Scrum crisis
I have been leading a development team for about 1 year. We have been working on a web application but didn't have a dedicated PO up until 2 months ago. Our workflow was Kanban just picking up tasks from stakeholders directly through informal meetings, and loading them onto a backlog. We were ploughing along nicely delivering to defined milestones. The new PO immediately upon joining showed a casual disrespect for my authority in the team and positioned themselves where they started assigning existing tasks in the backlog directly to the team and myself (I am also a developer). When I questioned their role, and pointed out they should be focused on owning and building the backlog they agreed to manage the backlog in return for being allowed to come to daily stand ups. This became a bigger nightmare. The PO now expects every member to give them a daily update at the standup and gives out instructions and tasks in the standup which lasts 30 minutes per day. We have to stand around the PO and explain ourselves and answer questions about when our tasks will be done. I eventually blew up and complained to the senior management who being ignorant of scrum just shrugged their shoulders. I am left now with a PO that wants to wield full control of the development team, (refers to them as their engineers), answers to nobody and bypasses me when they wish to assign a task to a team member. You may think, is the PO doing this because I am somehow incompetent in my role, the answer is this behaviour started immediately on them joining and accelerated when I was on vacation for a week. Before that we were running a stress free workflow and delivering builds daily , now team members regularly have up to a dozen tasks assigned to them with arbitrary deadlines and I have no idea who is working on what. I am at a loss to deal with this situation the PO is a friend of my superior who bought her into the company, so my complaints are falling on deaf ears. I am also expected as part of this new workflow to attend a daily update meeting where I have to give a separate update to the PO and my superior who recruited the PO. Can somebody please reassure me that this is not how scrum is supposed to work and how can I recover the situation or should I just quit?
Why is it *your* authority which you see as being threatened, rather than the Development Team’s authority?
In the development team I am elected as the the lead engineer. I am also the scrum master. Does that not give me some authority? If the PO refuses to collaborate with the scrum master and assigns tasks directly to developers that threatens the entire teams integrity and makes a mockery of scrum.
The role of the PO is to manage and priorities a backlog, how a team is run and their activities is not the domain of the PO. The team organises itself, in this case it has organised as myself to lead the engineering effort. This PO has bullied their way into stand ups and wants to lead the engineering team. I struggle to see how that is Scrum in anyway. All that is happening is a demoralised and confused team. We currently have no product strategy and no product roadmap, is that not more important for a PO to concentrate on. It seems like a lot of PO's are project managers in all but name, and mostly not even good ones at that.
Can somebody please reassure me that this is not how scrum is supposed to work?
Unfortunately Adam, you already know the answer to that question.
It seems you've already tried a number of things to raise the visibility of the changes in practice, and according to you, they have fallen on deaf ears. Staying or leaving is therefore your decision.
My only suggestion would be to highlight destructive practices and ideas that run counter to Scrum, such as the twisting of the Daily Scrum to represent a status meeting, assigning work (not trusting the Dev Team), and your new daily update meeting, to name just a few. Arm yourself with clear reasons why such behavior runs counter to Scrum (and is inherently horrible) if you seek to challenge it.
Good luck.
Being Scrum Master does not give one authority over the Development Team. And is it really in the best interest of a self-organized team to have a lead engineer that has authority over the rest of the team? And is a senior manager really the best person to solve these complex problems, or is it time to put your Scrum Master hat on to resolve these challenges?
I'm not trying to be snarky, Adam. Focus on the helping the Scrum team understand the purpose and rules around Sprint Planning and the Daily Scrum. Putting your Scrum Master hat on, bring this up at the next Retrospective. Ask some open ended questions with the team about how the Daily Scrum is going. If no one has the courage to speak up, count to 10 and learn to use the pregnant pause. If you still get silence share your observations. Teach the Scrum team about how to play the game the right way. Make sure the entire team understands the rules of Scrum, and that it is up to the development team to self organize around the Sprint Goal, and that means that they figure out how work is assigned.
I would also have a 1:1 with the PO and talk through the roles in Scrum to get on the same page, and use as many coachable moments as you can to help the PO learn the rules of the game.
The answers to your questions can be found within your Scrum Team. Part of being a Scrum Master is coaching, and a coach's role is to unlock those answers hidden within the team.
If it was easy, they wouldn't need Scrum Masters. All the best!
What authority does the Development Team currently assert over their Sprint Backlog and work in progress?
Do they understand that authority on development matters lies with them, and not with some other role?