Before I dive into the metaphysical and how it relates to ceremony cadence, please answer the following question:
When do you like to work out? In the morning, afternoon, or evening? Or do you like to integrate your workouts into your day like many people I know who ride their bikes to work?
Almost everyone has an opinion on this, but interestingly, when you listen to their responses, it is common to hear something like, “I like working out in the morning because it just fits better with the flow of my day,” or “I like working out after work because it clears my mind of work worries and saves me time because I don’t have to fight traffic,” or “It just works better with the natural cadence of my day.”
Although admittedly primitive examples, these responses touch on Wu Wei. Wu Wei refers to a Taoist concept of “effortless action.”
I like to keep my blogs pragmatic, so without drifting into the spiritual, cultural, or religious areas of this concept too deeply, we know natural flows exist everywhere. Unfortunately, we mostly notice them only when we’re working against the natural flow and feel the most resistance.
Ceremony cadence is a fantastic example of where you can capture a lot of efficiency if you can work into the natural flow of the organization. Like humans, every organization has a flow, or “heartbeat.”
I will review some specifics, but I challenge you to find as many of these flows as you can and align with them as much as possible.
Side Note: In a future blog, I will talk about stepping into the current. It is a similar concept, but instead of relying on existing flows, you create your own current like a stream creates its own path over time.
Definitions:
Cadence: In a business or project-management context, cadence refers to the pattern or schedule of regular meetings, project updates, and other recurring events. Establishing a consistent cadence helps maintain a rhythm in business operations, ensuring regular communication and progress assessment.
Taoism: Taoism, also known as Daoism, is an ancient philosophical and religious tradition that originated in China over 2,000 years ago. It is centered around the Tao (or Dao), often translated as “the Way,” which is a concept fundamental to Chinese cultural and religious thought. Taoism emphasizes living in harmony with the Tao, a principle that signifies the underlying natural order of the universe.
Wu Wei: This is an important Taoist concept meaning “non-action” or “effortless action.” It doesn’t imply inactivity but rather taking action in accordance with the Tao, which means acting naturally and spontaneously, allowing things to evolve in their own way without forcing or struggling against them.
Ceremonies: Agile ceremonies are structured meetings essential to the Agile project-management methodology, particularly in the Scrum framework. These ceremonies are designed to organize the work, plan and review progress, and adapt as needed. Here are the key Agile ceremonies:
o Sprint Planning: This is the kickoff meeting for the Sprint. The team selects items from the product backlog to work on during the Sprint. The goal is to clarify what can be delivered in a Sprint and how that work will be achieved.
o Daily Stand-Up (or Daily Scrum): This is a short, daily meeting, typically lasting no longer than 15 minutes, where team members discuss what they worked on the previous day, what they will work on today, and identify any blockers or issues.
o Sprint Review: At the end of a Sprint, this meeting is held to review the completed work as well as the work that was not completed. Stakeholders and the team discuss what was done and obtain feedback to incorporate in the next Sprint.
o Sprint Retrospective: This ceremony happens after the Sprint review and before the next Sprint planning. The team reflects on the past Sprint and discusses what went well, what could be improved, and what actions will be taken to make the next one more productive and enjoyable. o Backlog Refinement (or Grooming): Although not always considered a formal ceremony, this is an ongoing process where the product backlog items are reviewed and revised. It is a collaborative discussion involving the product owner and the team to ensure readiness for future Sprints.
Going from Suck to Awesome
Suck – Going against the grain of an organization. Being out of sync at multiple levels and being forced to replan work because of it.
Sucks a little less – Being in sync with some parts of the organization but not all of the areas that impact the team. Getting stuck in the middle of misaligned initiatives that can be executed but take longer than necessary because your team’s work is not in the same cadence as the organization.
Awesome – Lack of stress or project rework because the team is in the natural flow (cadence) of the organization. Work may be challenging, but it makes sense in the bigger picture of how the company is working and what the company is working on.
Creating Ceremony Cadence to Flow with the Company
Within the Team vs. Within the Organization
There are two different cadences the team should try to align.
First, the team has its internal cadence, which is determined by the scheduling of its ceremonies.
