We're used to thank someone when we are relaxed; when we are working to gain some objectives, we start forgetting to thank our colleagues and we're focused on the delivery and not on the informal relation. Formalities are taking over, and titles are governing instead of relations, passion and other emotive behavior typical of people hides.I see this as one of the big problem on a committed agile team that is highly committed and is releasing often; delivery is every day near the door, and commitment is really high since the first day. A formal title dominates to the relationship, passion is translated into the word work and stress is continuous.
I like to approach this kind of problem by doing a daily debrief in every team I work with: we start the morning by planning the day and believing what is a concrete result for the day, and we close the day by packaging up all the work by committing it to the version control and thinking about what's coming next.
I usually debrief teams every day before teams' player is leaving the office at a fixed our 6.30PM. This lets individuals to relax a little bit, to focus on what is done and to focus on what can be done the next day. This kind of approach is a formal day closure where we brainstorm about the day. It's an informal event differently from the morning daily scrum where there is also the product owner, and it takes no more than 5 minutes each day but gives some benefits like:
- work less than 9 hours a day;
- stay focused during the day to achieve the daily milestone;
- be sure every day everyone can remove every unpleasant thing matured during the day in an informal way.
For me and every person inside the team, this is a good opportunity where all of us can realize the power of individuals from the group perspective and start thinking about each one. I see some thanks fly around only during this kind of informal meeting and, when thanks is a reputation system better than all those you can find around internet.
A daily based thanks opportunity is the best way to achieve self-esteem and then increase the reputation of each one in the team; the more a team is growing the more it increases the reputation of all the people inside it. Reputation is something that builds from small action and models the different attitudes of a person making her confident what the others are thinking about her.
The things I'm presenting here is one of the techniques I'm adopting to make individual to act as a team and to stay focused. This kind of tuning is mandatory to search a group personality and moreover to enrich individual personality. During this type of meetings I'm acting as a facilitator and not as a stakeholder or as a troubleshooter; my role is to help in maturing self-confidence about the work and to stay committed daily.
Team players know I'm not so good to help them, they see me only as a curious person that would like to share the day and to breath the same air: someone outside that can make a team member being a team and can bring fresh air and harmony inside.
I will continue more on the topic of a daily reputation in the next posts.






