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Contract , Customer and working language

Last post 02:27 am February 5, 2020 by Sherwin Soriano
5 replies
ezgi kakaliçoğlu cihan
05:18 am February 3, 2020

Hi,

I am working in an international company. Last week we had a meeting with new customer. When foreign customers are working with us we are speaking in English. But our customer is Austrian. Also our product has 2 scrum team. We are in Turkey and the other team is in Germany. The other team speaks German (like our customer speaks German). 

Our PO bring every user story in English. We finished our first sprint and the we make sprint review with our customer. In our organization we also have product manager and he is responsible for traditional contract negotiations. First Turkey team show demo in English (it's ok no problem occured) ,and then our product manager told us we will switch in to German while our customer speaking. It is very strange but German team also began to speak in German. They also made feedback session in German. How we feel is like a disaster. I also discuss with our product manager and po , neverthless they said german speaking was a request an choice from our customer.In agile world how can we solve language problems, since you are speaking another language.

I do not know , how we can make a contract in agile world. Our focus is more than contract ,but our work affected from our contract. Now, development team feels that they are useless, it is very hard to me give them a solution and morale.

Sherwin Soriano
05:27 am February 3, 2020

How does the Turkey team feel on switching to speak in German? 

ezgi kakaliçoğlu cihan
06:07 am February 3, 2020

They feel very bad, shocked and humiliated and some of they said this is fascism. I also think this is inappropriate, whole organization doesn't understand the value of 'Respect' according to me.

Ian Mitchell
08:08 am February 3, 2020

our product manager told us we will switch in to German while our customer speaking.

On whose authority was this decision made, and why was it accepted? It doesn’t sound like it was made by your Scrum Team or suggested by any member of it.

ezgi kakaliçoğlu cihan
12:44 pm February 3, 2020

Hi Ian,

Yes it is totally Product manager's decision. I think he try to satisfy Austrian customer and that is why he suggest to speak in German. But these are totally my guess, i am not 100% sure.

Sherwin Soriano
02:27 am February 5, 2020

Then you should voice this to your product manager about how the turkey team felt.

Ask the product manager on the reason why you shifted to German so you would know the actual reason. 

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