I’m currently building out some training modules for a facilitation skills course. I’ve been working on my first module for about a month or so now, and I’ve recently found any distraction possible whenever I sit down to progress on it. We all know that work expands to fill the amount of time we have to work on it, so I knew that I needed to put some constraints upon myself to get this first module done. (And I will probably need to do the same for all the modules that will follow.) So I booked an alpha test run with some of my colleagues in two weeks, and now the pressure is on.
I needed to find some focus.
My calendar looked quite full last week, meaning I couldn’t spend more than an hour or so at a time working on my module. I take a long time to get into the flow; once I do, I can be there for hours. The Pomodoro technique has never worked for me; instead, it has always been a surefire way that I never get anything done. So towards the end of last week, I stopped putting things into my calendar for this week so that I had large swathes of time to concentrate on this one piece of work and do it to the standard I expect of myself.
I needed to make a commitment.
Now obviously, I don’t want to create any old thing here. I’m trying to educate people who are entirely ignorant of the world of agile, and I know that the best (and perhaps only) way to do this is to get feedback and iterate. At some point, I will need an audience closer to my target audience, but to start with, I want to test the content with people who know this topic as intimately as I do. I need to test my content with people who have experience in facilitation. I have chosen my initial audience to be some fantastic coaches and scrum masters whom I’m privileged to work with at the moment. These ladies know how to facilitate and have done so more than any of us care to acknowledge, and so will know whether or not the content I’ve selected for my module rings true to how we facilitate meetings in the agile world. Their opinions will create my next iteration.
I needed to show some respect.
Of course, I’ve only been able to talk about all these things and pull in all the support I need by telling people this is where I find myself. It’s all well and good creating the personal time and space to build a module out, but to do so, I have had to keep other people at a distance. I’ve had to tell people I can’t do the work they want me to do. I’ve had to tell people I’m struggling to find the motivation. I’ve had to ask people to help hold me accountable.
I needed to be open.
Even with clearing my calendar (as much as I have been able to do so), I know that I’m unlikely to be ready, and I’m definitely not going to have all the things I’d like to be ready, ready. I probably haven’t even thought about everything I need to get ready. I’m going to be delivering this module to my first group in very much an alpha state. Things are going to go wrong, things are going to be missing, and I’m going to lose my flow.
I need some courage.
And so, as with all things worth doing in the world of work, the scrum values yet again come to prove themselves as a guiding light of how to get the job done. I gave myself the space to focus; I committed to doing the work; I showed my respect for my colleagues by asking for their feedback; I was open that I needed to do these things, and I have had the courage to do them. Whenever I’m coaching people working in a scrum environment, I try to reflect to them when they’re exhibiting the scrum values. These values shouldn’t just be some esoteric section of the scrum guide; they should support us in staying true to the spirit of scrum. As a senior coach, though, it can often be up to me to highlight to myself that I need to (and hopefully am) live up to these values myself. After all, the best way to teach how to behave is by behaving that way yourself.
Alpha development stage is better than nothing. And most won’t even have got to alpha. So you just Go For It!