Labs Live: Agile 2

Thoughts and actions to help HR leaders forge the future. These are The Results of Labs Live: Agile 2 - This time it's Rituals.

Labs Live The Results

Agile 2 - This time it's Rituals | 29 July 2021

Introducing Labs Live

HR problem solving in real-time

Introducing

Labs Live...

HR problem solving in real-time

We're bringing together the brightest minds in HR to take part in collaborative, immersive live events where they have the time and space to focus on a pressing people challenge.

Facilitated by our talent experts and invited guests, we take a challenge or hot topic and work with you to produce actionable insight and solutions.

This is then fed back in the form of interactive content.

OK, but what is it?

Labs Live is an extension of BPS Labs - collaborative workshops to qualify recruitment problems, explore creative ideas and forge the future.

At our heart we’re HR problem solvers. We specialise in providing up-front, objective insight into how HR leaders can tackle their biggest people challenges.

Our latest session

Labs Live: Agile 2 - This time it's Rituals

Once again, we partnered with PTHR to take HR Leaders on a collaborative adventure into Agile.

Our collaborative session was designed for HR teams who…

Have a foundation level understanding of Agile Principles (Roles, Kick-off, Roadmap).
Are eager to take a deep dive into Rituals and Ceremonies.

Our expert facilitator

Perry Timms,
Founder and
Chief Energy
Officer @
PTHR

Perry has over 30 years' experience in people, learning, technology, organisation change & transformation.

Recognised as one of the UK’s most influential thinkers in HR, Perry is an international and two-time TEDx speaker and award-winning author and HR strategist.

PTHR's mission is defined as "Better Business for a Better World" and Perry is passionate about the value Agile working can bring HR teams and their businesses.

Connect with Perry on LinkedIn or check out PTHR.

The Hypothesis

or how it all began

The Hypothesis

Agile enables HR teams to respond to challenges with greater pace, efficiency, and effectiveness.

The impact of the pandemic has required HR teams to be agile. They've had to be responsive, adaptive and creative.

But there’s more to Agile than creative crisis management.

There’s a well-crafted philosophy of Agile put to work for inventive, iterative and inclusive ways to solve problems and deliver projects.

Agile working creates more innovative ways to solve problems and deliver projects.

It promotes flexibility, responsiveness, and inclusion in working patterns.

Our scenario

We would build on a foundation level understanding of Agile methodologies and take a deep dive into Rituals and Ceremonies. In other words, we wanted to examine how work gets done using Agile principles and explore how these can be applied to completing HR projects.

Building on these fundamentals, we would then move towards breaking down tasks and prioritising them for planned Sprints.

Following an Agile process, tasks were appropriately 'sized'. And we would use Rituals and Ceremonies to plot the milestones towards creating our Minimum Viable Product.

The Method

The Method
In attendance

The brightest minds in HR

Senior HR professionals from the disruptive and fast-growing digital workplace sector .

Our expert facilitators

Perry Timms – Founder,PTHR
Catalina Contoloru – Chief People & Operating Officer, PTHR
Rachael Allen– People & Culture Director, BPS
William Geldart – Brand & Labs Lead, BPS

What we covered

The Agile Teams (Squads) model.
Agile fundamentals - a reminder.
An intro to Cycles and Rituals.
Sprints and Sprint Planning.
Work sizing.
The 5 key Ceremonies.

The Results

The Teams (Squads) model

Agile
Fundamentals
– A reminder

Typically up to 8 energised people
End-to-end product build responsibility
Commissioned by a Product Owner
Self-selected as a norm
Self-directed
Supported by an Agile Coach
Disassemble on completion

Agile Team
Product – Vision & Deadline
Product Story
User Stories
Product Backlog
Product Roadmap

How does it all work?

Firstly, Agile teams are formed of people who WANT to be there.

The Product Owner (foreperson) holds responsibility for the demand/need (the project) and will own the vision. Meanwhile, the team itself will be self-selected and self-directed. This can be a challenge as the entire business needs to buy-in to this philosophy. There needs to be an understanding that teams are brought together for the benefit of the organisation, with parameters set for much how much commitment will be required.

Finally, the team will be disassembled on completion of the project. Every project must have a defined endpoint.

The maximum project term is typically three months, with the average timescale being six weeks.

You can have simultaneous sub-teams working on a project, provided they each have an Agile Coach to guide them.

