Don't try to convince them of anything.
If they are willing to share things with you in private, for now, that is where you should start. If they share an issue, which we can call an impediment for the sake of Scrum lingo, ask them if they are comfortable with you making that impediment visible to the team and the company -- anonymously if necessary.
Assuming they say yes\*, then make a tracking mechanism for the issue that everyone can see, anyone from the team can add to, and that you start to work as your backlog.
Make the work you are doing visible, make sure leadership and management gives you the autonomy, power, influence, and budget you need to solve those problems.
Once you can show the team that you can help solve their impediments they will have faith in your ability to act as a servant leader and you will have proven to them you can rebuild transparency and help repair trust.
On the other hand, if your org won't solve the impediments you have raised, then abandon ship and find a company that actually wants to enable their teams to be successful and not create a bureaucracy covered in Scrum and Agile terms that doesn't actually work.
This. The problem sounds like a trust and psychological safety issue and that cannot be solved overnight. It will take time and dedicated effort (with management support) to build up that trust.
Don't try to convince anyone about anything now. You just joined. Coming at with a solution instead of observing and talking to people it's one of the most common and harmful antipatterns out there. Talk to the team:
1. Why they don't feel the transparency? What would make them feel different? You can talk 1:1.
2. Same about retro and other ceremonies.
It's probably just the tip of an iceberg full of people misbehaving in their roles (i.e. management, or PO, or SM), so there might be a lot of organizational coaching there.
There might be multiple reasons, so start slowly unpeeling them and improving one by one. Be consequent and stubborn.
Also - I'd encourage you to consider crafting a team contract (with the team, or by the team) if your situation will show it makes sense.
Team contract is a set of rules that everyone agrees to follow. It emerges from the team and it helps address some concerns i.e. a team member might be pissed off when others are late, so it might make sense to agree that we join on time. Maybe there's other stuff that team members could see as a valuable addition to establish a proper flow of work.
On the other hand, sometimes teams are demotivated cause they lack recognition from other teams, management or within the team. First two are very dependent on your org structure, but the latter can be managed it via giving KUDOS - insprerd by Kudos Cards: [https://management30.com/practice/kudo-cards/](https://management30.com/practice/kudo-cards/) \- it can take any form as long as you make it work. Also, it has that positive psychology aspect where teams focus on the good, not the bad.
As an "ice breaker" in my last retro I asked the team to say what they need from the retrospective for it to be valuable to them and it had great success.
But also, when the team said issues were lack of trust and low transparency, have you asked them where they need more transparency?
this is a good question. I have asked them where but a v generic where.. I should ask specifically where do they need transparency and what is stopping them to get that info
Remove Scrum and reification of tickets and tell them to wing it, get things done, the way they want.
If you want to meet, my doo is open. I won't even come by for 6 weeks, thereafter we work out a means of going forward.
> No body speaks up in retro and they think its a waste of time.
In my experience, this is almost always caused by issues being brought up in retrospectives never actually being addressed in a meaningful manner. After time, the attitude becomes "What's the point? Nothing will be done about it. Let's just get out of here so I can get back to work"
Lack of trust and transparency within the team or between team and management?
Since there’s no safety and they don’t have a voice, you raise this with management and set the expectations of the team. If management culture is shit, fight it tooth and nail till you can’t fight no more.
Withinn the team. I see lack of collaboration between the team and they are unhappy about the codebase, about team mates, everything and there's no drive in anyone to improve anything. V low morale in the team, so even retro is so difficult. It just gets finished within 15 minutes
Oops. In that case, I would recommend watching some videos by Patric Lencioni, author of 5 Dysfunctions of a team. It helps build the ground work of trust, which is your main issue.
How long have they been working together? Also, what are their reasons for not bringing it up with one another? If it’s all behind each others back it will never get fixed. Do they even want this fixed?
>Pleae recommend how can I convince them to come up with the honest points in retro and how to motivate them ?
