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DEFINITION OF DONE: HOW TO USE SCRUM ON HR

  Today, instead of talking about a concept or idea, I'll just put together an exercise on how we can do things differently. But of course before that I will put a picture of some inspiring painting. 

  I recently discovered the art of Egbert Van der Poel, I am a huge fan of the crudity of Francisco de Goya's painting and I accidentally stepped into the good Ol' Egbert, who lived a hundred years before Goya, wich surprised me. His work somehow reminds me of the Spanish's famous painter although there were more than a hundred years of difference between them.

  Particularly there is a painting in which after a restoration they have discovered a new part of it, I encourage you to read the whole story, I found it fascinating.

Barn Interior - Egbert Van der Poel / Collection of Calvin Colling, Grand Rapids, Michigan

  Now let's get to work. For this exercise I will lay out an hypothetical case of a Software Company (Dough Inc.) in which is necessary to create an appraisal management framework from zero. I will use SCRUM to distinguish needed phases that would be needed in the creation of an appraisal and talent&development management plan.

  Note that all the valuation has been based on ad-hoc estimations based solely on my own experience and it is intended to be solely illustrative for the main purpose of the exercise. I am aware the lacks of internal consistency and technicality issues in some of the facts of the whole exercise, but I would suggest this to be taken only as what it is: an example which would need to be reviewed in order someone is interested on its escalation (i’d be happy to help if this is the case, don’t hesitate contacting me).

  

Dough Inc.

Mission: Help to manage the money of our customers so they can live better.

Vission: Create a personal finance control environment so easy it looks like a game.

  Personal financing software company Dough, which has leaded the desktop personal financing software by its simplicity for the last 4 years has recently seem his business is suddenly threatened by the competency, who have migrated their products to the Mobile Market long before they have even considered doing it. Despite the mobile market, the company still has its leadership position strong in the desktop market as well as a well founded brand awareness. However it took too long to them to analyse and jump into the mobile platform and this is reducing their competitiveness exponentially.

They have also realised they have not taken advantage of their current cloud system (which was originally designed to sync app data between work and home computers) although it is totally finished and works seamlessly, unlike the services in their competitors. After a quick estimation they thing their team is enough capable of delivering an interesting mobile product in no longer than 4 months.

However, the Director’s Board has decided the time to create a structured appraisal and talent&development management framework has arrived. They want to start with the appraisals to decide the members of the team that will lead the new mobile division. Business Intelligence has estimated the new mobile division will be in charge of the 40% of the income in less than a year and 70% of the income in less than 3 years period, and D’sB has decided to grant only to top-performers and most engaged employees to join these new division. Only the ones whose attitude is more aligned to the company culture and values will have the chance to be part of the mobile team and its expected fast growing opportunities.

The company never has had a talent and development management framework because they did not consider it was something they needed (they only had a product which was working perfectly well and they were not considering any steps ahead of maintaining their leadership position). Nevertheless, now they have seen the perfect time to set it up.

The team will use the same methodology they use to develop their software to develop their development plan: SCRUM. In SCRUM there are three main roles: Product Owner, Scrum Master and Development Team.

In this case, the Development Team will be made up of 6 HR Specialists, the Scrum Master will be one of the Project Managers of Software Development (which has a wide experience on Scrum implementation and carrying out Scrum Master’s role), and the Product Owner role who will be held by the newly hired HR Development Expert.

There will be only 2 people left in the HR team which will be in charge of describing the necessary key positions in of the new mobile division, prior to the first RELEASE when will come the time start designing and organising the upcoming training for the managers and the rest of the team.

The SCRUM TEAM takes to commitment to have its first release for the end of the second week, delivering a tool with the required minimum consistency (according to the previously agreed Definition of Done) to start the work of implementation.

Because there is no previous history and velocity measures, all the SCRUM Team agrees they can accomplish 32 Story Points in each Sprint.

In the first Sprint Init meeting the SCRUM Team design together the Product Backlog.

User Story	Story Pts	Topic	I want to…	so I can…	Notes	Priority	Status
1	13	Initial Tools	… make an inventory of the workforce based on the person and position.	… balance the person/position ratio to its real need and identify the potential.	It will let us make a detailed analyse of needs that will be the foundations to the training plan.	High (Sprint1)
2	5	Initial Tools	… define the positions.	… control and identify possible unbalances between responsibilities and tasks.	It will let us know if there is duplicity and overloading in any positions.	High (Sprint1)
3	13	Initial Tools	… make a valuation and classification of the positions.	… measure the efficiency of the compensation plan.	It will be important to know what is the compensation line in the company so we can figure out how to transfer this into a totally new division.
4	5	Initial Tools	… make a valuation of the rewards in the competency and the market.	… evaluate the internal equity and the competitiveness.	It is important to set up mechanisms to prevent human capital flight particularly in a moment of such strategic significance.
5	13	KPI’s	… describe the KPI’s for every position and activity.	… analyze the results.	Only if we can measure our productivity we will be able to take steps to improve it	High (Sprint1)
6	40	Appraisal Design	… create a tool of annual reviewing that bears in mind not only individual or group performance of an employee but his cultural engagement with company values too.	… have a measurement tool for our team that can be used to determine different variables of growth and development.	Analize independently the different constructs in which are built and consider the performance as an addition of every one of these to get an statistically valid value.	High
7	20	Objective re-designing	… redefine the objectives of the positions with SMART criteria.	… deliver the leadership team a more optimised and measurable working environment.	We need to outline some principles, we need to set a wider framework with leadership’s contributions.
8	13	Follow-up Tools	… create tools to work with the improvement opportunities in a continuous basis.	… identify rapidly the weaknesses and be able to react soon.	Design tools fast and easy to work with.