Practical tip: HR teams should start to think in terms of ‘product’. E.g – a new policy is a product.

An intro to Cycles and Rituals

In a nutshell:

Agile Cycles and Rituals allow for iteration and punctuation. After all, the Agile methodology is designed to keep energy and focus optimal.

Practical tip: People can move in and out of Agile teams, but the onus is on the leaver to find a replacement. This breeds accountability and ensures momentum.

Sprints and Sprint Planning

Practical tip:

Get granular about each task from the Product Backlog. Ask yourself: “how long will this actually take?”

Agile In-Play: Kanban/Scrum boards for Sprints

Practical tip:

Put names to tasks. Each person should only be working on one task at any given time. Share responsibilities and appeal to the team’s spirit. One person can’t hoard all of the ‘glamorous’ tasks.

Work sizing

Practical tip:

Define the size of tasks by agreed definitions, e.g Small (S), Medium (M), Large (L), Extra Large (XL), or use a scale between 1-10.

The Ceremonies
1. Sprint set-up meeting
(what will happen)

Many people (in IT) use Sprints to work up the different User Stories into overall product/solution.
You can Sprint based purely on the prioritisation/flow of tasks irrespective of the different User Stories.
Work sizing helps you appreciate how many tasks should be done in any given Sprint (how many people hours you have and how much the task estimations add up to).

Practical tip:
Start moving your backlog of tasks into the Kanban/Scrum board at this stage. Play with tasks – are they too big, or too small?

2. The Stand-Up meeting
(what is happening)

What it’s NOT:

• Everyone shares their entire workload.
• RAG assessments (if you like – not mandatory).

What it IS:

• Each day: 15 minutes max.
• Update the Scrum boards/task list.
• “Yesterday I…Today I…”
• “Swarming” to any issues, lags or blockages.

Practical tip:

The Stand-Up is a tiny narration of what’s been found and learnt. It’s NOT an update on workload, that much should be clear by looking at your Kanban/Scrum board.

3. The Review meeting
(what has been done)

This happens at the end of each sprint:

1 hour(ish).
What has been done.
Review the Minimum Viable Product.
Update backlog.
Remove what has been done.
Add new/update stories based on feedback.
Review priorities. Works well weekly.
CELEBRATE!

Practical tip:

Take the opportunity to congratulate each other. Be specific when mentioning achievements and individual contributions.

4. Show and Tell (review your MVP)

The Minimum Viable Product is:

The most rudimentary, bare-bones foundation of the solution possible.
Sufficient enough for early adopters.
Something tangible customers can touch and feel.

Your Show and Tell will be:

A display of Product concepts, including a flow of how the product is used by people. An explanation of how things work within your product forms the basis of a Show and Tell.
A way for the Users, and possibly the Product Owner, to show your early thinking and demo the MVP.
A forum where Users can tell you their initial reactions, and a chance for the Agile Team to invite Users to give input into what else is required and what adaptions need to be made.

Practical tip:

Invite Users to ask: “what will this help us do?” Also, invite team members to share and put something forward. This doesn’t have to relate to the MVP. Get people to co-create what something looks like.

5. The Retrospective
(how it has been done)

At the end of a sprint, it’s time evaluate:

How we worked as a team.
Review our delivery capacity.
o Accuracy of work sizing.
o Prioritisation and blockage clearing tactics.
o Work in Progress (the TO DO column) learning – i.e, were things in progress for too long?
What to improve in the next sprint.

Practical tip:

Think about and discuss what was good about how you’ve worked as a team.

Key Takeaways <br> and Resources

Key Takeaways

Agile is likely to be an alien way of thinking and working for many HR departments. However, it doesn’t have to be daunting. Lean into the process and learn as you go.
Building solid foundations (i.e - a tangible Product Story, such as ‘creating a personalised onboarding process’, and User Stories), will make planning and working through Rituals and Ceremonies more seamless.
Encourage each team member to be accountable.
Make the process iterative, inclusive and fun! Agile is designed to ensure pace and momentum, it shouldn’t feel like a slog.
Stick to Rituals and Ceremonies as closely as possible. Stand-Ups, Work-Sizing etc are designed to make teams work more effectively and with enhanced purpose.
HR teams can use Agile to create a huge variety of ‘products’. Create policies using Agile, complete projects this way!
Individuals can create their own Kanban boards and work on their own personal projects using Agile.
Ultimately, HR can bring people together to solve problems using Agile!