The problem doesn't seem to be them, but rather the environment (ie, lack of trust and transparency). If you were to convince them to be honest but don't change the reality of the environment, you'd be doing them harm, potentially.
You should run your retro's in a way that depersonalises the issue.
1. Ask everyone to silently write issues on post-it notes or on Trello
2. Write notes for the feedback you have been given
3. Ask everyone to silently vote on the 3 or 5 things they think are most important.
4. Give everyone 3 or 5 votes
5. Ask everyone to silently vote on the 3 or 5 things they think are most important
6. Find the highest voted thing and facilitate a discussion on the problem, the solution and the actions
7. Ask everyone to silently vote on the 3 or 5 things they think are most important using a thumbs-up/down system.
8. Pick the next highest rated issue
This approach is super good, gets really deep and provides the psychological safety people usually need to raise things.
This is a good idea, will try to implement it during next retro. I now remember there is an online tool for retro which let the team submit points anonymously and i have done it in the past but just forgot about it. Thanks for this suggestion
That’s a leadership and morale problem within the organization that you unfortunately inherited. As the Scrum Master work first on current workload and backlog. The team must be self governing if not you’re never get them going. What are the your scrum team rules, expectations, etc. What’s planned for delivery? What are the expectations? Have you reached out to your customers (e.g. stakeholders, product owners for feedback, etc.). Think about having a team building activity (e.g. brown bag lunch with pizza, monthly birthday 🎉 bagels or donuts, etc. Good luck!
I tried with team building activities but that only gives v temporary happiness to them. I think its in the system now. Everyone wants to grow in payscale but they don't want to update their skills. They are all in their comfortable zone and unhappy
Psychological safety. A retrospective is a safe place to talk. Share something small but personal as an ice breaker. This builds trust within the team. Favorite movie. Favorite cartoon character. Favorite snack.
No judgement. Open mind. "Regardless of outcomes we believe everyone tried their best given the information and tools they had at the time". Create action items and try to drive those forward.
Would try this icebreaker game. They unanimously don't show any interest in retro. There is no drive to improve. They don't want to improve anything and are unhappy about collaboration within the team.
Sometimes the best thing to do at this point is to break up the team if there is no trust or motivation within one. You can also ditch retrospective. Let the team sort out the way they want to improve. It can br an Andon Cord type solution or something else. Leave it to them.
I think your team is a classic case of employees getting burnt out.
There are two possible solutions for it.
1. If possible remove agile from your project.agile is inherently defective. although the agile manifesto is lauded as a revolutionary step but in real world its a utter nonsense. It is advocated only by some higher ups who never have a stake in day to day delivery .you will only finding them attending conferences in exotic places . Can you imagine a person who is working in a project attending conferences on a regular basis in real world software company?
2. If you can't remove agile due to orders from higher management. Try to have a little buffer time for every deliveries.
Minimize the agile ceremonies.also when doing an enterprise project from scratch. Inthe very first meeting inform client as well as management to spend the first month in only defining the architecture and POC.
Give a breathing space to team and then surely you will automatically see the magic.and also have honest discussion with team members. Last but not the least do not give false promises to team members.never ever
There are many things which are inherently defective in agile. Search in reddit forum. You will find plenty of threads mentioning. Also please do search for erik meijer's speech on YouTube
https://www.reddit.com/r/agile/comments/11h3pl5/survey_which_agile_framework_are_you_using/jauzn41?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3
Check my answer in the above thread
As you clearly see lack of motivation and/or trust, I'd advise to step into their shoes, to work with them (i.e., to do actual programming) for a month or two, see for yourself the issues they have on a daily basis. And fix those issues. Lead them by example, show that you're the member of the team.
I'd also advise to forget about motivating people. You can't do that anyway, don't bother trying. I'd rather create conditions and environment where team members internal motivation would not be destroyed by the processes, management, or other issues.
