Agile vs. Ego: What to Do When a Team Member Rebels

Bart has been in ecommerce for over 20 years, and can't imagine a better job to have. He is interested in all things agile, or anything new to learn.

  Agile  

Over the course of a career, every project manager will meet that one developer. You may have already met them: The developer who is brilliant. They are fast, and have become the go-to person when things get rough. Their code is clean, their logic is sound, their reviews both helpful and actionable. But there’s a catch: They think agile is a joke, and refuse to participate.

This takes the form of showing up late to standups (if they show up at all), skipping retros or demos because “everyone knows what the story is.” Or they roll their eyes during planning, saying it would just be faster to give them their tasks and let them leave to get started, instead of wasting time in a meeting.

The problem? They aren’t entirely wrong.

In too many teams, agile can feel like a waste of time. It can become rigid, bloated, or more focused on ceremonies and process than in actually delivering. This person might have worked in a previous team or organization where the stand-up was just a status mechanism, or where meetings and retros were just venting sessions where nothing really changed.

The problem is that when one person opts out of buying into the principles, no matter how talented they are, they will be creating a disruption and distraction to the team. Team alignment breaks down, trust falters, and knowledge sharing dries up. Slowly, team velocity and …

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