Agile Resources

Check out Perry's 'Scoop.it' page on Agile in HR for a collection of curated content.

Highlights include:

Plus, here's a link to PTHR's original slides from the session.

About BPS <br> and PTHR

We're BPS World

In a nutshell, we provide the people who design and build tomorrow’s world. Throughout the last 20 years, we’ve established ourselves across the engineering, technical and professional services landscape. We work alongside partners who trust us to deliver tailored recruitment services designed to bring them cost and time efficiencies at scale.

But what guides us is our founding purpose – ‘people can be more’.

We want the best for the candidates we serve and customers we partner with.

And as the representative of its people, we believe your HR team wants the same.

Sharing in this goal enables us to move at pace and forge new ground with the people that matter most to us – our customers, candidates and colleagues.

What we can do for you

One partner described it best when they told us: “You take my recruitment problems and make them go away.”

We’re problem solvers and we spend the time getting to understand you and your unique people challenges.

By doing so, we ensure you’re set-up for hiring success and able to focus on doing what makes your business great.

Our collaborative workshops are tailored to your organisation. Identify recruitment problems, explore creative ideas and forge the future.

We partner with marketing and HR teams to attract more candidates, increase their quality and raise engagement levels.

We’ve designed, built and delivered talent and compliance functions across the world. So we know how to find the right people, keep projects on track and protect businesses from risk.

Sourcing, engaging and hiring executive talent is
a service. Going the extra mile to assess the market and imagine the future is a true partnership.

BPS World combines the best parts of these agencies to deliver a tailored talent solution for your business.

About PTHR

PTHR is a consulting business with a big heart and bigger ambition to shape ‘Better Business for a Better World’.

Their aim is to help create workplaces where people flourish, that are sustainable and successful, and in line with the spirit of Next Stage Organisations. They offer consulting and products that deliver learning and transformational work design; solutions and support; and create spaces for research and experimentation with progressive HR, OD & leadership.

They will:

Build programmes of work that help skill and develop your people with specific, tailored methodologies and approaches for work.
Produce materials to provide insight, models, theories, and applications to improve how you approach work and deliver for your clients.
Create a more collaborative, sharing and supportive environment for your leaders and teams enabling people to be more effective, efficient and purposeful in their work. Ultimately, this improves results, creates value and positively shapes the impact your organisation provides for customers, clients, partners and communities who you operate with, for and in.
Leave you with more capabilities, tools, and techniques to sustain lasting positive impact and continue to create value. We want you to start with us and succeed without us.
Shift culture, behaviours, and processes towards more lasting improvements that will bring additional and adjacent possibilities to support your reason for being and purpose.
Create tangible evidence of what has been realised in terms of benefits and value creation that not only proves the merit of our work, but provides clarity, learning, acknowledgment, and future directions for your success.

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Labs Live

Join us and play your part in leading the evolution of HR

Labs Live is where the HR leadership community comes together to solve their shared people challenges.

The format deviates from ‘push’ sessions. Labs Live invites full participation and delivers actionable insight and practical outcomes that HR leaders and their teams can take back into their businesses.

It's an opportunity to take part in something unique. To provoke, debate, share best practice and educate while also initiating change.

All we ask of you is your engagement and to come prepared with thoughts and opinions.

By offering up some of your precious time you can help lead the way in the HR space and create happier and more productive workplaces.

At BPS, our founding purpose is 'people can be more'. We're passionate about fueling the ideas that'll help fulfil this mission and we want HR leaders to come with us on this shared journey.

What will we cover?

We want you to help us set the agenda, but we have plenty of ideas of our own...

• Adapt or die. Is an agile culture key to success?
• How can HR lead on digital strategy?
• How can HR teams step-up and drive the strategic agenda?
• Re-imagining HR. How can HR remain at the forefront of change?
• A single super brand - is it time for corporate and employer brands to become one?
• L&D is dead. How can traditional L&D teams reinvent themselves?
• Should mental health be a strategic priority and where do you start?
• Diversity & Inclusion. Why doing nothing could be your biggest mistake.

The benefits

• Connect with great minds and make a difference.
• Greater impact and credibility when driving the strategic business agenda.
• Be the authority on the most pressing HR challenges.
• Investment in yourself and growth of your personal brand.
• Opportunities to speak in front of eager audiences.
• The chance to give something back to the community.