How Diversity Challenged Me to Be Innovative as Test Team Leader (W5)

[Nathalie]

A discussion forum in extension to my track on Wednesday 11:00 (or maybe leading up to…?).

The track is wrapped around three main topics which were to change the team, the individuals in it, the organisation and also me…:
– motivate / stimulate
– guidance
– challenging

You will hear about the challenges I encountered by guiding 15 diverse individuals, besides staying those individuals, to become 1 team and to have the organisation perceive them as such. About Learning with lollypops, leaflets on the coffee machine, knowledge sessions, grabbaball and ‘ on the wall’ as ways to bring both the fun back in work as to provide a low-cost way to share knowledge and learn.
Especially those latter are brilliant to share in this forum-topic, so we can benefit from them all…
(I’ll will share mine, after the track, so there’s something to attend my track for 😉 )

[Kim]

I really enjoyed the different techniques.
I may have to try the whiteboard of wisdom and sweets jar!

How do you deal with other members of the business wanting to join in? We share a floor with a v different part of the business so it may get awkward.

I have just started to bring in cake on a regular basis fro sprint retrospectives. So if you take part you get to eat cake. 🙂

[Nathalie]

Hi Kim,
Thanks! *handing over a lolly*
I found out it really helps explaining what it is you do and why. You can also extend the invite…
And guess what!? : after some initial giggles (stick with it!) they will join when they see it works and gives energy!
Hope this helps!

[Kim]

So after a few months I think I am now going to introduce the sweet jar.

I want it to be a positive experience and keep a Q&A page in our wiki regarding which questions are in the jar and which can give you a sweet.

Did you find that lollies worked best or chocolate or a variety?

[Kim]

I am finally going to give the sweets box with questions and answers a go and will post how it went.

We are a smallish dev team of about 25 people.

My version of this will be to have box of sweets and chocolates (wrapped/air tight containers that people can take from if they ask or answer a question.
As it is all open plan and I am in meetings a lot I am setting a couple of simple rules:
1. Be clean
2. Be informative/helpful
3. If there are 4 open questions you have to answer one before asking a new one

Do you think this is too over the top? Should everyone just be able to ask questions and I can set a limit if it gets out of hand?

I then will document the questions and answers on our wiki page so everyone can learn from the questions.

I am really excited about this. Has anyone else tried it?

[Author]

Posts