My experiments with Surveys
Have you ever struggled with getting feedback from your agile teams? I have aways struggled getting any kind of feedback. Most of the time everyone wants to take the populous stand and say nice things or a mono syllable. Be it group discussions or 1:1 not everyone is open in sharing feedback, especially negative feedback.
Thats when I started experimenting surveys. I thought this way people feel a sense of pchyhologic safety to get actual feedback. Even there I struggled to get any kind of insights. I even had responses like “NA” simply because the text was mandatory and something had to be filled.
At the end of 2023 I decided to try a new approach to the way I formulated the surveys. I decided to launch a few surveys for my agile team to see how we were doing on our agile processes and what we should improve on. In the past when I used to launch these surveys I had just 3 questions on what were doing well, what we could improve, and what we needed to stop doing. All were descriptive fields. The response was very dismissive with very little feedback.
As I retrospected this time around I realised I took the easy path expecting the team would readily give me the answers that I need to take action. I need to make it more objective and specific so that its easy for the users to give feedback. I need to ask feedback on specific points, do the research and heavy lift to articulate the right questions for which I needed genuine feedback.
I will take the example of one of the surveys which was to do with Effectiveness of Daily Standup Meetings. The daily stand-up is a short, daily meeting to discuss progress and identify blockers. The reason it's called a “stand-up” is because if attendees participate while standing, the meeting should be kept short.
I lined up the following questions for the survey
On a scale of 1-5, how consistently do we start and end the Daily Standup Meetings on time?
Rate the level of participation and engagement during our Daily Standup Meetings.
To what extent do team members highlight and discuss blockers or impediments that are affecting their progress?
Do you believe the time allocated for each team member to provide updates is sufficient for meaningful communication without causing the meeting to be excessively long?
How well do the Daily Standup Meetings reinforce the team's understanding of the sprint goals and priorities?
Are the discussions during Daily Standup Meetings resulting in actionable insights or improvements for the team?
To what extent do you feel the Daily Standup Meetings encourage collaboration and communication among team members?
How effective do you find the facilitator in guiding the Daily Standup Meetings?
Do you think rotating the speaking order among team members adds value to the Daily Standup Meetings?
How well do we acknowledge and celebrate achievements or completed tasks during Daily Standup Meetings?
To what extent do Daily Standup Meetings provide insights into the workload distribution and potential areas of support needed within the team?
How often do team members reflect on how their daily work aligns with the sprint goals during the Daily Standup Meetings?
What specific suggestions do you have for making our Daily Standup Meetings more effective and beneficial for the team?
These questions are a mix of objective and subjective questions. I tried to tackle different areas liks participation, engagement, blockers, impediments, consistency, time management and facilitator’s effectiveness to name a few.
I am hoping this time around I might get some good response. I had launched it couple of week back and the survey closes next week. I launched similar surveys for other scrum ceremonies like sprint planning, sprint retrospective and sprint refinement
Next week I should be able to give a feedback on how the response has been like and whether this experiment was effective.
Please add in your comments on what strategies you have deployed to get feedback from your agile teams.
Surveys are great, but I did away with it post covid. I realized my connect with the team had dininished due to the lack of in person meetings. Since the last year or may be little more, my feedback gathering strategies morphed into in person retrospective meetings. Like a lunch and talk... At least in my case I have seen folks open up more at lunch tables :)