Second, the company has its cadence. The company has different macro-planning cycles. For example, the marketing team may get together each week and plan new sales and offers. If the Sprint team plans its work on Monday, and on Tuesday, the marketing department gets together to plan the offers for the week, the Sprint team will most likely have to replan. (More on this later.)
Although it sounds awkward, I suggest first having the team get their cadence in order, so they have a feeling for the ceremonies and their flow. Then analyze the company’s cadence. Then have the team move the days of their ceremonies as needed.
It sounds cumbersome, but in general, this approach has worked the best for me because the team really works to optimize and remove unneeded friction points.
Attributes You Have Control Over
Knowing what aspects you have control over is an important first step to creating flow in your ceremony cadence. For example:
● Choosing which ceremonies the team adopts
I would save some time with experimentation and do what so many other successful teams have done: adopt all the main ceremonies.
There are some articles on additional ceremonies or additional processes within the ceremonies that advanced teams may adopt over time.
● The length of ceremonies
Given today’s calendar-driven work culture, I suggest timeboxing all ceremonies. For example, you may schedule 30 minutes for your daily stand-up.
I would schedule in 30-minute blocks even if you typically take only 15 minutes. This way, team members won’t get stressed if something complicated comes up because they could miss other meetings.
● The order of ceremonies
Notwithstanding the daily stand-up, as it occurs every day, in larger companies, I prefer having the ceremonies in the following order:
o End the Sprint during the stand-up
o Do the demo with stakeholders
o Have the retro
o Then plan
This order allows a stakeholder to object and hold a feature from going to production. The team can then plan with what they’ve learned during the demonstration. Typically, larger companies have more structure and more stakeholders, so this happens more frequently than in smaller companies.
In smaller companies, I prefer implementing the following order:
o End the Sprint during the stand-up
o Have the retro
o Then plan
In many cases, I have the demo on a different day because the pace at smaller companies can be quicker, and stacking so many meetings can become an issue. It is also more likely that official Product Owner and Scrum Master roles don’t exist as full-time positions, so the team also has to deal with some inefficiencies.
Each team is different, but in general, gaps between the end of the Sprint and the beginning of the next Sprint are bad. [See the Mind the Gap section below.] It’s ideal to get the close of one Sprint and the beginning of the next Sprint as close together as possible.
● The format of the ceremonies
Self-organizing teams will modify the format of their ceremonies over time. Teams start very, very simple, and as they mature, they take on more commitments to processes and outcomes.
At a minimum, have an agreed-upon definition of each ceremony and what main steps are going to be followed. Many teams have an actual checklist they work through.
● Calendaring of ceremonies
I prefer keeping the times static. For example, it is much easier to remember that the stand-up occurs every day at 10 a.m. vs. a different time each day.
Schedule the ceremonies as recurring events. Nothing is more frustrating than team members getting pulled from meetings or missing ceremonies. Make it as easy as possible for team members to show up. Don’t do silly things like schedule meetings at 5 p.m. on Friday when your company has random but frequent company get-togethers on Fridays.
Schedule the meetings at weekly intervals. For example, every Thursday is when we plan. Don’t plan every ten days. Work is way too hectic to have complex intervals that don’t occur on an easy-to-remember schedule.
● Who attends which ceremonies
The same people should attend each ceremony every time. The only exception being that demos may include different stakeholders based on the functionality being released. Even then, I would start with inviting everyone to the demo and letting people opt out vs. trying to coordinate different attendees each Sprint.
Some Basic Ceremony Cadence Guidelines
Every team is different, just like every car you drive is different, but just like the expectation of having an accelerator, a steering wheel, and signals in your vehicle, every team should have some basic patterns around timing, such as:
o Stand-ups
Held every day at the same time OR at least held on a frequent basis at the same time every day.
The whole team attends.
A regular process of something similar to “What you did,” “What you are going to do,” and “Are there any impediments.”
o Retrospectives
Held at the end or near the end of each Sprint OR at least regularly at the end of the Sprint.
A high level of trust so actual improvements can be brought up.
o Planning
Held before the Sprint begins. It is hard to break this rule with Scrum because otherwise Sprint planning isn’t very effective.
