Proactiveness and responsibility within a Scrum Team
Hello all,
I've been working as a Scrum Master for close to a year now. It's been a challenging but most of all rewarding and very fun job and so I feel quite at home in the company that I work now.
The 2 teams that I've been guiding and coaching have seen changes in both staff and epics that they undertake. However they all share one development point in the eyes of the Product Owner and me: proactiveness and responsibility.
An example of this is the following: a new version of our app will come out in the coming weeks. One of our teams will deliver a couple of needed features after which the new app can launch. To deliver the features, there are a certain number of steps required: security tests, communication with other teams, etc. Another example is the onboarding of new interns, which I asked them about a couple of weeks before the interns would start. It then happens that we have an onboarding meeting the day before they start. Additionally, I observe a lot of passiveness (not asking questions, not addressing one another) when the team doesn't reach their Sprint Goal or if there's scope creep.
While these steps are needed, and have been taken into account with our planning which the team knows, it feels like they're not in control of their own work and it sometimes feels more like the PO and I are the mom and dad of the team. Obviously our behavior has a role in this situation as well and maybe this is more of a coaching question than a real Scrum question, but I'd like to address these subjects in a retrospective sometime.
Looking forward to hearing from you!
Edward
I observe a lot of passiveness (not asking questions, not addressing one another) when the team doesn't reach their Sprint Goal or if there's scope creep.
The Sprint Goal is a joint commitment made by the Developers in Sprint Planning, and which gives them a reason to work together during the Sprint. At which point does that fail to be true in your situation, and passiveness takes over?
While these steps are needed, and have been taken into account with our planning which the team knows, it feels like they're not in control of their own work
Are they in control of their own work? You mentioned scope creep. How does this arise, and how does it find its way into the Sprint Backlog without the Developers' say-so?
The Sprint Goal is a joint commitment made by the Developers in Sprint Planning, and which gives them a reason to work together during the Sprint. At which point does that fail to be true in your situation, and passiveness takes over?
The passiveness is more in the terms of communication, hiring issues, or preparing meetings. F.e. with one of our stories, we had some external impediments which were caused by several external stakeholders. If the PO and I do not actively ask the developers about these issues, then there is little to no communication, even though they have an impact on the progress of the Sprint Goal.
So it's not so much about the Sprint Goal, but the values, perhaps?
Are they in control of their own work? You mentioned scope creep. How does this arise, and how does it find its way into the Sprint Backlog without the Developers' say-so?
The Sprint Backlog is comprised of items only the Developers take in. However, I feel like sometimes the Developers take too much stuff in, either to prove to themselves that they're able to do the work, sometimes because we fall behind on schedule, sometimes due to PO pressure. Thanks for pointing this out.