Topic Teasers Vol. 16: Negative Agile Teammates

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  Agile   Communications Management   Talent Management  

We have a person on our team who is annoyingly and consistently negative. It is having an impact on our team morale and also our productivity, but since we are agile and self-directed we have no manager to deal with him. What should we do?

A. Inappropriate team members are always a possibility with agile teams. Suggest to management that your team revert back to a more formal project management approach.

B.  Meet with your teammates, minus this negative person, and arrange for a team intervention. Explain to him that he is damaging the throughput and morale of the team and ask him to be a more positive person.

C. Go to the Product Owner or customer and alert him/her that the negative person is impacting the delivery schedule. Perhaps he or she will intervene with your teammate.

D. Grin and bear it through this iteration, then ask for a change in the team rules at the next retrospective.

Answer: D. Grin and bear it through this iteration, then ask for a change in the team rules at the next retrospective.

There is a recent book entitled I Could Pee On This. It’s a humorous collection of poems written from the first person perspective of a cat. But if you were unaware of the contents, most of us would swear from the title that it was written as an autobiography by a current or recent agile team member we have encountered. Regardless…

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