Alba GonzálezProduct Owner| Discover Financial ServicesSalt Lake City, Ut, United States
I am looking for inspiration on how to improve scrum teams' performance. In particular, for scrum teams that are more established and have been using scrum for many years.
Please share any resources in the form of articles, books, webinars, etc.
Alba GonzálezProduct Owner| Discover Financial ServicesSalt Lake City, Ut, United States
Jan 18, 2023 10:56 AM
Replying to Aaron Porter
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- Simplilearn dot com has a good article titled "the secret recipe to building high-performing teams in 2023"
- Entrepreneur dot com provides a list of "7 ways to build a high performing team"
Are you talking about fine tuning, or is the team underperforming? If someone external to the team thinks they are underperforming, are their expectations realistic? I've run into the "go faster" mentality, without concern for creating a foundation that enables speed and efficiency more than I like; I'm not saying that's your situation, but it is something to be mindful of.
As mentioned by Stephane, retrospectives are one of your first tools. Having the right metrics helps, but they're not a panacea. Most importantly, listen to the team. Do they think there is a problem? What improvements do they think are needed?
Hi Aaron,
You made a really important point about the motivation behind the improvement request. I think it would be important to find the right motivators for the team to make a change toward higher efficiency. If the request is external, then try to build consensus and communicate clearly the potential value of the improvement.
I meant more in the context of fine-tuning performance and finding new and creative ways for self-assessment and improvement. Saving Changes...
Alba GonzálezProduct Owner| Discover Financial ServicesSalt Lake City, Ut, United States
Jan 18, 2023 8:01 PM
Replying to Keith Novak
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Leading a well established, high performing team can be both very rewarding, and very challenging. Everybody is very knowledgeable and once people are getting repeatable good results, it is easy to get stuck in certain thought and working patterns. The team has gone through forming, storming, and norming but you can't stop at norming.
Being very deliberately and actively engaged as a team leader, and continuously challenging the norm is very important. Your question itself implies that is what you are doing yourself.
One of the things that challenges me to keep rethinking why we are where we are, and how to move beyond our current state is bringing in new team members. They are going to ask questions that none of us have even thought about for a long time, and they will bring in new perspectives that challenge the long standing reasons we have been doing things the way that we do. At the same time, it gives them a great career opportunity.
Hi Keith,
Love the idea of new team members bringing new perspectives and asking questions. I would also add increasing team diversity to foster innovation and diverse perspectives. Thank you for your contribution! Saving Changes...
Luis BrancoCEO| Business Insight, Consultores de Gestão, LdªCarcavelos, Lisboa, Portugal
Dear Thomas
His proposal is that we transform the people who are part of our organization into a tribe with a level 5 culture.
Very interesting
How would that be done?
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1 reply by Thomas Walenta
Jan 24, 2023 8:57 AM
Thomas Walenta
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Hi Luis
this level of Team culture can be built by establishing trust, creating a joint vision inspiring members, loving the people/making sure they love each other, and feeding the flow.
It works only for some time, as context, members and vision will change.
In my 40 years on projects I was only lucky enough to enjoy it a handful of times.
As Logan says, level 5 can only be seen in a very low percentage of tribes, so do not expect it can be reached by everyone.
Thank you for your input. In your experience, what would be a good agile metric to measure team morale?
Depending on the team's wishes, it could be done formally and rigorously (e.g. Spotify's stoplight assessment for team engagement) or informally (e.g. a smily face, sad face, neutral face on a whiteboard which team members tick as they walk in the room for their retros).
This info is by the team and for the team and can be used as an input into their retro discussions.
Kiron Saving Changes...
Thomas WalentaGlobal Project Economy ExpertHackenheim, Germany
Jan 24, 2023 5:20 AM
Replying to Luis Branco
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Dear Thomas
His proposal is that we transform the people who are part of our organization into a tribe with a level 5 culture.
Very interesting
How would that be done?
