I believe that communities exist as homes for professionals to learn, teach, and reflect on their work.

I challenge each community in the software industry to:

* reflect and honor the practitioners who make its existence possible;
* provide an excellent experience for its members;
* support the excellent experience its members provide for their clients and colleagues in all aspects of their professional interactions;
* exemplify, as a body, the professional and humane behavior of its members;
* engage and collaborate within and across communities through respectful exploration of diverse and divergent insights;
* embrace newcomers to the community openly and to celebrate ongoing journeys; and
* thrive on the sustained health of the community and its members through continual reflection and improvement.

I believe that leaders builders in each community have a responsibility to exhibit these behaviors, and that people who exhibit these behaviors will become leaders the community’s builders.

I am a member of a community of thinkers. If I should happen to be a catalyst more than others, I consider that a tribute to those who have inspired me.

”A community of thinkers” by Liz Keogh, Eric Willeke and Jean Tabaka is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

For software a kanban tool must be highly visible, with a policy to strictly limit work in progress and a policy to only accept work when there’s capacity. To be effective, it requires consensus on these policies from the people involved.

Kanban is a Lean way of saying, “I trust and respect you”.

My answer was pretty short in coming, as I have wanted to establish the proposed incentive program written about in the ground rules for one team I was working with doing kanban stuff.

The following is what was agreed upon by our senior management. Some things were changed, and quite drastically. For starters, credit will only be given for features/stories completed in one Sprint. When asked my opinion, I suggested this may lead to technical debt. It was also decided to have a showdown at the end of the year, and to recognize the team with the most redeemed tokens. I am afraid this is against the whole-team incentive, and once again fosters competition.

Here it is:

“Video Tokens” rewards

Team collects tokens (1) for every MMF/story that is developed & tested in 1 sprint

Eligibility:

All Video Platform Teams

Selection criteria:

MMF/Story must meet acceptance criteria from Product Owner, must be tested and bug-free

Selection process:

At the end of each Sprint, Scrum Master will review Sprint deliverables and compliance w/ selection criteria. Tokens are awarded to a team.

Timelines:

End of each sprint

Rewards:

Finished features can be collected by the team and redeemed for rewards. Team can decide to either redeem their collected points or wait to accumulate more points for a higher reward

• 10 = Beer and snacks for the next Review & Retrospective
• 25 = Team Lunch
• 50 = Movie passes
• 100 = Day off

ALL tokens collected and/or redeemed are counted annually when team enters into Annual Token Standoff.

Program Facilitator

Scrum Master or Program Manager