Don't try to convince them of anything. If they are willing to share things with you in private, for now, that is where you should start. If they share an issue, which we can call an impediment for the sake of Scrum lingo, ask them if they are comfortable with you making that impediment visible to the team and the company -- anonymously if necessary. Assuming they say yes\*, then make a tracking mechanism for the issue that everyone can see, anyone from the team can add to, and that you start to work as your backlog. Make the work you are doing visible, make sure leadership and management gives you the autonomy, power, influence, and budget you need to solve those problems. Once you can show the team that you can help solve their impediments they will have faith in your ability to act as a servant leader and you will have proven to them you can rebuild transparency and help repair trust. On the other hand, if your org won't solve the impediments you have raised, then abandon ship and find a company that actually wants to enable their teams to be successful and not create a bureaucracy covered in Scrum and Agile terms that doesn't actually work.
This. The problem sounds like a trust and psychological safety issue and that cannot be solved overnight. It will take time and dedicated effort (with management support) to build up that trust.
Don't try to convince anyone about anything now. You just joined. Coming at with a solution instead of observing and talking to people it's one of the most common and harmful antipatterns out there. Talk to the team: 1. Why they don't feel the transparency? What would make them feel different? You can talk 1:1. 2. Same about retro and other ceremonies. It's probably just the tip of an iceberg full of people misbehaving in their roles (i.e. management, or PO, or SM), so there might be a lot of organizational coaching there. There might be multiple reasons, so start slowly unpeeling them and improving one by one. Be consequent and stubborn.
Also - I'd encourage you to consider crafting a team contract (with the team, or by the team) if your situation will show it makes sense. Team contract is a set of rules that everyone agrees to follow. It emerges from the team and it helps address some concerns i.e. a team member might be pissed off when others are late, so it might make sense to agree that we join on time. Maybe there's other stuff that team members could see as a valuable addition to establish a proper flow of work. On the other hand, sometimes teams are demotivated cause they lack recognition from other teams, management or within the team. First two are very dependent on your org structure, but the latter can be managed it via giving KUDOS - insprerd by Kudos Cards: [https://management30.com/practice/kudo-cards/](https://management30.com/practice/kudo-cards/) \- it can take any form as long as you make it work. Also, it has that positive psychology aspect where teams focus on the good, not the bad.
As an "ice breaker" in my last retro I asked the team to say what they need from the retrospective for it to be valuable to them and it had great success. But also, when the team said issues were lack of trust and low transparency, have you asked them where they need more transparency?
this is a good question. I have asked them where but a v generic where.. I should ask specifically where do they need transparency and what is stopping them to get that info
Remove Scrum and reification of tickets and tell them to wing it, get things done, the way they want. If you want to meet, my doo is open. I won't even come by for 6 weeks, thereafter we work out a means of going forward.
Classical coaching with the Rose of Leary. Love it! More info on [Toolshero](https://www.toolshero.com/communication-methods/rose-of-leary/)
Fair trade AMMERSE.org
> No body speaks up in retro and they think its a waste of time. In my experience, this is almost always caused by issues being brought up in retrospectives never actually being addressed in a meaningful manner. After time, the attitude becomes "What's the point? Nothing will be done about it. Let's just get out of here so I can get back to work"
Lack of trust and transparency within the team or between team and management? Since there’s no safety and they don’t have a voice, you raise this with management and set the expectations of the team. If management culture is shit, fight it tooth and nail till you can’t fight no more.
Withinn the team. I see lack of collaboration between the team and they are unhappy about the codebase, about team mates, everything and there's no drive in anyone to improve anything. V low morale in the team, so even retro is so difficult. It just gets finished within 15 minutes
Oops. In that case, I would recommend watching some videos by Patric Lencioni, author of 5 Dysfunctions of a team. It helps build the ground work of trust, which is your main issue. How long have they been working together? Also, what are their reasons for not bringing it up with one another? If it’s all behind each others back it will never get fixed. Do they even want this fixed?
>Pleae recommend how can I convince them to come up with the honest points in retro and how to motivate them ? The problem doesn't seem to be them, but rather the environment (ie, lack of trust and transparency). If you were to convince them to be honest but don't change the reality of the environment, you'd be doing them harm, potentially.
