Sprints are one of the most classical elements of the Scrum methodology. They are time sessions of tasks you can associate with the project’s goals. As a result, teams work together and focus on accomplishments. Theoretically, it’s no news for managers that teams need motivation. Maybe you are just looking for the right tool to help you bring engagement to practice. And this is possible with a smart project management tool that helps you manage your work in Sprints.
What Are Sprints For
- Setting your project’s goals for a certain period of time and communicate them clearly to your team;
- Increasing teams’ productivity, guiding them to work based on measurable results and surpass their limits gradually;
- Supporting leadership, demonstrating to the team the importance of commitment and self-organization to win autonomy;
- Spotting your team’s top performers, the difficulties, and eventual bottlenecks.
So, let’s fall to business and see what you need to do, to take advantage of GitScrum Sprints.
How to Engage Your Team With GitScrum Sprints
1. Set your Project Goals
This is the first basic Sprint principle, besides including a group of Tasks. If you write your Sprint’s goals down, better yet. At least, talk about them and let your team know them by heart. Your Sprint’s goals have a shorter term than your project’s goals, they are about what must be accomplished during the Sprint period (week, fortnight or month).
It is important to establish goals, to make your team realize the importance of the Tasks. Otherwise, depending on the individual maturity, workers might think “they are just Tasks”, not understanding deadlines are essential. You must show them every little Task is part of something greater and impacts overall results.
2. Create motivating projects, with big purposes
If you want to have a passionate team, think of a purpose-driven team. Nothing is more motivating for a team than believing they are working for a grand purpose and feeling helpful. So, your project’s goals should demonstrate what they must pursue, so they feel really useful and capable.
One of the essential Scrum principles is value-based prioritization, so, it is essential to reflect on whether your project is valuable enough to be implemented. Not all creative ideas are good enough. Before transforming a request into a project, please answer yourself:
– Will this project change my customers’ lives for good?
– Is my company an expert in this, or can it handle it in the short term and stand out?
– Will this project be profitable, or bring new market opportunities?
3. Guide your team to work results-oriented
GitScrum Sprints allow you to simplify what seems complicated. If you think it’s too hard to “pressure” your employees to complete their tasks on time, know that the Gitscrum tool itself helps you do this, in a friendly way. All you have to do is assign Tasks to your team members, determine deadlines to the Sprint and monitor it. There will be a burndown chart for you to demonstrate to your team daily how good they are doing, compare their expected performance to the ideal one, and motivate them to meet the expected standard.
Your main argument will be that they must work to balance their flow, finishing the expected amount of work daily to avoid overload at the end of the Sprint.
4. Invest in team’s autonomy
If you haven’t started to work with Sprints yet, you will soon discover the best of it: investing in the team’s autonomy and reducing your responsibility load as a project manager. No, it doesn’t mean the assignments will be left apart, it’s just that your team will be given the tool to self-organize and update their own accomplishments, so you won’t have to be asking every day for what was done or not. The team can have a meeting at the beginning of the week, fix the Sprint’s goals, and then each team member becomes responsible for prompting you the status of their Tasks – this way, you will track the progress of the Sprint and the project any time during the week.
5. Support the teamwork
As long as the team members start working during the Sprint, you will get a clear “X-ray” of your team’s situation. While some team members will meet their deadlines and deliver the expected Tasks, others might present some difficulties. It’s a common situation when we talk about remote work. The primary measure to be applied in this case is to identify the cause for eventual difficulties, offer support and promote collaboration among team members, with the most experienced helping the newcomers. When team members are interested in making progress, Sprints can be an excellent engaging tool to promote individual and common growth.
6. Reward and Gamify Top performers
Here is where things get really exciting! Did you know you can integrate GitScrum Sprints with gamification? Yes! Gamification is a growing trend all over the world, and you shouldn’t stay out of it if you lead a team and want to engage your team members. Gamification is not about turning the game more important than work, but it’s about bringing some fun, challenge and excitement to the work environment. People really love it! Men, women, young and seniors, everyone is able to play and be rewarded. It’s a way to stimulate healthy competitiveness and self-overcoming.
8. Slit big projects into several Sprints
Use GitScrum Sprints to organize your project’s stages. Each Sprint will be a stage, and each stage will include a number of Tasks. This way, it will be easier for you to elaborate and plan a project schedule side by side with your team, fixing and negotiating attainable deadlines for them. Remember, when it’s possible to allow them to participate in the project from the start, their commitment is even stronger. In addition to this, they will feel motivated to accomplish the Sprints, if they are invited to have a broader view of your big project. Imagine your project is made of 6 Sprints, when you get to the 5th, team members will really feel like crossing the finish line with honor. And you can use communication resources to help you motivate them, too! Imagine if you use a custom image on your collaborative board – GitScrum Board – motivating them for the final Sprint!
9. Adapt Sprints to your Business area
Create adapted Sprints, according to your working area. You will see the possibilities are numerous!
- Your commercial department can set your weekly prospection goals with GiScrum Sprints;
- Sales managers can coordinate a sales team, setting their weekly goals in Sprints;
- If you are a Coach, you can create a course or training sessions and relate your group’s goals to Sprints;
- Doctors, nutritionists, and physiotherapists can make personalized programs for their patients with individual goals with Sprints;
- Programmers and software developers can plan app releases and increments schedules in Sprints;
- Philanthropic institutions can create social projects and campaigns with Sprints with funding goals;
- Marketing agencies can run short-term digital campaigns of paid traffic and digital launches in Sprints;
- An industry can set its weekly production, deliveries and sales in Sprints;
- Schools can plan educational calendar of activities in Sprints;
- A digital influencer can plan his/her content delivery and indicators goals in Sprints;
- A Youtuber can plan video production, release and projection goals in Sprints;
- A UX Designer can plan his/her research and product development stages in Sprints;
- A business counselor can plan a client’s development process in Sprints;
- A meeting & event organizer can plan a convention or congress, organizing all its stages and tasks in Sprints.