<\/p>\n
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, there was a development team with the mission to liberate the true value of content in the entertainment industry by empowering artists and composers with solutions that optimized the monetization of their assets. The battle against the complexity of the music industry was fierce. The team was constantly getting hit through the refinement process of its development initiatives.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The refinement meeting seemed like a standardized procedure. But the team unconsciously followed many antipatterns. The meeting had become a\u00a0requirements announcement event instead of a working session<\/strong>. This caused an\u00a0increased knowledge gap<\/strong>,\u00a0lack of challenge<\/strong>, and a\u00a0reduction in ownership<\/strong>. The meeting was not tailored to the purpose it was supposed to serve. This resulted in\u00a0unidimensional focus<\/strong>\u00a0(either business or tech),\u00a0lack of participation<\/strong>,\u00a0demotivation<\/strong>, and\u00a0low morale<\/strong>.\u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n To address the aforementioned issues, the team decided to strike back at these tendencies. They created a new epic refinement structure by:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n The objective of this meeting, which is inspired by the 3 amigos perspective check, is to\u00a0reduce feelings of uncertainty and disconnection towards an unknown work item\u00a0<\/strong>and\u00a0save the team\u2019s time later,<\/strong>\u00a0by proactively answering high-level questions and doing a feasibility check.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n This is a pre-refinement slot in which\u00a0participants opt-in<\/strong>\u00a0to act as ambassadors of the epic for the rest of the team. Ambassadors are the point of reference when the high-level tech conversation of the epic\u2019s refinement comes to technical requirements or spontaneous peer questions. The ambassadors will assist the team to focus on the business-oriented discussion by instantly answering any technical question or addressing the team\u2019s uncertainty.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n The objective of this part is to present a new work item to the team, cater to the\u00a0value-based debate<\/strong>, and\u00a0enhance active participation<\/strong>\u00a0in later stages of the refinement.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n During this phase, the entire team faces a new work item. It is the\u00a0mechanism that ensures the business-oriented challenge<\/strong>\u00a0of the proposed solution\u2019s value. At last, the team members are called to voluntarily formulate pairs to further analyze the assigned stories asynchronously and offline.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n The objective of this activity is to\u00a0increase ownership<\/strong>\u00a0and improve the quality of work by providing an already ready-to-be-reviewed proposed solution.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Now the team, in pairs,\u00a0dives into the details of a ticket\u00a0<\/strong>without the anti-patterns of large group discussions, like peer\/time pressure, authority, and anchoring bias. The offline and asynchronous activity improves the quality of the proposed solution and its value. This allows the team to design a high-level tech approach, identify dependencies, define spikes on unknown items and proactively resolve possible roadblocks in the process.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n The objective of this part of the journey is to\u00a0validate the quality of\u00a0<\/strong>the refinement outcome while it\u00a0reduces the knowledge gap<\/strong>\u00a0on new items and\u00a0increases participation<\/strong>\u00a0in the process.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n During this slot, the team\u00a0splits into parallel working groups.\u00a0<\/strong>Each group consists of a member that defined the initial solution during the Jedi apprenticeship and one reviewer, who is not a member of the initial design pair. The outcome of this ritual is a fully completed user story, for which the team can confidently estimate effort.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n The objective of this part is to\u00a0increase awareness across the team<\/strong>\u00a0and validate that the working items have all the necessary information to be developed.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n During this slot, the working groups are merged to share the outcome of the process, validate each item\u2019s estimation and declare as\u00a0\u201cReady for Development\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0the working items.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Every era brings its challenges, but the one thing that never changes is\u00a0people<\/strong>. As in the refinement process, the team\u2019s traits will be further analyzed to design new working habits in other dimensions that apply to human-centered needs and principles. Otherwise, people will ignore mechanisms that ignore people.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMuch to learn you still have\u2026my old padawan. This is just the beginning!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Yoda<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, there was a development team with the mission to liberate the true value of content in the entertainment industry by empowering artists and composers with solutions that optimized the monetization of their assets. The battle against the complexity of the music industry was fierce. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":91,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asynadinos.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asynadinos.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asynadinos.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asynadinos.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asynadinos.gr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.asynadinos.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":93,"href":"https:\/\/www.asynadinos.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49\/revisions\/93"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asynadinos.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/91"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asynadinos.gr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asynadinos.gr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asynadinos.gr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
Epic ambassadors<\/h3>\n
Target<\/strong><\/h4>\n
What<\/strong><\/h4>\n
High Council Chamber<\/h3>\n
Target<\/strong><\/h4>\n
What<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Jedi Apprenticeship<\/h3>\n
Target<\/strong><\/h4>\n
What<\/strong><\/h4>\n
The mirror war<\/h3>\n
Target<\/strong><\/h4>\n
What<\/strong><\/h4>\n
The rise of an epic<\/h3>\n
Target<\/strong><\/h4>\n
What<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Future endeavors<\/h2>\n
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