Applying Ladder of inference in Scrum events.

I have been handling with a scrum team where we are piloting Ladder of inference is a tool for all the Scrum events.

Why? the purpose was to - How to minimize conflicts in scrum events? we choose to identify the thought process from all the team members to take a certain decision or conclusion. Be it feature identification, story slicing or technical decision making, we as a whole team desire to identify the end to end rational process.

What happens most of the time?

Most of the team members share their conclusion but not the rationale that brought them there.

We skip to explain the rationale by considering that it is obvious.

When we get into conflicting dialogue, we do not demand to disclose further details. we become emotionally involved and start defending self.

We know Our beliefs have a significant effect on how we choose from reality and can force us to ignore the true facts altogether. Soon we are simply jumping to conclusions – by missing facts and skipping steps in the reasoning process.

We admitted as a whole team that we will adopt the Ladder of inference as a tool.

Few queries we asked:

1. Why have I preferred this course of action? Are there other actions I should have considered?

2. What belief lead to that action? Was it well-founded?

3. Why did I make that conclusion? is the conclusion sound?

4. What am I assuming, and why? Are my assumptions accurate?

5. What data have I chosen to use and why? Have I selected data correctly?

6. What are the absolute facts that I should be practicing? Are there other factors I should deal with?

7. Is this the “proper” outcome?

8. Why am I making these assumptions?

9. Why do I think this is the “correct” thing to look at?

10. Is this really based on all the data?

11. Why does he/she think that?

12. Why not explaining the reasoning behind their opinions?

What challenges we were facing as a team?

It takes time to work out this new tool as we are the slave of our habits, but once we consciously help each other, we slowly getting benefits

It creates a high-performance culture which helps us to learn mutually 

What we want to improve is ?

We insist that 

a) Team members reflects - Awareness of their own thinking and reasoning

b) Improve Advocacy - making their thinking and reasoning more visible to others

c) Inquire - Inquiring into others thinking and reasoning

Let us encourage each other to challenges our own views, own beliefs and assumptions. Publicly test those.