So why don’t we recognize employees more?

As a manager, you want to keep these top performers and let them know about the great work they are doing.  Recognition motivates employees and gives them a sense of accomplishment.  They are more likely to do more and stay with the company. It’s also a way to show other employees what success looks like.

Giving recognition is easy and can be budget friendly.

3 Easy Ways to Recognize Employees:

1. Thank you cards with lapel pin

As an employee, I appreciated receiving a nice thank-you note from my manager or leader in the organization.  It was the simplest way to show appreciation and I felt great that they were noticing my work. I was making a difference and wanted to do more.

A modified version of a thank-you note is an appreciation card with a lapel pin.  The pin acts as a token of appreciation and can be worn on a lanyard with the employee’s badge, displayed at their desk, or put onto a laptop bag or backpack.  Here is one that Agile Inspirations offers on Amazon.

2. Recognition Wall (aka Big Ups or Snaps)

When my team had low-morale and felt a lack of recognition from the organization as a whole, I implemented a recognition wall, something I called ‘Big Ups’.  Big Ups was the motion of ‘raising the roof’ to show appreciation, something like ‘Snaps’ from the movie Legally Blonde.

Since the wall was highly visible, anyone who walked by the wall felt compelled to stop and read the kind words we had to thank and appreciate the good work being done.  This created more visibility into the team’s efforts and what they did day-to-day to make a difference.  Sometimes there was some humor sprinkled in for some additional fun and laughs.

Materials needed: a wall or whiteboard, sticky notes, and markers.

Have sticky notes and markers available for your team near a wall.  When someone sees another person on the team going above and beyond, increasing sales, saving an account, being proactive, etc., write a note of appreciation and post it on the wall.    For example, Anne mitigated a critical issue on a project and was proactive to fix the issue in a timely manner.  As a manager, you may not have known about this accomplishment, but Brian who sits next to Anne does and writes a sticky note and puts it on the wall.  Anne is recognized for her efforts that others may not have seen.

3. Awards for the next all-hands meeting

A higher visibility way to recognize employees is to implement certain awards such as Innovation, Leadership, Teamwork, Quality, Customer Focused, Above & Beyond, etc. or values aligned with the company.  This provides recognition to a larger audience.  For example, in one organization, teams worked in different locations and aligned with different business units.  Recognition at an all-hands was a great way to show appreciation for the teams across the organization.

An easy way is to send a survey using Survey Monkey or Google Forms and have employees nominate peers that they see demonstrating the values in each award and write a little blurb on why. After the deadline to submit nominations has passed, the results can be determined by popular vote or by management.  Carve out time in the next all-hands meeting to announce the winners.

The bonus is that there is feedback for all the other nominees and this can be shared later in a one-on-one meeting.  It’s also great to use for annual reviews.

Do you have other ways you recognized your peers or employees?  Let us know!

The post 3 easy, budget friendly ways to recognize employees appeared first on Agile Inspirations.

Exercise 1: Making a Fruit Salad

Your team has been tasked to make a fruit salad and these are the types of fruits that need to be cut and prepared:

• Pineapple
• Banana
• Grape
• Orange
• Strawberry

Compare these fruits and estimate the relative size of each fruit.  List from smallest size to largest size.

Talking points after the exercise:

• If the team was tasked to determine how long it would take to cut each fruit, would it have taken more time to estimate or not?
• If there are multiple teams doing this exercise, look at the result for each team, are they similar?
• Would it be easy to add another piece of fruit such as Apple to the list and be able to estimate the size?

Exercise 2: Animals

Compare and estimate the relative size of each of these animals using the Fibonacci series (0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55).  Guideline Dog = 2, Horse = 5.

• Lion
• Horse
• Cow
• Tiger
• Zebra
• Pig
• Elephant
• Rat
• Sheep
• Dog
• Snake

Talking points after the exercise:

• Were there disagreements on sizing and how did the team resolve them?
• Were some animals similar in sizing? Did the team use a technique to group animals of similar size together first and then determine the number in Fibonacci (size)?  If not, would this technique be useful?
• Would it be easy to add another animal such as Cat to the list and be able to estimate the size?
• If there are multiple teams doing this exercise, look at the result for each team, are they similar?

The post Agile Estimation Exercises for Your Team appeared first on Agile Inspirations.

Types of estimation

1. Time Estimation
   • This estimate is typically given as a unit of time (i.e. days or hours).
   • To get ‘accuracy,’ the team needs to get into the details, which could lead to a large amount of waste.
   • Different techniques: 3 Point Estimation, Top-Down Estimation, Bottoms-Up Estimation, Parametric Model Estimating
   • Typically done up-front for a project and done once.

2. Relative Estimation also known as Affinity Estimation
   • The estimate is based on a function of 3 factors: effort, complexity, risk.
   • Based on size or comparing and uses a value or point system such as:
     • Fibonacci: 0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89
     • Power of two: 0, 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128
     • T-shirt: XS, S, M, L, XL, XXL
   • Can be done quickly which reduces planning time.
   • Is done continuously throughout the project.

As humans, we’re typically better at comparing things than giving the amount of time something will take.  For example, in a team, team members will more likely agree on the size of something than agree on how much time something will take.  This is important in Scrum when the team needs to iterate rapidly and needs to adapt to changes. Relative Estimation is better because over time it produces more accurate estimates and release dates.

Relative Estimation

In Relative Estimation, the intended outcome is to quickly estimate stories as a team effort.  It is meant to drive conversations.  Note: It is NOT a commitment.  In the long-run, this technique becomes more accurate than time-based estimation as the team is estimating continuously and improving along the way.

In a scrum team, the estimations should be made by the team members doing the work, not by the people who want the work done.  The below highlights the different scrum roles and actions.

Product Owner:

• Available to clarify stories.
• Does NOT estimate.

Scrum Master:

• Facilitates the process.
• Does NOT estimate.

Team Members:

• Discuss stories and estimates the backlog.
• Estimates are forecasts NOT commitments.

Agile Estimation Strategy

When starting, the team members should agree to a baseline.  This can be done by taking one user story and assigning a value to it.  Then other user stories are compared to the baseline to determine if the size should be smaller, larger, or the same.

Here are two types of Agile estimating strategy:

1. Estimating stories individually (one-by-one)
   • Layout all of the user stories.
   • Team members should select one story to be the baseline and assign it a value.
   • Then each subsequent user story should be compared to the baseline to determine if the size is smaller, larger, or the same.

2. Estimating stories in groups
   • Layout all of the user stories.
   • Team members should group stories into similarly sized piles of related activity.
   • Then estimate size for each pile.
   • This is a fast way to estimate a large number of stories.

If your team is just starting out and wants to practice, try these Agile Estimation Exercises for Your Team.

To help with estimation, Agile planning cards can be purchased on Amazon here.

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