Visualizing communication (or lack of)

[Yves Hanoulle]

Hi,

In a distributed team I am coaching, we realized that a lot of communications are promissed  and they don't happen.

That could be either inside the team as with other teams.

It reminded me of what we have in GTD (getting things done) @WaitingFor

Basically there when you ask something to someone, you writ on a card (or i your GTD system) that you are still waiting on an answer from X

For me, when I started GTD, using @WaitingFor was really helpfull.

I said I would help the team to make these promisses visible.

My current best idea is to make a conversation board.

How would you visualize this?

Yves

[Cuan Mulligan]

Hi Yves, 

Is the point of the card / marker / call to action reminder, to remind the person who asked, the person who needs to respond, between the 2 people, or to the team that there is an outstanding communication ?

Just that I feel there could be a different solution for each scenario...

Lets play with this a little..

If I ask you  something...

• then to remind me, perhaps a simple marker on my desk, or work area
• to remind you, thats a challenge, as your not near me, so how will you create a marker or why would you ?
• if its between the both of us, perhaps some recurring digital reminder
• if its for the team, maybe put two same coloured markers on the board between us ? 

Just a starter for ten...

C
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[Doc List]

It also sounds like both Personal Kanban and a team Kanban for commitments. This could be (probably should be) completely separate from the card wall/Kanban wall for the project, but still visible. Perhaps even covered in the/a daily standup.

Using Kanban allows team members to focus on only the highest priority item at any given moment, but to respond to unexpected priorities.

Doc

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[Yves Hanoulle]

2012/9/21 Doc List <d...@anotherthought.com>

It also sounds like both Personal Kanban and a team Kanban for commitments.

yes. That is why I can't imagine that we are the first that have this problem.

 

This could be (probably should be) completely separate from the card wall/Kanban wall for the project, but still visible. Perhaps even covered in the/a daily standup.

probably yes.

Using Kanban allows team members to focus on only the highest priority item at any given moment, but to respond to unexpected priorities.

I have now created already a board with one column per team mamber and a converscard  

[Yves Hanoulle]

oeps send while typing....

2012/9/21 Yves Hanoulle <Yv...@paircoaching.net>

2012/9/21 Doc List <d...@anotherthought.com>

It also sounds like both Personal Kanban and a team Kanban for commitments.

 

yes. That is why I can't imagine that we are the first that have this problem.

 

This could be (probably should be) completely separate from the card wall/Kanban wall for the project, but still visible. Perhaps even covered in the/a daily standup.

 

probably yes.

Using Kanban allows team members to focus on only the highest priority item at any given moment, but to respond to unexpected priorities.

 

I have now created already a board with one column per team member and a conversation card  per topic

I have been thinking about also creating a row per memembe ran dputting the card at the cross of both.

or playing with colored magnet's.

I'm hoping on more idea's on how to deal with this

and yes I first do this on a whiteboard so I can see what' happening, before I handle this digitally

some of these things could turn into impediments, yet yesterday I started to record all of these and there is an enourmous amount of them, and the word impediment would be to strong for 80% of them 

and the other 20% will only turn into an impediment in a week or 2.

(and with the visibility I want to avoid that ;-) )

[Yves Hanoulle]

2012/9/21 Cuan Mulligan <cuan.m...@gmail.com>

Hi Yves, 

Is the point of the card / marker / call to action reminder, to remind the person who asked, the person who needs to respond, between the 2 people, or to the team that there is an outstanding communication ?

all of them.

with the idea : the team can help the team members to keep their promiss

Just that I feel there could be a different solution for each scenario...

true. I don't want to limit the options (still brainstorming here) 

 

Lets play with this a little..

If I ask you  something...

• then to remind me, perhaps a simple marker on my desk, or work area

I gave personal post it's to every one who promissed 

• to remind you, thats a challenge, as your not near me, so how will you create a marker or why would you ?

as this started at a startup where we were all together (yes our team meets for closure startup's) , I gave the other person also a post it

• if its between the both of us, perhaps some recurring digital reminder

say more

 

• if its for the team, maybe put two same coloured markers on the board between us ? 

I created a board to have a copy of the post it's.

