What is Visualisation of Work? This practice involves radiating and visually representing all aspects of work. Information that is useful to team members, stakeholders and users is physically presented on walls, windows, doors and other flat surfaces and positioned in the line of sight of those people who will get value from consuming the information. The “Information Radiator” is an artefact that is used to physically provide information to one or more people.

What is it? A burndown chart is a visualisation of work left to do within a specified time period. The remaining work (or backlog) is often on the vertical axis, with time along the horizontal. Teams often use burndown charts to track progress within fixed time periods (for example, Sprint Burndown charts). They can also be used to visualise progress for longer time periods and milestones (for example, Release Burndown charts).

What is it? Team Sentiment practices track the mood of a team and provide a mechanism for team members to rapidly feed back, either publically or anonymously, when their mood has changed. Why use a Team Sentiment pratice? Team sentiment practices enable problems to be identified, radiated and addressed early. They enable the team to quickly discuss where one or more team members is suddenly troubled by the direction their work is going and can also provide an information radiator to assess the overall team health and feeling.

What are they? Retrospectives provide opportunities for groups to reflect, inspect and adapt their ways of working. They often take place at the end of sprints but can be scheduled at any time. There are a myriad of types of retrospectives you can run with your team, and it’s good to mix things up to keep things from getting stale which leads to decline in involvement. You might run something like in the header image (The Heroes Journey), then maybe try this sailboat retro the next time:

What is it? The Social Contract is a simple, yet highly effective manner to enable team autonomy and self accountability for engagements. The Social Contract is created by and for the team. It looks to codify the behaviors and expectations of the team. It also provides a mechanism for the team to radiate and share its desired behaviours with management and other stakeholders. To effectively use this practice you should look to create the following outcomes:

What is it? A “Stop the World” event is when somebody on the Team identifies that the engagement is off-course for one reason or another. The FULL Team then works together to find a compromise that is acceptable to all and continues progress towards customer success. By the end of the “Stop the World” event, the team should: All be in agreement with the proposed compromise Identify actions or changes and owners Maintain good Psychological Safety1 among the Team Why use “Stop the World” events?