In my last project I kept hearing statements from developers like “Let’s stop this, we are shaving the Yak!” or “Do you really think this is still part of the story or don’t you already shave the Yak?”.
If you have never heard that phrase before you start asking yourself what could that mean. As I have been working in software projects a long time I wondered if I missed something essential all these years. And I have to say: Yes, I did! Because after somebody explained it to me I just loved it and it will be included in all my projects in future. And before the readers who do not work in software projects lose their interest now, please keep reading. Because I am pretty sure that one or the other Yak got rid of his fur during your work or in your private life.
So what does it mean? Let me describe a situation where everyone has probably been before.
You go to your kitchen and want to prepare a cup of tea and realize that there is only an empty box. No problem, the supermarket is not that far away and you pack your things to go shopping. Before leaving the house you see the empty water box and take it with you as you can kill two birds with one stone. While driving to the supermarket you notice that you have no cash with you. And wouldn’t it be great to stop after shopping at the bakery to buy this great bread you can only get there?
That’s why you stop at the bank and withdraw money before you go to the supermarket. When you finally arrive at the supermarket you think about other things you could need and as you are already in the supermarket why not buying some more things. And not to forget the water!
With a full shopping basket it goes back to the car and after a stop at the bakery you drive back home. After all the purchases were put away you can finally brew the well-deserved tea. But wait, the tea??? Where is the tea?
I think it happens very easily that the original task gets out of focus. In your private life you might get a little annoyed with yourself but at work this is a complete different story.
Let’s take a look at a Scrum Team which has planned for the next sprint User Stories which are really important for the customer as the changes have been promised to the end customer in a marketing campaign. The team is very experienced and knows which tasks can actually be done in a two-week sprint. In this situation it would be critical if team members lost focus and no one brought their attention to it. And every developer will understand how this can happen.
For example, you have to work on a piece of code which is quite old and you realize that it has missing tests or it is not coded “clean”. Of course, it is a good idea to fix minor problems while working on this code but you have to be careful that it does not become a complete new piece of work and loosing yourself deeper and deeper in work that has nothing to do with the original task.
In my last project they tried to find a funny way of making the developers more aware that it can easily happen to lose focus. At the end of each Retrospective the team awarded the winner of the Yak, the person who lost most of the focus on a task. The winner got a small Yak figurine and then put it for two weeks on his desk. Of course it is important that you make clear that it is not meant to pillory someone but to have a look with the whole team if it maybe happened to somebody without realizing during the sprint. And as the team works in pairs or mobs everybody is responsible and not only one person.
My team made great use of this award and had a lot of fun with it. You could see very soon that especially when mob sessions were done or when they were programming in pairs that there was always somebody making the team members aware not to lose focus.
After a while we used it more for funny things that happened during the sprint as we couldn’t find situations in which they were doing tasks totally unrelated to what they were trying to achieve.
And let me say, I also got awarded for the Yak as I was expert in writing “Denglish” . As my team talked in German but the documentation and flip charts were done in English I had to create the one or other flip chart again 
And the Yak you see in the header image was my farewell present, a present I will honor and that will remind me of a great time with a creative and funny team. Therefore I would like to dedicate this post to team “Suso”. It was a great pleasure coaching you!
