Ever see an episode of Kitchen Nightmares?
I enjoy watching the transformation and the methods to Gordon Ramsay’s madness (if you read last week’s blog, you’ll know I sometimes envy his approach).
There’s one thing you can almost always count on him to do: take the restaurant’s giant, inflated, multi-page menu and pare it down to just a few simple dishes within the chef’s specialty. Just one page. Focused.
Like those restaurants, teams want to do it all. Everything is the #1 priority. Everything must get done.
Their Sprint Goals read like a menu at the Cheesecake Factory: a list of everything under the sun.
Unlike the Cheesecake Factory (yes, I am a fan), the team’s menu probably isn’t working for them. The more they try to do, the less they get done.
Teams want to please their stakeholders by promising them everything and yet they’re doing the opposite: they’re losing their trust by not honoring their commitments.
And that’s where Agile Coaches come in.
We help them reflect on the impact of their current approach. We coach focusing on doing a few things really well together as a team.
And we facilitate taking the menu down to one page.
Photo by Monika Grabkowska on Unsplash