(yes a lot of post it's, but I want to start and improve (I don't want to wait untill I have the perfect solution)

Just a starter for ten...

please keep them comming

[Cuan Mulligan]

• if its between the both of us, perhaps some recurring digital reminder

say more

in a previous life we created a reminder tool, that we set a limit on, lets say 3 days..then it would pop up a reminder every X hours, and the gap would reduce, and in essence get more annoying until we canceled it...

The concept was a good one, however the implementation came across as aggressive and people ended up gaming it...

C

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"The value of experimentation is not the trying - it's the trying again after the experiment fails."

[Doc List]

2012/9/21 Cuan Mulligan <cuan.m...@gmail.com>

Lets play with this a little..

If I ask you  something...

• then to remind me, perhaps a simple marker on my desk, or work area

I gave personal post it's to every one who promised 

• to remind you, thats a challenge, as your not near me, so how will you create a marker or why would you ?

as this started at a startup where we were all together (yes our team meets for closure startup's) , I gave the other person also a post it

The challenge I have with these (this point and the one above) is that it goes counter to the team-oriented nature of what we do. I live visibility and transparency. If something goes on my desk, then it's no more visible (or effective) than counting on me to put it on my to-do list.

[Yves Hanoulle]

>it goes counter to the team-oriented nature of what we do.

I agree

yet it is a problem and I am looking for ways to help, without taking over their responsibility.(which is a big risk)

that's why I ask for help and look for better idea's.

y

2012/9/21 Doc List <d...@anotherthought.com>

[Doc List]

I absolutely get that, Yves. The value I find in the visibility and transparency is that team members can support and assist each other, as well as hold each other accountable. 

If we can avoid or get past the defensiveness that comes in response to the question "Is there anything anyone else can do to help you?", it becomes amazingly welcome and empowering.

Doc

[Alfred Almendra]

Hi,

Perhaps (never tried it) you can use those 2 axis on your board :
 - requesters (vertically) : filled with team members names
 - contact-people (horizontally) : also filled with team members names, and anybody else contacted by the team

Each requester puts and removes notes on his or her line.
A note could simply own a question (or identification) and a creation date (or last message date).

This could bring out an underlying cause, while a reminder handles one single note at a time.

Overloaded people for instance, or people not focused on the same goal :
 - a full or supplied line could mean the team member needs pairing for a while (and not only separate answers), or the point he's working on needs to be parsed by the whole group.
 - a full or supplied column could mean the contact-person is focused on other priorities, or needs backing.

I hope it can help you find a suitable solution.

Alfred

Yves

[Yves Hanoulle]

I like that.

2012/9/21 Alfred Almendra <alfred....@gmail.com>

Hi,

Perhaps (never tried it) you can use those 2 axis on your board :
 - requesters (vertically) : filled with team members names
 - contact-people (horizontally) : also filled with team members names, and anybody else contacted by the team

Each requester puts and removes notes on his or her line.
A note could simply own a question (or identification) and a creation date (or last message date).

This could bring out an underlying cause, while a reminder handles one single note at a time.

I don' understand. Please say more.

 

Overloaded people for instance, or people not focused on the same goal :
 - a full or supplied line could mean the team member needs pairing for a while (and not only separate answers), or the point he's working on needs to be parsed by the whole group

great insight

 

.
 - a full or supplied column could mean the contact-person is focused on other priorities, or needs backing.

 

I hope it can help you find a suitable solution.

yes it does great idea's.

[Michael Dubakov]

Here is how I see it. Sticking a new card for every delay's day will have a psychological impact and will force people to keep promises. Or maybe not :)

@mdubakov

http://www.targetprocess.com/3

[Yves Hanoulle]

wow. Michael, very simple and powerful.

You are a genius

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2012/9/21 Michael Dubakov <mdub...@gmail.com>

[Alfred Almendra]

This could bring out an underlying cause, while a reminder handles one single note at a time.
I don' understand. Please say more.

Sorry, was not clear.
For sure, a reminder contains many questions to be answered. It shows who and why you're waiting for.
Adding an other dimension (contact-people) can shows an underlying cause information : someone asking too many questions, or someone that should manage too many questions.

[Yves Hanoulle]

Thank you. Apparently I did understand, but did nor realisme it :-)

Scrambled by my Yphone

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