Get your Scrum Team to be self-managed

One of the key accountability of the Scrum Master is to improve effectiveness of the Scrum Team. A team is effective if they are aligned to common objectives and are empowered to make their decisions. However, with management 2.0, where hierarchical structures still exist in many organizations; empowerment and self-management remains a distant dream. Also, in my experience and observations, because of the existing structures the new Scrum Masters often find it difficult to break the norms or are often clueless about how to empower/motivate the Scrum Team towards self management.

If you are a Scrum Master or a leader who wants to improve the motivation of your team and propel them towards self-management; then here are few tips that might help.

Tip 1: Lead with questions instead of answers, be vulnerable.

A couple of years ago, a good friend and a Scrum Master invited me to his Product Backlog Refinement session as an observer. This is how it went. For every requirement that was refined, there would be some clarifications and then my friend would say,

In my opinion this requirement is X points, let's estimate.

The result was the estimates were mostly biased towards the number which my friend usually started with. He was unconciously impacting the estimates. I call it passive direction. After the refinement session, I shared my observations with him and he realized the impact of his action and improved.

Now, why does this happen. In traditional management narrative, a leader should know all; should have all the answers, should direct. And often Scrum Masters, who are considered to be leaders, fall for this false narrative and try to provide answers.

For self-motivation/self-management to flourish, it is imperative for the Scrum Master/leader to understand that one person may not always have all the answers or even if they have an answer it might not always be the best option. It is always better to be vulnerable in front of the team and calling out "I don't know" what "I don't know".

When as Scrum Master instead of providing an answer you start leading with questions then, you can:

• Gain clarity for self and team,
• Create different perspective and
• Explore possible options.

Tip 2: Facilitate towards consensus

Jim Collins, one of the prominent business thought leaders and author states that people are self-motivated if they are engaged in meaningful dialogues and debates instead of being coerced into performing an activity.

In the corporate world it is often opposite. People are coerced into performing mundane tasks using the typical carrot and stick mechanisms. This often leads to silos within the team, narrowed focus on my work - your work and at times clash of egos.

Scrum Master should start identifying such anti-patterns and start facilitating meaningful conversations to create consensus. A couple of things that might help include -

• Tip 1 from above - lead with questions instead of answers.
• Working agreements for the team
• Common goals and clarifying why they are important.

Tip 3: Retrospect without blame

No team is perfect, no individual is perfect. We will end up with issues, we will have our conflicts of ideas and opinions. All that is good. Conflict is part of teams natural growth. However, what is more important is how to overcome these conflicts or issues and become more effective.

As Rocky Balboa says

It's not how hard you can hit but how hard can you get hit and still keep moving forward.

To do so it is important for the team to look at their challenges or conflicts more objectively; without biases. Avoid pointing fingers or putting blame.

Scrum Master's job is to create the right environment for such open discussion where people move away from blaming and start addressing issues objectively. Scrum Master may use techniques like 5 WHYs to conduct retrospectives which make discussions more objective; help teams to get into the root cause of problems and become more effective.

Tip 4: Mechanism to call out "red-flags"

For a team to be self-motivated and self-managing they should be able to clearly call out aspects of their process, product and even management which are impacting their effectiveness. Scrum Master's job is to enable such mechanisms and make it easily available to the team so that easily call out the red-flags.

One such mechanism which Geoff Watts talks about in his book Scrum Mastery and I have tried in past is the "Bull-Sh!t buzzer". A simple yet powerful technique to call out any non-sensical thing in the team.

We did not have the exact same buzzer in our team room but we got simple bicycle horn and used to blow it whenever someone caught any red-flags.

Tip 5: Get out of the way

One key aspect/skill that I often talk about in my PSM - I classes for Scrum Master is to "actively do nothing". What it actually means, your team members are smart people, and mostly they know how to deal with their challenges on their own. Do not become a roadblock to them or their abilities to find best solutions by continuously directing them.

The best thing a Scrum Master can do to promote self-management is to get out of the way of the Scrum team and let them decide the course of action. Although, the Scrum Master constantly acts as a thermostat gathering the observations and then sharing when necessary or requested so that the Scrum team becomes effective.

Conclusion:

Creating and supporting a self-managing team is no easy job. A Scrum Master requires to be continuously focused and in the look out for opportunities and options to help the teams become more effective in adopting self-management.