is the right thing to emphasize?
Is it about the 15 minutes it has to happen in or about focusing on finishing stories before starting one? The interplay between how and why is important.

”The HOW” is the basis for to improve his specific movement. But, the how does not come alone;
understanding the ‘how’ and its connection to the ‘why’ is important here.
This will establish the method into the routine and its absorption and understanding.

After the sprint is finished, we must get into the “how” of the software development if we want to improve an excellent production line operated by an excellent team.
The retrospective, for example, is a tool to improve the how, to learn it and from it to take more small actions to improve all the time.”

Focus:

Without how there is no good focus for improvement .
Focus is the ability to direct attention which depends on many factors and can be improved by coaching and developed through experience.
Without a dedicated focus to produce change and improvement of practices in a direction we see as positive. 

Sprint Brun-chart – should produce evidence and decision-making for changing something in “how” we do things from today to tomorrow

A good coach will lead the team from the way to understanding how and creating the proper focus for improvement.
Not doing it, will provide low or no value to the team you are coaching.

How is it possible not to refer to best practices after I said something about the “how? And here is the trick.
“How” does not mean forcing the teams to work according to best practices.

Why best practice is not always best

As your company grows and becomes more successful, you’re likely to hear the words’ best practice’ more often.
They feature in conversations with colleagues, technical standards, motivational art, and anything else you can imagine.

• • But what if best practices aren’t best after all?
• • Could following best practices hold your company back and stop you from reaching your full potential?

When the world is undergoing rapid change and experiencing more uncertainty than ever,
it’s vital to ensure that you give your company the best chance of survival.
So maybe it’s time to consider removing the words’ best practice’ from conversations about your company’s future.

What is the best practice in business?

The best practice is integral to organizational learning and is based on knowledge research carried out inside and outside the industry.
It takes knowledge gained through trial and error, validates the results, and determines the approach likely to produce optimal results.

This becomes the standard approach (best practice) and provides a guideline for achieving good outcomes in the future.
Best practice policy may be set internally for a specific organization or by the industry’s governing body.

What are the downsides of following best practices?

It’s easy to assume that successful companies always follow best practices,
but closer examination often reveals that best practices aren’t critical to their success.

A best practice approach can negatively impact a business’s performance, especially if the associated dynamics are ignored.

Here are four reasons why following a best practice approach could be holding your business back from success:

1. Best practice stifles creativity.
   Following best practices without questioning why is a great way to destroy innovation and creativity in your business.
   Creativity occurs at the edges, so organizations need to look at problems from all angles to develop innovative solutions.“Because that’s how we’ve always done it” or “it was the highest ranked answer
   on Google” or “this is how “they” do it and they are a successful company” are shortcuts that will get you to an endpoint,
   but you could miss out on a better option along the way.After all, the scrum process and agile methodology were created over 20 years ago and were born out of best practices.
   They, in turn, became industry best practices, and then a new set of practices (e.g., Spotify Model, Safe Model) developed out of them.
   This innovation and development cycle is how the business world evolves, and rigid adherence to the best practice model will only stifle improvement.Blindly following best practices can also cause severe operational problems in a world where new challenges emerge daily.
   Imagine insisting on your scrum framework Daily Standup meeting when your company needs to sit down and focus on the impact of a global pandemic!
2. Best practices can dilute differentiation.
   Differentiation is vital if you want your company to stand out in the marketplace,
   but how can you stand out if you’re doing everything the same as everyone else?If every company follows industry standard best practices,
   they will all look the same to the customer. So if you want to differentiate in the marketplace,
   you will need to ignore industry best practices at some point.This is a brave decision but one that needs to happen if you don’t want to look just like all of your competitors.
3. Best practices can enforce limitations.
   Ever heard those dreaded words “but that’s how we’ve always done it”?They clearly illustrate the limiting effect of the best practice model,
   which will hold your company back if you allow it to persist.
   Just think of all the changes that have taken place in your industry over the last 20 years.
   In retrospect, the decision to make any given change seems obvious – who can believe that at one point,
   we used to hand deliver photocopied memos to each recipient?But all of that progress happened because someone said, “What if we…” and ignored the laughter they probably heard from their colleagues.
   So try to think of best practices as just one of the tools in your toolkit and recognize that best practices are often replaced by better practices.By considering how you can serve your customers better, rather than just blindly doing things how they’ve always been done,
   you could change your industry forever. Just don’t forget me if doing so makes you rich!
4. Best practices can be used to control power.
   Good business practices can be a great starting point when assessing and improving your company’s operating procedures.
   But best practices can also be leveraged by executives who choose to put their progress above the company’s best interests.Simply mentioning “functional area best practices” can be enough to stifle innovative thinking and will ensure that power rests in the control of a limited few.
   In this scenario, best practices act as a roadblock that is hard to challenge, particularly for lower levels in the organizational hierarchy.

Moving away from best practice policy

How other organizations operate is excellent, but we must know how to be flexible.
We need to look at how our competitors are like us and what results they obtain from their practices.
We may not see the same results if they have distinct differences from our own organization.

Best practice for your competitor may not necessarily be best for your organization.
So try things out, run experiments, and examine the results.
It’s essential to define what you see as a success because something which is only 80% effective may still be worthy of further tweaks and trials.

Once you understand the value of these new practices, you can only decide which of them you want to adopt.
Accepting industry best practices will hold you back from looking for better practices and will impose limits on your organization.

Don’t be afraid of change; go forth and get better.
Don’t worry if you don’t reach ‘best,’ and please, please try to resist the idea that anything that isn’t best practice is necessarily ‘bad.’
Our world is ever-changing, and our practices should continuously be improving.