Adding Work to the sprint to make some of the team members busy
Hi, I work in a scrum team of 6 developers, a PO, and a Scrum Master, Usually, we start our sprint planning by adding some features to the sprint backlog, In this process the work is divided between the team members based on the expertise they have (Front end , backend..etc), and normally every 2 members work together to finish a feature, and the next high priority feature get assigned to the next 2 members and so on, but usually we end up by some of the team members have filled their capacity for 2 weeks work, while others still have the capacity to work on other feature but often there are not sure if they can complete it at the end of the sprint or not,but management insists of filling those who still have the capacity with work, by adding the more and more features to the sprint backlog, even if we are not sure that those features will get done.
the problem is we get like every 2 members forming a feature team, people who are working on the highest priority features, and others who are working on lower priority features to just fill their capacity of work, and often the team who is already assigned to the highest priority feature can not get it done by the end of the sprints, alongside the other member who are working on others things that has been added to the sprint to fill there capacity also don't finish the features they started. and we end up with 2 sets of features that are not completed at the end of the sprint "the ones with the high prio features, and the ones we added to fill the capacity of others, and we start the next sprint with the same thing, the same people who still have work in progress, just continue on the same feature until it gets done and so one.., I to make those teams to work together to finish the highest priority features first, but often the team shutdown the idea by pointing out that adding more hands in one feature ( Like having 4 members working on one feature) is slowing work and its a lot to manage "Technically "in terms of dependencies and so on....
I tried to have a lot of that we need to make the whole team work together to delivery one thing at a time, but I often get shutdown by the dev team who things more hands on one thing is a "Mess" and between Management not agreeing on having team members not having "things to do' even if they are not important at the moment
It seems like you have a cross-functional team, but not necessarily cross-functional individuals. That is, as a whole, your team has all of the skills that it needs to get work Done. However, individuals have expertise and typically do not work on areas outside of their expertise. Although cross-functional teams are a pre-requisite to enable agility, cross-functional individuals can help make the team more effective in situations where you describe.
What can the team do to develop their abilities outside their expertise? For example, what could enable a front-end developer to have the skills needed to take on back-end development work? Although they can't be expected to be as effective as someone who specializes in back-end development, they can be effective enough to take on that more valuable work that they can't take on today.
Another option is to consider is if starting those new Product Backlog Items makes sense. Instead of starting new work, are there other things that can be done? Is there technical debt to pay down? Maintenance of tools or libraries or infrastructure? Skill building (see the first idea of developing skills outside their expertise)? Company overhead work, like mandatory training? There could be things that make sense to do that don't involve starting new work that can benefit the individual, the team, or the company.
Hi, I work in a scrum team of 6 developers, a PO, and a Scrum Master
No, you're in a workgroup. You won't be in a Scrum Team until there is a reason for teamwork to be demonstrated. That won't happen as long as the individual Developer is seen as having capacity. In Scrum, the Developers make a forecast of work to build a Done increment that achieves a joint Sprint Goal.
I often get shutdown by the dev team who things more hands on one thing is a "Mess" and between Management not agreeing on having team members not having "things to do' even if they are not important at the moment
That's right. You'll be shut down because it isn't your team or organization to change. Only management can create the requisite sense of urgency for a different way-of-working and for different outcomes. What you can do as a Scrum professional is to manage people's understanding of commitment based planning.
As @Ian stated, you aren't part of a Scrum Team. You are working for an organization that wants to give the appearance of being agile so they adopted some of the terminology used in the Scrum Guide and use them to do project work based upon full utilization of individuals. Scrum is about delivering incremental value that can be inspected and adapted as it is being built. No where in your description did you mention anything about stakeholders needs, Sprint Reviews or Sprint Retrospectives. It is all about management not wanting someone to be doing something that can't be considered billable. You mentioned that your Scrum Team is "6 developers, a PO, and a Scrum Master,...". I'm going to assume that those are their job titles but do their job descriptions resemble any of the responsibilities that are listed in the Scrum Guide for those roles? Often the job title of Scrum Master is given to someone that is expected to be a project manager.
Your situation is not caused by the developers. It isn't caused solely by the managers. It is caused by misunderstanding of the Scrum framework by your entire organization. Just saying you have Sprints, a Product Backlog, a Sprint Backlog, Scrum Masters and Product Owners does not mean that you are utilizing the Scrum framework. If you want to have impact on the organization, you will need to get them to fully understand the Scrum framework as described in the Scrum Guide and not something that they read on some other site or have heard from their friends.