  In the first Sprint Init meeting the SCRUM Team design together the Product Backlog.

  Once the SCRUM Team has built the Product Backlog, we take as startin point the items with highest priority to prepare the first Sprint on Sprint Planning meeting.

  Here is defined the project with 4 Sprints of 1 week each and with an agreed Release in the third week and a commitment of shipping the complete product at the end of the 4th week.

  This has been a quick example of how to implement SCRUM in HR. As I mentioned before there are some consistency gaps but I think its a valid example on how we can use the most advanced and innovative ways of production also into the HR field. The challenge is not on the process, the challenge is on getting creative in order to have the work done in the most agile way posible.

Written listening to "Grinderman - Grinderman 2" album (Rate:8,5/10)

HOW CAN EFFECTIVE LEADERSHIP CHANGE THINGS

How does a messy corporation look like?

- Divergence between areas. There are places where energy and resources are being explicitly wasted.

- There is confusion, every leader, manager, director has its own perspective of what is going on. The culture of rumor has installed and there is little or no information.

- The leadership and the employees are highly reactive, they respond adversely to any new event or occurrence.

- There is neither intention nor purpose and the topics, decisions and actions adrift from one scene to another.

How does a fine-looking corporation look like?

- United. Leaders have learned to debate and solve openly and maturely their conflict and disagreements.

- There is common strategies, objectives and a shared operational procedure.

- Corporation takes the initiative and acts over the competitive setting.

- Employees and leaders actively take part of the corporation and they are fully engaged with the objectives.

- A common purpose sense is shared throughout the company. There is progress.

  So the question is, what do we change in "messy corp" to become "fine-lookin' corp"? First of all, we need to focus on identifying the underlying problems. But don't panic, these use to be quite predictable. Normally there can be identified 5 behaviours that need to be changed: Divergence, Reaction, Apathy, Inactivity and Drift. The leadership need to turn this trends into others.

  Once we know what to do... how do we end up changing things? Here are some proposals to get this trends swapped.

- Turn Divergence into Solidarity: Provide a more consistent understanding of what is the situation for the company, invest resources making sure everyone is in line with the company's point of view.

- Turn Reaction into Initiative: Define a well landed strategy based on specifics. Clarify how the company is expected to achieve goals with the given resources.

- Turn Apathy into Proactivity: Inspire the members of your corporation to embrace the culture of effort and illusion for achieving goals.

- Turn Inactivity into Activity: Mobilize your people to transform their resources into means to achieve the goals. Set the right expectations, reach an agreement and harmonize collectively the objectives.

- Turn Drift into Purpose: Spread the sense of responsibility through managers and employees. Everytime its possible, make them part of the decision making and strategy design so the sense of belonging flourishes among them.

  Important Note: Leadership is not something that one person is, leadership is a process, a social dynamic which is shared in a given context in a given moment. So we should stop talking about leaders as individuals and start talking on situational leadership. To know more on this topic read the super comprehensive Hersey-Blanchard Situational Leadership Theory.

Written listening to "Mogwai - Kicking a Dead Pig" album (Rate:8,5/10)

MARSHMALLOW SUCCESS

  Even though everybody today is aware of the marshmallow challenge, I recently saw one of the most interesting TED videos on human productivity I have ever seen conducted by author Tom Wujec.


  For me one of the most interesting key concepts Mr. Wujec underlines in the video is the equation "Specialization Skills+Facilitation Skills=Success". But there is a even a more important thing hidden behind this equation:This two variables not always have to be a mixture of skills that need to be mastered by the same individual. What interests me of this all is how the designation of complementary roles in a team working environment leads collectively to success. In other words, this simple, even goofy, experiment is an example of collective leadership.

  Of course there are other variables such as time or reward pressure that deserve attention while studying this phenomena. However, it is also interesting to think how significant knowing your team's skills as fast as possible can ease the journey of success. 

  Just to end this quick, the main point in this activity is how allocating efficiently the human resource of your team, based on the advantage of the singularity of their individuals, leads to team success.


Written listening to "John Lee Hooker - Free Beer and Chicken" album (Rate:8,5/10)