For a team to perform at the highest level they need the right culture.
Too many teams focus on Agile rituals (like story points and burndown charts) without understanding Agile principles (like self-organising teams, fast feedback and delighting customers).
I believe that every team deserves an experienced coach. To help with this i’m creating an AI product to coach Modern Agile and Lean Startup principles.
I call it Zenboard. (Demo here).
Here are a couple of examples of what it does…
1. If there is too much work in progress then Zenboard will suggest that you help with that before starting something new.
2. If you start work on a card and it has no details then Zenboard might say, “Not clear what’s required? Conversation beats documentation”.
The secret sauce
1. Create good habits. A key driver of habits is variable rewards. Zenboard embodies variable rewards by sometimes giving simple praise (Good work!), sometimes giving a nudge (How can you get user feedback for this?), and sometimes staying quiet.
2. Timing matters. People are most open to nudges when they are at a pause point, such as having just moved a card into “In progress”.
3. Context matters. Different nudges are relevant depending on wether a card has just been created or is just being moved to “Done”, for example.
4. Conversations matter. We prompt face-to-face conversations where possible. We want people immersed in the team, not the tool.
5. Not just text. Pictures and memes have more impact than just text.
The future
This is just the start. We have big plans to improve our AI coaching!
What do you think? Leave a comment below.
To get started with Zenboard visit our Github page.