Pradeep is a Scrum Master for the team that you have been coaching. In your 1-on-1 with him he shares with you his view of the team. After a spurt of improvements over the initial few sprints, it appears that the team is not making similar progress. They are doing good, but is there something more that can be achieved. He has been reading up on Scrum Master’s responsibility and reviewing the Scrum workshop material too.
He asks you what needs to be done to ensure that his team is a high performing one?
Additional background info: The team was practicing Agile Scrum for a few months with no guidance. The coach came on board and was actively engaged with the team for about six sprints. After that the coach drops in to the ceremonies occasionally and at times the SM or team members approach the coach with specific questions.
Suggested Solution:
I pointed Pradeep to a blog Scrum Masters, Navigate your careers! and specifically, the 4th point on the blog that relates to the Team. Then there was the question on the characteristics of a high performing team, there are many views, but I like this one.
After some discussions it emerged that the team comprised of people with varying level of skills, tenure and confidence. The need was to get them to the deliver on the goals in spite of these differences. The Scrum Master had to have a different approach for the different team members, assessing where the team member was currently and providing the right support to them as a Servant Leader was the key.
I suggested a technique to try – Skill Attitude Matrix, more on it in another blog. This exercise requires the team members to be placed in one of the four quadrants along the two axes of Skill and Attitude. The exact placement is not something we bothered about, the intent was to arrive at an approach appropriate to the team member’s situation. This helped in getting the best performance from each of the team member and also in improving them. This helped the team in their journey towards being a high performing one.
