Week in Review #19

  • Monday - Kanban team member delivered impassioned plea for more support and communication from management. Spent a lot of time with a Udemy course on Excel, not something I ever thought I would need more than the basics for. It's nice to have so many resources available these days (harking back to a time when "learn this software" meant a trip to the bookstore... do they still publish "For Dummies" guides?). Had a meeting with one of the Kanban team's managers, intended to start addressing some of their systemic concerns; I think it went well. Met with the main audience for the sprint reports and discussed the intent behind the various charts and how we might provide more useful information. Very pleased with both meetings. Less pleased with what appears to be an abrupt partial about-face regarding the "reteaming" effort originally planned for next week. 
  • Tuesday - Met with an abbreviated set of the Kanban team. Psychological safety keeps coming back, so I guess the Agile Games theme this year is timely. Attempting to deal constructively with my anger and frustration over the Scrum team situation. Finished my first draft of an 'article' on the Managers & Leaders track for the Mob Programming conference, and messed around with the program grid and room assignments. Feels kinda weird - it's not as if I have any experience doing any of this - but when NvS asks me to do things, so I figure the least I can do is give it a shot. 
  • Wednesday - The hand of the reorg descended upon us. I knitted passive-aggressively and refused to take part in assigning people new cubicles, because apparently we can't even give them that shred of autonomy. I've fielded some complaints from team members, but overall the mood seems to be subdued (or possibly resigned). I am now supposed to be serving two teams as SM and two other teams as their documentation person, so we'll see how long I can keep up with that. Trying to keep my eyes on the end goal right now. 
  • Thursday - Make that three teams as Scrum Master. And two teams as a technical writer, one overlapping. Plus my Kanban team, although that was originally planned as a short-term engagement, and a few more weeks should see them at a point where I will transition off. This is ridiculous, given that all of our product groups are on the same sprint cadence. I can't be in four retrospective meetings on one day. However, I have asked that we keep the rosters as they are for now, rather than confuse everyone even more by shifting people around before we've even been introduced. 
  • Friday -Exhausting.

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