People manager in Scrum
My organization is having some difficulty coming to terms with "People management". Specific use cases are when team members are questioning why teams are split up certain ways, why we are missing some skillsets, why we continue to say one thing and do another. I act as the product owner and they ad-hoc approach me. My first reaction is to take it in to make sure they feel heard, it also is hindering progress on our backlog. Secondly I tell them to bring up any impediments to the scrum master and bring it up in the retrospective.
The issue is that the organization believes there has to be a people manager, someone to sit down and manage the team. Talk about drama, talk about these types of things.
I have never dealt with a "people manager" in scrum, as most teams deal with their own issues. Curious as to how others have handled this?
Side note: Teams clearly see that they aren't self-organized and are pushed into teams against their will.....approach to that?
In my current company we also have people managers. One for POs, one for maybe up to 20 devs (from multiple, various Scrum teams), etc.
I think you could talk with your Scrum Master, maybe with more of these PO-SM pairs, confirm if the management problem is shared, and if it is, you should let the management know, make them realize the negative consequences, and maybe even change their behaviour.
In my company we had a similar problem, and after making the management aware of it, they now try much more to first come to teams, discuss why the changes are needed, and then maybe arrive at a solution together that more or less satisfies everyone. It is not easy, not always works, but worth trying.
Sometime unfortunately people managers try to mange-from-above with the POs... One more bad possibility we are trying to stop.
Teams clearly see that they aren't self-organized and are pushed into teams against their will.....approach to that?
As Product Owner, what effect would you say this has on outcomes? Are the teams delivering shippable work every Sprint which you make use of and which demonstrate value?
Unfortunately Ian, this could still be possible. Maybe less effectively... but still possible.