In one of the last retrospectives a team member complained about the “not very sexy” tasks the team had to do. Well, we all know that life is not all beer and skittles. Nevertheless I think, the team member was actually pointing out, that the “sexiness” of tasks can have impact on the general motivation of the team, of course. That’s why I was introducing the “sexy <> not-so-sexy” activity in the last retrospective. (As this idea originated in the team member’s comment I also call it “The Thomas S. Approach”. 🙂 )
In general, the team’s job is split in tasks on a support level (approx. 65%) and project tasks on a product development level (rest of their time). The team is working with a Kanban system and is using several Scrum ceremonies (regular retrospectives, review meetings, agile estimation for project tasks etc.).
The “sexy <> not-so-sexy” activity fits perfectly in between the check-in (“Setting the stage”) and “Gather Data” activities and is as easy as this:
1) Prepare a chart that shows a line between “sexy” and “not-so-sexy”.
2) Put all “done” tasks on the table and let the team stick them on the line accoring to the task’s “sexiness”.
3) Discuss (“Any suprises? Any patterns?”)
Why I think this acitivity works:
- The team is reviewing their finished tasks while sticking it to the flipchart. (Reflection: “Cool, we have done quite a lot.”)
- The team is re-evaluating the tasks. (Reflection: “Wow. That was a cool task.” or “I really hated that task.”)
- The PO (Note: The team decided to have their retrospective with the PO.) realizes that different tasks can have different motivation.
Of course, the activity also shows the big gap between doing tasks that have value (“sexy”) and tasks that are simply stupid mechanics (“not-so-sexy”). Team members are aware of that. And it does have impact on the motivation if you are only doing “not-so-sexy” tasks.
As there will always be “not-so-sexy” tasks: Maybe there is a way to morph “not-so-sexy” tasks into “sexy” tasks? Any suggenstions?
UPDATE FEBRUARY 2013
The activity has been refinded after discussing it with one of the team members. He pointed out, that value is more “valuable” than sexiness. As a consequence I added the value dimension to the chart.
