Scrum, Cross-functional Teams, and Belbin Team Roles

In the efficient delivery of knowledge work, having cross-functional teams can be incredibly useful to avoid unnecessary hand-offs. Hand-offs create delays in delivering customer value and getting feedback due to the need to re-explain the intent of the work-in-process or its other inputs needed to complete the work. If you have played the telephone game before, you will know how easily information gets left out or misinterpreted such that the original intent of the message is warped. A team should have everyone it needs to deliver end-to-end value to the customer so that there are minimal external dependencies to convert effort into downstream value.

Scrum advocates cross-functional teams, a shared purpose, and a common alignment towards a goal. Similar to team sports such as soccer, a good team is one where various different skill sets needed to win the game are possessed by the various team members. Throughout my experience in building cross-functional Scrum Teams, I have noticed that it is insufficient to staff a team with all the skills needed for end-to-end delivery of a value stream if the goal goes beyond reducing waste and delay to make the team high-performing.

There are certain qualities that a team has to possess to be high-performing - creativity, courage, highly communicative, self-motivated, focused, analytical, etc. Instead of coaching team members to build up these qualities, I often find it easier to recruit members who already possess certain inherent traits or a propensity to behave in certain ways due to their background or experience. Could it be that besides skills, it is also important to consider the personality traits of the team member as well?

The 3 Roles of Scrum

Scrum has three roles:

1. Scrum Master 2) Product Owner and 3) Developer.

These three roles come with certain functions. I will not be elaborating on these roles as they are readily explained in the Scrum Guide. However, I would like to delve more into the desirable characteristics or behaviors of each role so if you are predisposed to have them, you potentially have a head start over other peers in these roles.

Scrum Master

• LEADERSHIP: Ability to rally the team to meet the Sprint goal and coach them to victory
• IN-THE-KNOW: Knows the progress of each squad and each story; able to foresee problems
• URGENCY TO ACT: Acknowledges the impediments faced and quickly seeks to remove them
• INCLUSIVE: Includes everyone as part of the team and collaborates closely with the PO to make the Product/ Upcoming Sprint Backlog ready
• PEOPLE’S SKILLS: Has a good relationship with the team and is well-respected for the leadership that they bring
• PERSUASIVE: Understands the team dynamics and is persuasive in getting the team to try out new practices that can improve the team’s productivity
• HANDS-ON: Involves themselves in the work of the team instead of functioning as a secretary, coach, consultant, or facilitator

Product Owner

• ADAPTABLE: The ability to adapt on the fly when business conditions or demands have changed
• AVAILABLE: Available to the team to answer questions and provide valuable insights to help them create the best product
• DECISIVE: Able to make strong decisions that reduce unnecessary stories which do not deliver value and prioritize stories that bring the highest value
• EMPATHY: Able to understand the users and customers of the product
• INFLUENTIAL: Able to influence stakeholders and the team to achieve results
• KNOWLEDGEABLE: Understanding the work which the team does; the domain, the shifting market conditions, and the product
• WELL-CONNECTED: Have strong relationships with the team and the stakeholders to help the team remove blockers
• SALESMANSHIP: Able to articulate clearly and passionately about the value that the product and the upcoming PBIs (product backlog items) bring

Developer

• CUSTOMER-CENTRIC: Knows the purpose behind a story and its benefits to the user/ customer. Seeks out the PO or customers to clarify any user stories
• UNABASHED: Does not suffer in silence. Raises impediments quickly to the team
• HELPFUL: Offers to help solve other team member’s impediments
• COMMITTED TO QUALITY: Work is of high quality and bug-free in order to avoid rework
• COMMITTED TO THE GOAL: Makes a commitment to the Sprint Goal and keeps it. Hates carrying work over to the next Sprint. Is focused on the goal and delivering value to the users/ customers over perfect technical implementation

Let’s take the Scrum Master for example. My experience from building teams is that not all Scrum Masters are equal. I once knew a Scrum Master named Sherwin (not his real name). Sherwin is predisposed to be quiet and is not very outspoken. He is the sort of person who would rather avoid confrontation and keep the peace than addressing the elephant in the room. When management decided to do Scrum for one of the new products, they asked if Sherwin was interested. He agreed and was sent to do the Scrum Master training. Months after, the Scrum Team led by Sherwin was doing alright. It was a cross-functional team where everybody was happy and there were few complaints. The only problem with the team was that they were not delivering in a timely manner. Committed work was constantly carried over to the next Sprint and the velocity of each sprint was fluctuating wildly. Yet nothing was being done to address this. No wonder the team was happy! There was no pressure or consequences when the Sprint goal was missed!