Hi Luis
this level of Team culture can be built by establishing trust, creating a joint vision inspiring members, loving the people/making sure they love each other, and feeding the flow.
It works only for some time, as context, members and vision will change.
In my 40 years on projects I was only lucky enough to enjoy it a handful of times.
As Logan says, level 5 can only be seen in a very low percentage of tribes, so do not expect it can be reached by everyone.
...
1 reply by Luis Branco
Jan 25, 2023 7:35 AM
Luis Branco
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Dear Thomas
Logan's proposal for "create high performing teams" is fantastic
Saving Changes...
Vijay SuryavanshiProject Manager - Engineering| RECARO Aircraft SeatingPlantation, Fl, United States
Collaboration, Contribution, Communication and Commitment are the four pillars of High-performance team.
If you are scrum leader, make sure the team members work with the above four pillars in mind.
If you are the scrum of scrum leader, make sure your scrum leaders work within the framework of the pillars. Though the idea of SCRUM of SCRUM is better management of bigger teams.
Most importantly, to build a high-performance team, a strong leader with a vision who understands the team dynamics, be able to understand the team (strengths and weakness, who is capable of what, at times assign them the work they like or have a flair for (quick turnaround), at times challenge them to next level,(when time is on your side)) and get the best out of them. Also, as a leader you must be able to resolve team conflicts.
As a team you can always achieve greater output than if you were to work as individuals. And hence the saying below.
"The whole is greater than the sum of its parts." - Aristotle Saving Changes...
D'Wayne HubbardProject Portfolio Management (PPM), Technical Project Manager Lead| PeratonSanford, Nc, United States
What I have had a very high success rate with is to use retrospectives at the end of every sprint. But first you need to use your servant leadership skills to mentor your team to create a team charter and set ground rules for user story and hour estimates. Everyone needs to contribute and agree on team ground rules. Then have full agreement on your retrospective questions. I have the team write on sticky notes up to five topics'/action items. Then let each team member read out loud each sticky note and group them into topic areas. At the end everyone agrees on the grouping. Then they take turns dot voting. Each team member has 5 votes. The sticky notes with the most dots are then used to ensure that we continue to use the good practices and what went wrong topics are always goals with action tasks for the next sprint. As a SCRUM master, and CSPO this dot voting technic has worked for our team to improve velocity and capacity. But a good understanding of planned tasks and unplanned tasks is a key to success. If you have an open workspace with lots of distractors, I set capacity at 4 hours a day. If you have more of a private workspace or work remote, then I use 6 hours a day per recourse. Then once you repeat this for 6 sprints just add and divide to establish a known velocity. Once you know your magic numbers on what your team can do. Then your team will start to focus on trying to beat that numbers. But as a PM ensure that the team still dose quality work and provide earned value. I hope this helps and good luck. Saving Changes...
Luis BrancoCEO| Business Insight, Consultores de Gestão, LdªCarcavelos, Lisboa, Portugal
Jan 24, 2023 8:57 AM
Replying to Thomas Walenta
...
Hi Luis
this level of Team culture can be built by establishing trust, creating a joint vision inspiring members, loving the people/making sure they love each other, and feeding the flow.
It works only for some time, as context, members and vision will change.
In my 40 years on projects I was only lucky enough to enjoy it a handful of times.
As Logan says, level 5 can only be seen in a very low percentage of tribes, so do not expect it can be reached by everyone.
Dear Thomas
Logan's proposal for "create high performing teams" is fantastic Saving Changes...
Latha Thamma reddiSr Product and Portfolio Management (Automation Innovation)| DXC TechnologyMckinney, Tx, United States
I have been managing multiple scrum teams and they were high performing ones, for us the backbone was "Stop Starting and Stop Finishing" , means if we have started working on something, we should complete them, before picking up something else.
Moreover we should always pick up items, which go to production within next 2 to 3 Sprints, because otherwise teams will be working on items, which would never yield any business value nor give them satisfaction that they are contributing to something great. Saving Changes...
