The Avengers “LEGOS”

We, Avengers team is “LEGOS” super fans!

First “Lego” - It is a real bricks toys

“Do you Lego fans know the feeling when you pick up a Lego brick, you see endless possibilities? That happens to me every night” John Comley once said and we agree.

Legos provide endless opportunities for us to learn. Every lesson includes grade-level accommodations that will allow us to scale the complexity of the activity up or down depending on the learning and experience. These activities also work to promote the development of the communication, collaboration, problem-solving, critical thinking and decision making.

Second “LEGO” - a.k.a Day Goal or Lepin 日拼 in Chinese

In particular, the team Daily Standup’s usual agenda of “What did you do yesterday? What are you doing today? What are you doing tomorrow?” became redundant and can be a boring affair. Also, everyone seems narrowly focused on their own tasks only, team members tend to ignore their teammates and what’s happened in the team.

To us the point of the daily standup is not to rattle off what you did yesterday, what you’re planning to do today and if you have any blockers. The point is to Decide, Strategize, and Plan, as a TEAM, what each of you can do to make this an awesome and productive day that helps you get closer to building something great.

What is the Day Goal?

• It’s a shared goal that applies to the entire team which aims to achieve by the end of the day.
• It’s a goal that would make team go home at the end of the day thinking they have had a productive and meaningful day.
• It’s a goal that create focus, facilitate teamwork, and provide the basis an effective daily standup meeting. Teams not just commit to individual stories; they commit to the daily goal.
• Daily goals that involve everyone’s work are by far the best but unfortunately that’s not always possible. If team can’t define a goal where everyone is hands-on involved we are pragmatic about it and just pick the most important thing to be complete for the day.

Examples of daily goals are:

• Getting user story X, Y done
• Release feature Z
• Ready the BDD or test cases for feature B
• Clear off “Testing” column
• Remove the impediment A and so on…

Why does it work?

• It offers the team focus. The daily goal focuses the team while allowing it maximum flexibility to self-organize afresh around the day’s work. The team hold each other accountable for achieving their daily commitments. They gains an excellent understanding of what has been done and what work remains.
• It helps team practice collaborating towards a shared goal and to gather feedback on team collaboration more frequently. If the team can’t define a shared goal, it’s a good idea to review and strategize the daily plan again. Matching the daily goal isn’t mandatory, but it can be used as an indicator that someone isn’t doing the right tasks.
• It stimulates cooperation, collaboration and teamwork. When a team member has a problem, other team members can help them. If an impediment gets in the team’s way, they can raise awareness about the impediment and get it removed.

• It supports the team in setting small realistic goals that can be reviewed daily. The daily goal keep the team’s efforts aligned with the company’s strategic goals. Daily goals show the progress we’re making towards completing the work.

• It helps to increase the visibility on the team progress to other people who might be interested in the project.

How does it work?

• Define the daily goal either at the beginning or at the end of the daily standup. Make sure that the goal is aspirational and not just a list of individual tasks, and we can determine at the end of the day whether we have achieved it or not.

• Make the daily goal visible to anyone on the floor what the focus and reminder is for the day. We put our day goal in a special place on our working area as a reminder during the day. Then, we start our standups by assessing whether we have achieved yesterday’s goal and put a visible check or cross on the sticky note before placing it on the past timeline.

• The daily goal is the most important thing for the day. The team can have a ground rule or agreements that every team members should have a self-awareness, a sense of purpose and achievement to divert their efforts towards achieving the daily goal. Also, the whole team has responsibility for identifying risks and developing mitigation strategies.

• Start less, finish more and limit the daily goals WIP. Our team is probably somewhere between two and three maximum. The small daily goals for a team are good for the focus, attention and team spirit.

How is Avengers “日拼 LEGO” board?

Let’s play and build your “LEGO” today! We wish you fun.