This Simple Technique Will Draw Out Even The Most Introverted Members Of Your Scrum Team

Beware friendly reader. The first passage of this article may disturb you. Caution is advised.

Look at the infographic below. Follow the 12 steps suggested and you will most likely ruin your company’s social culture - which undoubtedly will rob your company from its most talented and dedicated employees. Next, the youthful startup contender sitting on the sideline will rob your marketshare. You start to push your management for faster results. But you will then notice that the culture you have created will be an obstacle to adapting your organization to the new challenges of your industry.

How To Have Better Daily Scrum Meetings

I came across this post on LinkedIn while studying a guide on how to establish better Daily Scrum Meetings within the Scrum Framework. It was written by Mirko Perkusich (PhD). I studied with one of Mirko's Udemy courses to prepare myself for the Scrum.org PSMI assessment - which I passed. In his guide, Mirko advocates that the Daily Scrum should not be held as a reporting meeting where superficial and shallow information is shared.

This made me think, that such a meeting culture only demotivates high-performers. On the other hand, should the team already show signs of inner resignation, conducting stiff, bureaucratic meetings only hardens the inner frontlines and reduces the chance that any other initiative may take roots (like breaking up silos). And don't we all know how this feels?

Look at the following graphic from Mirko’s guide and think about a team that has low autonomy and low self-management versus a team that is expressing high values of these two aspects.?

Note, that in the left schematic, the scrum master is heavily involved in being the switch board, relaying information back and forth between individual members of the team. Functioning as some sort of conductor, he becomes himself the bottleneck, or should I say 'impediment'. Note also that there is no communication between the members of the team amongst themselves. In fact, this setup impedes effective communication within the team. In the right scheme, the Scrum Master’s active engagement in the meeting is not needed, because he has helped the group members to lead the facilitation of the meeting themselves. Thus, the team is now autonomous and can achieve its purpose without micro-management from above.?Can you sense how such an organization feels different to the one described in the first infographic?

How To Turn Around The Cultural Climate In Your Team

To have better Dailys, Mirko refers to a study conducted across a dozen of software teams in the United Kingdom, Poland, Norway and Malaysa in which researchers around Viktoria Stray observed 79 Daily Scrum events. One surprisingly simple technique that facilitates the sharing of more meaningful information, involves all the participants and may nudge the team towards higher trust, engagement and productivity, is called the Round-Robin Approach.?

Let’s look at the best visualization of the Round-Robin I found on the internet from Meagan Pollock (PhD) over at?engineeringinclusion.com.?

The idea of this facilitation method is to ensure that every single member of the team will make a contribution. No one overly-assertive member will dominate airtime (which honestly can sometimes be a problem and wise is she/he who can adress it).

If you feel trust is lower and some people may not feel comfortable sharing their ideas, thoughts & problems verbally, you may want to start out using cards and pens and use a written format. Make sure everybody is writing down a contribution and that all contributions are heard. The above study also found that the most positive Daily Scrum meetings centered around information sharing in the team and the subsequent discussion around solving problems. Therefore, introducing a technique such as the Round-Robin may jumpstart a new level of trust among your team and slowly improve your performance.

Let me know how you have improved the quality of the Daily Scrum in your team. I’d love to hear from you.

Regards

Benjamin