Half-Life of commitments

Half-life is the amount of time required for a quantity to fall to half its value as measured at the beginning of the time period. 

During private PSF (Profession Scrum Foundation) classes my students create a Change Backlog. The idea of this backlog is to codify the things that need to be changed in order to become agile. Actually, after they finished creating the backlog I ask them to put a name on each sticky note, meaning that the person whose name is on the note is responsible for acting on that item and is accountable for it. Finally, I ask them right away to define a date at which they will review this backlog. Inspect and Adapt.

I am doing this to avoid the training conundrum ‘Yeah, this has all been very interesting but right now I don’t have the time and right situation at hand …'

In my opinion if you don’t go out immediately after the training and walk the talk, your motivation will decrease rather dramatically. Not that I have researched, but my feeling tells me that the half-life is about one week. So, after two weeks your motivation is down to a quarter.

Also, I see best results when whole teams get a company private class. Even better when their superiors join in too, if not for the entire training but for the last 3 hours of the second day when we create the Change Backlog. This exercise creates a transparency which hardly can be reproduced in a later setting. At the end of day two, most of my students are really enthusiastic to get started and the managers sense this as well. 

High chances of success: An enthusiastic team with management support: you are ready to roll on your path to agility.