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Team is not self organized and missed 3 sprint goals in a row

Last post 05:13 pm July 18, 2016 by Dimitrios Tsigkakos
2 replies
10:36 am July 18, 2016

Hi there

Our Scrum Team has done there first 3 sprints and each sprint had some issues which where in testing or not started yet.
The team does not start be self organized, the scrum master have to attend and teach them all the time to organize them self. But if he's missing, they aren't.
Some team members helps each other, others don't and work completly for themselfes.

As a scrum master, what should I do?

We've already decreased our velocity, still not reached the sprint goal


Regards


02:44 pm July 18, 2016

Justin,

As a Scrum Master, what were your expectations for the first few sprints? What is your Scrum maturity/experience? Your team's?

What were your team's expectations for the initial sprints? Your organization's?

Scrum is always ugly at the start. Scrum is not magic - it simply makes issues and impediments much more visible and painful. You can address them, little by little, each sprint, or you can ignore them, and continue repeating the same results.

What has the team discussed in their retrospectives? What are they changing or experimenting with? How are they improving?

Why do you feel it is unnecessary for a Scrum Master to work closely with a new Scrum team all the time, especially if they are struggling?

One area that may help is to consult more mature Scrum Teams in your company (if there are any) regarding your team's pain points.

If the team is not completing testing for stories during a sprint, you may want to continue splitting work into smaller and smaller stories until the team is able to complete them within a sprint.

Good luck to you.


05:13 pm July 18, 2016

Hello Justin,
Even with an experienced team - in scrum - sometimes starting a new project can be dificult.
How long are your Sprints? With an inexperienced team it might be a good idea to go for a sprint length no bigger than 2 weeks. Self Organization - like other things in scrum - is emerging. Does not happen in a day, a week or in one sprint.
The scrum master "has" to participate if the team is struggling, to fascilitate and help them to actually move towards self organization. Do you have a "proper" backlog prioritized etc? Does the team participate in refinment meetings with the PO to clarify and further dillute the Backog items? What do you mean you have decreased your velocity ? Velocity should be sum of Business value through time. With a team that just has 3 sprints finished and is not experienced in scrum it is highly unlikely that you can use velocity as statistical data to predict the next sprint's performance. Try it one step at a time and best of luck to you and your team.


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