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Team Involvement to Improve Individual Performance

Last post 09:45 am January 24, 2023 by Ben Safratowich
3 replies
09:39 pm January 13, 2023

Our organization is currently discussing how to deal with scrum team members who are underperforming.  Our management team feels the teams themselves are best equipped to identify and address underperformers within the teams.  They are looking for us scrum masters to coach the teams on how to do this.  

I'd like to hear feedback from any of you who have been in a similar situation.  Any feedback would be appreciated, but a couple of questions that I have are, what methods are appropriate for working with individuals who the team find to be underperforming?  And, how can commitment and trust be maintained in a situation like this?


10:57 pm January 13, 2023

How is "underperformance" being measured? Is there a consensus view of the supposed problem within each team and that appropriate individual measurements are being taken? What have Sprint Retrospectives turned up about this?


01:31 am January 14, 2023

It seems like your management is encouraging self-organizing and self-managing teams by pushing these types of decisions to the teams themselves, but it's not clear what it means for an individual to be underperforming or who has made the determination what underperformance (or adequate performance) looks like. Is the management team the one making these determinations or is it people on the teams themselves? What are the specific concerns and are these concerns widely shared or the views of specific individuals? Understanding the context and details would be helpful as the first step.


10:01 pm January 23, 2023

Ian and Thomas, thank you for your responses.  No guidance has been provided from the management team regarding a definition of "underperforming", nor how to measure it.  In that regard, and in putting the onus on the team to address the issue, I agree that the management team is encouraging self-organization and self-management.  The topic of underperformance has not been brought up in any of the retrospective ceremonies for the teams I work with.  I sense this is an isolated situation for which a broad solution is being suggested.


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