Interaction between SCRUM Masters and Product Owner of different teams
Hi all,
I'd like to ask an insight for a real-time situation happened between two different SCRUM Teams.
First of all we are in a very fighting scenario: A Dev Team member John works for two different SCRUM Teams (A and B) with an effort of 50% per team.
John is suffering the fact that a B Team's Product Owner is pushing him in solving some issues and forcing him to concentrate his effort more than the agreed 50%.
A Team's SCRUM Master feels John's emotional state tryes to find a soution for that. He speaks about the solution with DEV Team member, who agrees, so they have to speak with the other team. A Team's PO doesn't want to speak directly with B Team's PO, because he prefers that A Team's SM can be more convincing. So A Team's SM calls B Team's PO in order to check with him the solution and let John be able to better focus his effort more on the A backlog for a period.
B Team's PO says there's no problem in checking that and takes the committment to inform the DEV team about the possibility and decide all together. After checking, PO calls A Team's SM and says it's ok, all the team has been informed and agrees.
The day after, B Team's SM calls A Team's SM blaiming he's not been involved in this agreement.
The question is: who's wrong? A Team's SM who didn't inform B Team's SM at first? B Team's PO who didn't inform B Team's SM? B Team's SM, who wanted to be included within the agreement? A Team's PO, who didn't call B Team's PO directly?
Thank you in advance,
Aniello
Why does Development Team B allow the PO to "push" work onto one of their members?
Why doesn't the Scrum Master of Team B explain to that PO which behaviors are unhelpful?
John is suffering the fact that a B Team's Product Owner is pushing him in solving some issues and forcing him to concentrate his effort more than the agreed 50%.
Just want to highlight a couple red flags here regarding Scrum.
It is not prohibited in Scrum to split a development team member between two Scrum teams, but it is definitely not a good idea for many other reasons (team cohesiveness, commitment, context-switching).
That said, why is a PO involved at all with how a Development Team works? Once a Development Team has agreed to a Sprint Goal with the PO and made a sprint forecast based on the PO's offer, the Development Team must be allowed to self-manage around completing those items, and reach the sprint goal, in whatever manner they see fit to.
It is imperative for the Scrum Master to protect the Development Team from any outside interference attempting to influence or direct how the Development Team works. Such micromanagement practices violate Scrum values (Respect, Commitment), and do serious damage to the trust necessary to practice Scrum.
Let me add to @Ian's questions.
Why does Development Team A let PO B push work on one of their members?
Why doesn't the Scrum Master of Team A explain to PO B which behaviors are unhelpful?
Since the team member in question belongs to 2 teams, then both teams should be pushing back.
I have typed 5 different sentences trying to state I was going to ignore the "1 member on 2 teams" thing but I can't because that actually seems like one of the biggest problems you described. Why is there 1 member on 2 teams? In my experience, that never works out and always causes problems like this because each team has their own priorities. I feel like the two Scrum Masters should also be addressing that as an impediment to both teams. If that individual's skill sets are required on both teams every sprint, then your organization should come up with a way to address that issue which doesn't involve putting an individual into the situation where they are set up to fail and take 2 teams with them.
At the very least work out an agreement where instead of splitting his time 50/50, split it by sprint. Let him focus entirely on 1 sprint's work for an entire sprint, then switch his focus to the other team. It still isn't ideal but it is much better than what you have now.
@Daniel: I agree with you, the real issue is why this happened and avoid that. The option to get one person be fully committed on one Team per Sprint surely is in my opinion a good approach.
In general, as everybody stated, the problem is the percentage of committment that doesn't help the Team at all.
A team's SM is wrong for that he din't contact B team's SM but preferred to contact B Team's PO.
SMs should act as a bridge here and not the respective teams. because team should be busy developing the MVP. and not look into these issues which essentially the job of SM. And when it comes to the allocation it should be directed to the Project managers.