CHESS OR MESS game we are playing ?

Most of the time I am getting question from the team if they could break the rule of the game on day 1 and claim they are we are playing the same game!

I usually start saying that either we are playing the game or not

Recently I got an opportunity to work with one of the scrum team(one of my friend invited me to visit his startup office) ,the leader of the team ask to me to have a look at the team , to inspect how they are operating.

Team claims that they were following SCRUM framework

Scrum framework defines certain roles,ceremonies and artifacts.

A;l the rules has to be followed to get the expected output but most of the time team by pass the rules based on the context they operate in.

I had interacted with the all the team members to understand what is going on and realized they are really following MESS model.MESS model is similar to the above picture where we are not playing CHESS but trying to discover some other game in CHESS board name MESS game by breaking the CHESS game rules!

Some of my observation which I shared with the team which I had found is not good and asked team members to think about these.

a) Team is doing daily scrum, average stand up time is > 30 mins maximum time they spend 60 mins (It happens when Manager participate daily scrum and do rapid fire questions like why not? why it is so? how come etc.) They look towards the manager/scrum masters and give update, it is micromanagement meeting.

b) Product owner and scrum master is the same person. Sometime the roles are on rotation. Willingness is less to play the role, no extra benefit! so reluctant to play these roles

c) No fixed release date, release date varies based on the critical customer demands.

d) Total team members are 6,engaged in many activities like ad hoc supports, release activities (various types,small releases /Big release in a month)), enhancement, bug fixing, etc. work where good amount of context switching is happening.

e) Tech lead decides who will do what and how long it will take

f) There are some works always in team members mind, cannot be trace through any tool.

g) 4 weeks sprint, but committed delivery stories missed most of the time at the end of sprint.

h) Team members are overloaded with various assignments which is not captured in sprint planing time.

i) Team feels they should follow SCRUMBAN or some time confused with what to do.

j) Sprint retrospective or sprint demo meeting happens on need basis.There are no measurement of Story completion.

k) Sprint Retro action items are captured in team members mind(we can not share sensitive data so not captured in tool!)

l) Customer satisfaction survey result also showing good rating !( they showed me last 3 months data they got 8 out of 10)

m) Tool what team is using to sprint plan is not up to date, team feels it is overhead to maintain all the data in tool, Team members are not finding any value addition to do so. There is no way to inspect and adapt with the current workload

n) One or two team members has recently completed scrum certification and certificates are displayed in the cube.They are Hero of the team.

o) Product owner micro manage each and every $ value and how they are being utilized, team members need to answer every penny utilized.

p) There were not a single celebrations for last several months with the team members

q) Prioritization meeting happens only with Manager, PO and tech lead

r) Manager feels we know everything/ we do everything which is working fine for me, please do not try to teach us!

These lists goes on , I could obverse 100 more items for sure with this team.Team is completely breaking the rule of the game.Bending it the way the feel comfortable.

Team is stuck now, they can not go back to waterfall days, neither they are able to adapt Agile, they are following fragile agile.

I have asked my friend to hire a coach

Who should do below activities, let the team know about the scrum values and principles to start with

a) Take several workshops with the upper managers to explain various agility aspects in the organization from mindset, culture, operating styles, servant leaderships etc.

b) Several workshops with the team members to explain WHY we are doing what we are doing(SCRUM, Kanban)

c) Coach one to one wherever require on various aspects of agile

d) Create coaches within the team for sustaining the changes

e) Asked team members to connect with the Community of Practitioner (COP) within the organization and contribute into the COP

f) I have asked my friend to reward team member (an Apple iTab will be provided) whoever will contribute into the external platform by showcasing of a great success story implemented within the team and achieve significant result.

g) Take the team to the other team where SCRUM is following as designed and team is getting the benefits.

Consistently enforce and reinforce the scrum rules to the team if they are following SCRUM

I asked my friend to us connect again to inspect, how team has come out from MESS game to CHESS game! and gift this below cartoon to all the team members.

I did connected with the team.

Surprisingly the team did very good turn around.There were few new inclusion in the team who are experts in scrum and fetched many new ideas and energy into the team.I was impressed!! Team has expanded now with may more responsibilities.

I discussed with the coach who was engaged with the team for couple of months and he shared while coaching he had applied ADKAR model with the team to bring and sustain change initiatives.He designed the whole engagement model considering below factors.

Team is playing CHESS game now.

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