“What Is The Right Answer to Address Our Tough Scrum Team Issue?”
In complex environments, what works for one team doesn’t work for another team. There are no easy answers.
In complex environments, what works for one team doesn’t work for another team. There are no easy answers.
Some time ago, I conducted a Scrum Master training together with two colleagues. Most of the 20 participants had been working in Scrum Teams for years. It is safe to say that they knew the basics of Scrum before they joined the training.
Our training is packed with activities to let the participants discuss tough topics with each other, trying to uncover possible solutions for the problems that we put in the exercises, like:
What to do when only one person has the capabilities that are needed for three teams?
How to act when a member of the team doesn’t uphold the Scrum Values?
How to respond to conflict in a team?
There was a lot of knowledge in the group and it was very effective to help them share that knowledge. Every time they came with more approaches than we could ever formulate ourselves in the same time-box. On top of that, participants learned more from doing than from listening to us.
Participant Frustration
About halfway through the training, I observed a pattern. Some of the participants wanted to hear from us what the best answer was from all their suggestions. They wanted to have a solution that they could immediately implement when their team would have these issues too. They expected more guidance, as the feedback at the end of the training showed:
“Sometimes I was lacking guidance after exercises. Would be nice to see what was correct, wrong, how to resolve the problem in a better way” — An observation from a participant of our training
Here’s a second remark along these lines:
“I expected more “I would do it that way” input from coaches” — An observation from a participant of our training
But it is not that simple.
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Enter complexity
Scrum is a framework to address complexity. Scrum Teams build valuable products in a complex environment. The Sprint, Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum, and Sprint Review exist because teams and their stakeholders need to inspect and adapt. They need to be able to adjust course based on new information:
“Scrum is founded on empirical process control theory, or empiricism. Empiricism asserts that knowledge comes from experience and making decisions based on what is known. Scrum employs an iterative, incremental approach to optimize predictability and control risk. Three pillars uphold every implementation of empirical process control: transparency, inspection, and adaptation.” — Scrum Guide 2017, Scrum Theory section
I believe we drove this home. At the end of the training, all participants had this understanding.
They also saw why Scrum has the Sprint Retrospective, to improve the way the team works together to deliver value. However, some kept on stressing that the Scrum Master should guide the team with solutions for their improvement areas.
Sure, a good Scrum Master is knowledgeable about areas like team collaboration. But a better Scrum Master will help generate great ideas from the whole team and facilitate empiricism, guiding the team to experiment and learn. A Scrum Master’s first and foremost responsibility is in supporting the team to embrace Scrum effectively. It is a bonus when a Scrum Master can do more. Still, a Scrum Master should enable self-organization. The best ideas emerge from the team. As a teacher, a Scrum Master can always help with suggestions whenever a team can’t find options themselves. But the strength of collective knowledge may surprise you.
Note that a Scrum Master can’t have all the answers, coming with best practices for everything. With best practices, you have the same answer for the same conditions. They are suitable for simple problems. Good practices apply to context. They may be applicable for a certain situation. Emergent practices are for complex problems. You will learn from trying. Emergent practices involve empiricism.
Team dynamics are a complex topic too. With that, empiricism trumps best practices: what works well in one team may not be effective in another team. A team can only find the best way of working while experimenting.
What we learned
A Scrum Master helps the Scrum Team to work effectively with Scrum. The primary focus of the Scrum Master is … Scrum. It helps a lot when she or he is knowledgeable about items like team dynamics and lean-agile. Having said this, a Scrum Master should not impede the team from coming with their improvement suggestions and experimenting with them.
In complex environments, what works for one team doesn’t work for another team. There are no easy answers.
With Scrum you uncover issues. How you solve them is up to the Scrum Team with help from the Scrum Master.
We were happy to see that other participants of our training did grasp what we wanted to bring across:
“Now I know that Scrum does not provide answers, it helps you to find answers yourself.” — An observation from a participant of our training
Now we need to make sure that we emphasise this so that other participants can grasp it too.
Thanks to -danny for the pointers on best practices.