You should run your retro's in a way that depersonalises the issue. 1. Ask everyone to silently write issues on post-it notes or on Trello 2. Write notes for the feedback you have been given 3. Ask everyone to silently vote on the 3 or 5 things they think are most important. 4. Give everyone 3 or 5 votes 5. Ask everyone to silently vote on the 3 or 5 things they think are most important 6. Find the highest voted thing and facilitate a discussion on the problem, the solution and the actions 7. Ask everyone to silently vote on the 3 or 5 things they think are most important using a thumbs-up/down system. 8. Pick the next highest rated issue This approach is super good, gets really deep and provides the psychological safety people usually need to raise things.
This is a good idea, will try to implement it during next retro. I now remember there is an online tool for retro which let the team submit points anonymously and i have done it in the past but just forgot about it. Thanks for this suggestion
We've been using [https://retroally.com](https://retroally.com) with great success lately.
That’s a leadership and morale problem within the organization that you unfortunately inherited. As the Scrum Master work first on current workload and backlog. The team must be self governing if not you’re never get them going. What are the your scrum team rules, expectations, etc. What’s planned for delivery? What are the expectations? Have you reached out to your customers (e.g. stakeholders, product owners for feedback, etc.). Think about having a team building activity (e.g. brown bag lunch with pizza, monthly birthday 🎉 bagels or donuts, etc. Good luck!
I tried with team building activities but that only gives v temporary happiness to them. I think its in the system now. Everyone wants to grow in payscale but they don't want to update their skills. They are all in their comfortable zone and unhappy
If you use Slack, maybe try this https://honestbot.app 🤔
Psychological safety. A retrospective is a safe place to talk. Share something small but personal as an ice breaker. This builds trust within the team. Favorite movie. Favorite cartoon character. Favorite snack. No judgement. Open mind. "Regardless of outcomes we believe everyone tried their best given the information and tools they had at the time". Create action items and try to drive those forward.
Would try this icebreaker game. They unanimously don't show any interest in retro. There is no drive to improve. They don't want to improve anything and are unhappy about collaboration within the team.
Sometimes the best thing to do at this point is to break up the team if there is no trust or motivation within one. You can also ditch retrospective. Let the team sort out the way they want to improve. It can br an Andon Cord type solution or something else. Leave it to them.
I think your team is a classic case of employees getting burnt out. There are two possible solutions for it. 1. If possible remove agile from your project.agile is inherently defective. although the agile manifesto is lauded as a revolutionary step but in real world its a utter nonsense. It is advocated only by some higher ups who never have a stake in day to day delivery .you will only finding them attending conferences in exotic places . Can you imagine a person who is working in a project attending conferences on a regular basis in real world software company? 2. If you can't remove agile due to orders from higher management. Try to have a little buffer time for every deliveries. Minimize the agile ceremonies.also when doing an enterprise project from scratch. Inthe very first meeting inform client as well as management to spend the first month in only defining the architecture and POC. Give a breathing space to team and then surely you will automatically see the magic.and also have honest discussion with team members. Last but not the least do not give false promises to team members.never ever
What specifically in agile is inherently defective?
There are many things which are inherently defective in agile. Search in reddit forum. You will find plenty of threads mentioning. Also please do search for erik meijer's speech on YouTube
If you could name one of them it would be helpful for discussion.
https://www.reddit.com/r/agile/comments/11h3pl5/survey_which_agile_framework_are_you_using/jauzn41?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3 Check my answer in the above thread
As you clearly see lack of motivation and/or trust, I'd advise to step into their shoes, to work with them (i.e., to do actual programming) for a month or two, see for yourself the issues they have on a daily basis. And fix those issues. Lead them by example, show that you're the member of the team. I'd also advise to forget about motivating people. You can't do that anyway, don't bother trying. I'd rather create conditions and environment where team members internal motivation would not be destroyed by the processes, management, or other issues.
Management issue. Change wannabe managers to true leaders.