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Feedback Techniques

Giving critical feedback to someone in order to change the behavior is a delicate process. It is very important to assure that you approach the task with sensitivity to the person's feelings to avoid the common problem of a very defensive reaction. If it's done properly, however, the recipient will take the feedback positively and good results will follow, a very effective way to do this is to "sandwich" the coaching inside other positive statements, where you make positive statements, discuss areas for improvement, and then finish with more positive statements.

Example - You really did an excellent job in finding pros and cons process- everybody has been very impressed! In the future, it would be better to avoid naming people that haven't accepted it well. It's great that you put so much thought into this, and a lot of people are going to benefit from it!“

Another effective way is Stop, Start, Continue, here we tell team members

  • What they feel they should stop doing

  • What they feel they should start doing

  • What they wish to continue doing

Example: Start job shadowing Chris to get a feel for how he handles client meetings.

Stop using email to update our senior leadership. Voicemail or face-to-face are more effective tools to gain their support, and we need better exposure. Continue helping our extended team understand the new tool we’re implementing. You’re the best at training them they trust you. Remember that when you are receiving feedback it will help if you are open to suggestions and listen carefully. Typically in Agile process we, change something find out how it went learn from it change something again.

Generally speaking you want as short a feedback loop as possible, so you can adapt your process quickly. Hence ask questions about their comments and be prepared to contribute. This is generally carried out in Daily feedback on Sprint Planning. It has been said that 98% of personal or an organization's problems can be solved routinely. However, remaining 2% of the problems – the problems that have the greatest effect on you or your organization. Require creative approaches or innovation to surmount. Stopping a problem as soon as recovered is an important recipe of success for any project, be it agile or not. While looking for an agile problem, the agile team working on the project needs to look at different levels. Be a great problem solver, the team must be open to new data and ideas, respect the needs for others, build trust, communicate clearly and honestly, listen actively, ask effective questions, be persistent and firm in their willingness to have it succeed.