Are We Really a Team?
Looking back, a couple of years ago I had a chance to work with the great team. Yes! They are a great team, but not from the beginning...that was a broken team when I came on.
- The team used Scrum but the Transparency was lost. The Development Team hid issues from the Product Owner when he came to ask. They said: “All good!", but actually, they had a ton of bugs and impediments and couldn’t deliver working software.
- The Development Team complained that the goal was changed frequently by the Product Owner.
- Disappointment appeared between the Development Team and Product Owner every Sprint Review.
- The higher manager started to doubt the product's quality and progress. Therefore, they put more and more pressure on the team and asked for more reports. This didn’t help to improve the situation but only made it more terrible.
- Every time something went wrong, people started to complain to each other and this led to "fear mode." They started to say "I", not "We."
In a tough time, I planned to do many things to support the team, but first I asked them: "As a Team, do you trust each other?"