Dealing with lack of responsabilities at several levels
Hello,
I've been a scrum master in a team for over six months and I'm facing a rather difficult problem.
I have motivated and competent people in my team, but also people who demonstrate a very poor state of mind and who are, admittedly, quite incompetent.
To address the problem, I have initially tried to coach these people so that they can improve, but they have no intention of changing, because nothing is held against them.
I should point out that most of these people are externals, as the 10-strong team is made up of eight externals.
I then approached their manager, who hadn't noticed the problem. These people don't have a real manager, they have a person in charge, let's call him "the manager", who approves or rejects the renewal of their service provider contract. This manager, therefore, decided to do nothing to resolve the problem. So I took the matter up with the manager of "the manager". After sharing my constant with him, he told me he understood, but that he wouldn't do anything to change the team's situation, except not to renew the service provider's contract in a year's time.
Do you have any advice other than to flee this mission?
Thank you for your help.
Have you clarified with senior leadership whether there is any urgency for change to happen, and for better outcomes to be obtained within Sprint timeframes?
I have motivated and competent people in my team, but also people who demonstrate a very poor state of mind and who are, admittedly, quite incompetent
Is this something you have observed, or has the team brought this up ? Was this point first taken up within the team (during the retrospective may be ) ? If there is a skills gap leading to incompetence, did the team take some measures to address this?
The question from @Ian is also relevant - have we been able to communicate how our outcomes are impacted due to this issue ?
@Ian urgency is a weird concept here, I'm working for a big French bank, everything takes years and this has a real impact on people mentality ("no hurry" is the moto)
I must admit that, it's common in a SM career to have one or two demotivated or less performing team members (for whatever possible reasons) in a team. I did succeed to motivate teams working on goals and pride of the good work, removing personal conflict through open discussion on real problems etc.
This time I really feel struck with clear problem having clear impact (quality of the work, bad mood in the team, risk of demotivation for the people trying to be professional in front of others don't give a fuck, etc.).
To answer in one sentence: yes, I did clarify with senior leadership and the answer I got is "let's wait until March for the end of their contracts".
That is why, I called this discussion "lack of responsibilities at several levels" :(
@anand : both observed and rise by the team. I need to be more precised, one of the person has proved to be unable to convey information "information is not understood and distorted" as his role is crucial for the work of the dev team, he's at best passed by, at worst he creates obstacles
Thank you for your help.
P.S. I know some contexts are too hostile for agility to flourish (when there is no care for the people, for the client) I think I'm in this case...
Quite often, inefficiency or performance issues stem from insufficient cohesion of the Scrum Team. For the team to reach high performance, it is not only about particular individual abilities but also very much about the team dynamics as a whole. Especially in recent years, when many teams are spread geographically and are composed of 'strangers' from various contracting companies, the effort to 'build' a cohesive Scrum Team that strongly presents Scrum values of "Commitment, Focus, Openness, Respect, and Courage" is even bigger. For the team to improve, they need to be able to show their vulnerabilities and shortcomings, they need to be able to talk openly. This requires a high level of trust.
Is this team capable of 'holding each other accountable as professionals'? What is the level of trust within the team? Do they have a clear purpose as a team?
When was the last time the team met physically or had some fun together?
one of the person has proved to be unable to convey information "information is not understood and distorted" as his role is crucial for the work of the dev team, he's at best passed by, at worst he creates obstacles
As a team can you make this person accountable. Whatever information he needs to convey take it in writing from him and if at a later point in time the team understands that they went down the wrong path due to the wrong information then use it as a case to convey to the management- how this miscommunication has impacted the work and try to convince the management to rethink.
Also another way may be try to check if someone in the team can take up additional responsibility and pair up with this person so that the correct information is captured and documented.