Upon probing, I learned that Sherwin understands what a high-performing team is. Actually, it was his natural inclination to not call out the problem and push for a resolution that prevented him from performing his role well. His fear of conflict and desire for team happiness at the cost of business results made him less suited as a Scrum Master as compared to someone who is more demanding of the team and unafraid to push boundaries. I am not suggesting that Sherwin is unteachable and cannot be a good Scrum Master. However, I mean that it is less work to get someone who is more predisposed to be a Scrum Master, whose one of many functions is to improve the team’s performance, as compared to coaching Sherwin to the desired state of awesomeness.

This and many other examples have led me to think hard about the behavioral characteristics of each potential team member whenever I am given the liberty to recruit a team from scratch.

Do they already exhibit certain characteristics or behavioral traits that would naturally make them a better fit in the Scrum role?

Being able to answer this question has worked out well for me so far in building successful Scrum Teams but what I lacked was a working model. I was relying more on my own observations and intuition rather than a theory. This was when I was introduced to Belbin last year.

Introducing Belbin Team Roles

Belbin Team Roles was developed by Dr. Meredith Belbin and is based on studying teams at Henley Management College (now Henley Business School) for a period of ten years to determine what made them succeed or fail. The Belbin Team Roles model is used globally by organizations such as the United Nations. Numerous books and research papers have been published over the years to corroborate the nine roles. A Team Role is a tendency to behave, contribute and interrelate with others in a particular way.

The nine roles are:

Social Roles

• Resource Investigator: Opportunity seekers; knows where to get the resources for something and are enthusiastic about possibilities
• Teamworker: Diplomatic; the gel of the team that brings the much needed support and encouragement
• Co-ordinator: Focused on objectives; knows how to involve people and delegates work appropriately; big-picture in outlook

Thinking Roles

• Plant: Highly creative and unorthodox when it comes to problem-solving
• Monitor Evaluator: Logical, discriminating, and weighs up all the options before making a decision
• Specialist: Has in-depth knowledge about a subject; your Subject Matter Expert

Action-Oriented Roles

• Shaper: Makes things happen by driving the team forward and getting them focused
• Implementer: Great at execution; efficient; systematic in carrying out the work
• Completer Finisher: Able to scrutinize a work down to its detail and maintain high-quality standards

A more detailed summary of the nine roles can be found here . To determine the Team Role a person would be inclined to exhibit, they would have to take a Belbin Team assessment which is a 360 assessment.

All nine roles are not necessarily needed in a team. Rather, it is more important to understand the Team’s objective. For example, a team that is focused on compliance does not need a Plant. They want to make sure that everything is followed strictly by the book.

It also does not mean that nine people are needed for each role. Most people fulfill two to three of the Team Roles and this can also change over time.

In Scrum, a high-performing team is always able to deliver high-quality increments that meet the Sprint goal aligned to the organization’s business objectives and strategic vision. These increments must be increments of value delivered to the customer. What Belbin Team Roles would be more inclined to fit into the Scrum Roles?

Belbin and Scrum

Scrum Masters are leaders in the team and in the organization’s transformation efforts. They are constantly removing impediments, keeping the team focused, and relentless in rallying the team to accelerate faster towards the goals. They also need to be resourceful in solving problems, engage help from outside if needed and have strong people skills.

The combination of Belbin Team Roles that would potentially make good Scrum Masters in my opinion are:

Co-ordinator, Shaper, Resource Investigator

Product Owners are the experts in understanding the customer as well as how the product fulfills the customer’s needs. They are constantly surveying the business landscape to observe their competitors and have a strong awareness of their product in relation to others. The decisions they make have to be well-researched and rationally thought out as if they were playing chess, making this a highly cerebral role. They are able to understand their stakeholders and negotiate outcomes with each of them to gain buy-in.

The combination of Belbin Team Roles that would potentially make good Product Owners in my opinion are:

Monitor Evaluator, Plant, Resource Investigator

Great Developers are the ones who know how to build the product effectively and with high quality. Without them, there is no product for the customer. They bring in a high level of technical expertise and are very skilled at solving problems in an efficient manner. Besides building the products right, they also think about sustainability so that they focus more of their time on creation rather than routine tasks.

The combination of Belbin Team Roles that would potentially make good Developers in my opinion are:

Implementer, Completer Finisher, Specialist, Teamworker

Each of these Belbin Team Roles has strengths and weaknesses. The key is to emphasize the strengths and be self-aware of the weaknesses so that the team member can self-regulate or be supported in certain areas of growth. Belbin gives me a good way to determine the Team Roles that are lacking in my Scrum Team. For example, if my Scrum Team is constantly delivering poor quality products, is it because of the process or could my team be improved by bringing in a Completer Finisher team member? If my Product Owner is lacking the ability to decide on different features of a product, would having a Business Analyst with a strong Monitor Evaluator background help the PO?

The knowledge of Belbin Team Roles is more relevant today than before where the creation of knowledge work is a team sport. I would love to write more in the future about the relationship of Belbin Team Roles to Agile and about the weaknesses of each Team Role that could jeopardize the dynamics of the Scrum Team.