Let the Quiet Ones "squeak" their mind!!

I have many colleagues who’re introverts, both in my team and outside. Long back, I recognized my own introvert side as well. I was suffering from imposter syndrome. I was not valuing my ability, my competence. But, as I grew older, I accepted & appreciate my introvert side.

Normally scrum team includes both extroverts and introverts. But that’s not the real problem. The problem starts when the extroverts or the SMEs or the technical leads or the dinosaurs (people in a same team or organization from a long time) dominates the meeting, decision making and ideation process. Now what the introverts does? They tend to be quiet, don’t interrupt the team conversation, and don’t share or explain many things/ideas they are thinking or feeling.

With my experience, what I strongly believe is that introverts have a lot to offer. They have high levels of focus, expansive creativity, responsiveness to intrinsic rewards, and the ability to thrive without as much supervision. The flip side is that they don’t always contribute all they have to offer in a meeting.

Good news is there are tricks which can help in unlocking the talent of introverts. Well I will share those techniques later but today I am going to share a hack to have an effective backlog refinement when there are introverts in the team.

This is a good way to make sure the team is involved during a refinement session, fully understands a user story, and in the process have some fun. I call it as "the squeaky duck". Here is how it works. We are going to use a toy duck which makes squeaky sound during the refinement session.

Every member of the team gets this “squeaky duck” and asks at least one question to the team or the product owner, and then passes the duck over to the next person. The idea is to cover everything related to the user story and to seek more details. If the team feels that the user story still needs some more discussion, they can go for another round. The questions could cover anything from applying the INVEST criteria to sharing a bad feeling about the user story implementation or warn the team about a hidden roadblock or dependency.

Introverts aren’t just quiet because they are disengaged or don’t have anything to contribute. Often, they’re processing, organizing their thoughts, and waiting for the right time to share. Prompting introverts during refinement will give introverts a clear opportunity to share their ideas. It will also shut down extroverts to dominate the meeting. When it comes to ideas, quantity doesn’t mean quality. The most talkative contributors are not the most valuable every time. Using this technique will provide enough time for introverts to think, process and contribute. As a scrum masters we can conclude a discussion around one user story by asking questions like, “Have we overlooked anything here?” and, “can anyone sum this up for us?”.

Start maximizing the ideas your team brings to the table and get more from each team member during product backlog refinement by using this technique that empower introverts.