Estimation of some sort is done during the planning process.
o Demo
Held frequently after the Sprint is completed OR at least regularly after the work has been completed.
The team attends or has access to the recording of the demo.
o Grooming
Held frequently.
Enough grooming is done proactively to make planning effective.
Done continuously but at least one explicit grooming session is done before each Sprint.
Some Advanced Ceremony Cadence Guidelines
It is important for the team to determine the nuance of their cadence. The nuance is what makes a team’s cadence theirs. The team cadence should be congruent with the company cadence so unneeded friction isn’t created.
For logistical reasons, it is better to have retrospectives before the planning begins. Initially, participation may be limited, but as the team gains trust over time, you will need to timebox the retrospectives so they don’t monopolize all the time allocated for ceremonies.
I personally like to have stand-ups every day because it is an efficient and effective way for the team to make micro-adjustments in their daily work. I have worked with teams that have stand-ups two times a day (not the norm) because they are going really fast and have so many changes within a day. I have also worked with teams that only have stand-ups three or four times a week because their work is very consistent and requires less synchronization.
When working with overseas teams, sometimes having stand-ups four days a week works better because, depending on the geographical location, it allows both teams to have the weekend off.
Mind the Gap: It is best to have as little time as possible between the end of the current Sprint and the beginning of the next Sprint. Issues arise with the undefined and unplanned time between the end and start of two Sprints, so minimize it.
For example, let’s say you ended a Sprint on Friday and started the next Sprint on Monday. What if a person wants to work over the weekend or ends up working late Friday night after a Sprint ended? Where is that effort counted? What does the person work on?
Sometimes, when straddling a large time zone, such as between the U.S. and India, and your demo is one day and the planning is the next day, try to reduce the gap for as many developers as possible.
Product Owners and Scrum Masters should have fewer issues with the gap than developers, so keep that in mind if your roles are split between time zones.
On the question of what days are best to hold ceremonies, the team should decide. In my experience, I’ve found it takes a little bit of time for teams to settle in. There are only so many ways to slice the days of the week up, but in general, some teams like starting their week with planning first thing on Monday, while other teams are “cleaning up” from weekend issues and can’t focus on planning on a Monday. Most U.S. holidays fall on Monday or Friday, so keep that in mind. [See Holiday, Holidays, Holidays blog.]
Should you start the next Sprint (hold a spot) before finishing the last? I would advise against having more than one Sprint open for any one team at any one time. [See Preplanning a Sprint for some ideas on preparation.] Most tools now support the concept of keeping more than one Sprint open at a time, but the overhead is high and usually not worth the effort.
If one of the ceremonies isn’t working, don’t cancel it; refine it. Teams are tempted to save time by removing meetings, but all the ceremonies serve a purpose, so keep them all.
Initially, teams couple releases to Sprints, and in many cases, it really helps organize the team and work. At some point, though, that coupling just feels like a queue and can create artificial bottlenecks for no good reason. So, decouple software releases from Sprint boundaries.
Where S = a Sprint and R = a Release, the following patterns occur as the team optimizes:
Initially: S1, S2, R
Optimization 1: S1, R1, S2, R2
Optimization 2: S1, R1, R2, S2, R3, R4
Final Optimization: S1, R1, R2, R3, R4, R5, S2, R6, R7, R8, …
When teams take DevOps seriously, releases move from a detached state to a state of flow where they are always happening, maybe many times throughout the day. There is always friction to adopting continual releases, but the friction usually originates from not having automated processes in place, including automated testing. [More on this in future blog posts.]
Conclusion
In conclusion, you can interweave the principles of Agile methodology with the Taoist concept of Wu Wei, offering a unique and effective approach to enhancing efficiency in organizational settings.
The emphasis on aligning team ceremony cadence with the natural flow of the company provides practical and insightful guidance for optimizing team dynamics and project management.
This approach, which combines traditional business practices with a pragmatic understanding of a company’s natural flow, presents a fresh perspective on managing work rhythms. It highlights the importance of synchronization between the team and the company at large in project success, advocating for understanding and integration into the organization’s natural rhythm.
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