Highly efficient teams exponentially increase business value.

I am a scrum master, but my area of expertise is the subtleties of human interaction and making individuals more efficient.  The more efficient the individual, the better the team, the higher the business value. And it is not just a 1+1=2  relationship, with every individual that ‘gets it’ your business value output increases exponentially.

Yesterday, something interesting happened with my scrum team. I constantly do small experiments, to analyse and increase value where I can.

This team, has impressed me in the past with how they take matters in their own hands. On the last sprints, when they needed to know something, they just went and got that information and shared it with every one that needed to know.

It wasn’t always perfect and some individuals are more advanced at doing this than others, but I found it remarkable, you don’t always see that quality. In some teams, the misconception even exists that the scrum master should be the one ‘organising’ everything and being a bridge.

As a side note: I am not saying that there are no situations where as a scrum master you can’t jump in and help, or where you consciously decide to take on a bit of this work as a transition, there can be a multitude of reasons where being a temporary bridge might be the right thing to do, but that is food for another post.

In the current sprint, the team have taking on work with a lot of unknowns, they need to communicate with a team that before they haven’t had a lot of interaction with, the technical solution is not straight forward and there have been some external emergencies which surfaced some frustrations,…

As the days in the sprint went on, I noticed that the cards linked to the interaction with the new team, were not moving. The first few days the team seemed to have good reason for that, but we are now almost in the middle of our sprint and only one card has moved over to in progress. I try to not interfere unless the situation reaches a critical moment. Especially with this team, because the focus is getting them from good to great and learning and responsibility is a big part of that. But usually, because I care a great deal about them and the project, when it reaches a certain threshold, I will start working on a backup plan, without them knowing. So yesterday morning I started that prep. I usually start about 2 hours before every one else, gives me the time to focus.

Later that morning, the lead developer came to me and voiced his concern that we hadn’t started yet on international. So to put his mind at ease, and to see his reaction, I showed him that I had already started, I also asked him what he needed and he said he needed an info session with the other team. So, I said I would organise the meeting. ( not the right thing to do by the way )

I checked with every one involved and set a time, invitations were sent and it was clearly visible on the board when that info session was starting, 3 PM.

At 3, no one was there, one person was on the phone and emailing, the other was still in another meeting and one of the other developers was still working on a different task. So, I went over and asked: ‘are you ready?’

D1: Hmm, it’s not really a good time, I am right in the middle of something.

Me: Is it urgent?

D1: Not really but I am just in a flow

Me: Ok, but this meeting is for you all, it is not for me, you told me this morning that you needed this urgently. Things change, as is often the case in reality, and that is perfectly acceptable, but why wasn’t anyone notified?

D1: You are right, we do need this, it’s ok.

Of to the next one…

Me: Hello, are you working on an emergency?

D2: Hello, ow is it that time already? no its not an emergency, it’s a very difficult problem though that i need to help X with, but we wont be able to solve it in the next 30 minutes. So I will come over.

External team member: I am just on the phone, and then I need to send a quick email, I will be there in 2 minutes.

10 minutes later, every one was finally available. But it was like herding kittens ( an expression I heard one of my colleagues use on several occasions and I must admit, it has a nice ring to it 🙂

The above scenario is not a big deal and I paraphrased it a bit, but it illustrates the subtleties of balance between self-organising and dependency. Because I took it in hand, the team lost a little bit of their maturity, of their sense of responsibility. And a sense of responsibility, is one of the most valuable talents of a highly efficient team.

So today, I am going to have a sidebar mini retro to point that subtlety out so they can reflect on it and learn and claim their independence back.

It’s fascinating being a scrum master, challenging and the longer you do it, the more you realise that your role probably has to deal with the biggest unknowns of all and you need to be strong enough to be able to handle those unknowns.

Yours truly,

Brigitte