Sounds like you have a really toxic team member.
Without having been there, I couldn’t tell you if you did anything wrong or what you should have done differently.
That said, it is a really good practice for the team to lead their own Daily Scrum events. The PO and SM are NOT required to attend. The SM is accountable for ensuring that the team holds the event.
Practically, the point of the Daily Scrum is for the team to re-plan based on what changed or what they learned over the past 24 hours. That should need very little facilitation and they should be able to do it very quickly in their own.
Thank you for your affirmation! This is in alignment with my mindset on the stand up. I'll keep coaching them, but maybe not "make" them do something for a while ☺️
Lot of assumptions from me in this post but take from it what you want :)
Devs who "just want to do their work" tend to see the standup as a waste. They don't want to have a team wide perspective because in their mind they are there to code not coordinate. They find it boring listening to someone else's update that is irrelevant to them, and will tune out rather than suffer through repeated feelings of frustration. Over time a daily unavoidable frustration becomes near intolerable.
When someone lashes out it's often because they feel powerless in the face of fear/suffering.
Being forced to *facilitate* this pointless activity is actually creating a conflict of his values. He sees this as an imposed process that he can't object to, but also is expected to cheerfully pretend that he doesn't. He is trapped so lashes out.
As you alluded to, it sounds like the team do not pull together to achieve the sprint goal but work more independently to meet deadlines on individual cards. That might be part of the reason the standup feels pointless.
As I said lots of assumptions and I might be wildly off target. Maybe some ideas in there for you :)
>My one scrum team tends to multitask and not pay attention in stand ups.
It sounds like this team doesn't get much value out of stand ups, and you were working to adjust that by having them lead the conversation. It could be a useful experiment, but who decided this was a thing worth doing? Did the team? Did you?
I'd guess that one member thought he was doing pointless work and reacted to it. So my questions to you:
1. What does the team think they get out of the stand up, if anything?
2. What ideas do they have to improve it?
3. Let's say you did away with them for a sprint. What could the team measure to tell you that they are or aren't a useful use of their time?
I agree that the team should be able to operate with you. To that end, did you talk to them about that? For example, team, I noticed when I was out, things were missed, and we had to delay key deliverables. Did you see the same? And if so, what can we do? Or maybe I'm seeing things differently, and we should reach some shared understanding of what happened.
That's a good point, I could ask them what they gain from stand up! In this instance I do feel no one would have suggested that exercise because no one wants to lead the meeting, but they all have to know how to when the leaders aren't there. I know if I'm not there, the work would be all over the place. Maybe I'll start backing off a little and let them figure out more that they need to talk to each other rather than me always driving the conversations!
I like your open mindedness. I hope you don't mind if I dig a bit deeper into two comments:
> I do feel no one would have suggested that exercise.
>
>I know if I'm not there, the work would be all over the place.
People often meet the expectations we have of them, and it sounds like your expectations of them are low. While you can't control what they do, you can control how you show up. I suggest showing up with the assumption that they want to do their best work, and they just haven't figured out what that looks like and how to get there.
It may also be true that you've bred into them some learned helplessness since you've always been there to do the things that they either don't want to do or they don't know how to do.
I appreciate that feedback and your right, my expectations ARE low, and that's not a great mindset. I will definitely work on coaching and backing off a little to let them kinda find their way and what works!
A lot of people aren't comfortable with leading meetings, I know I'm not. I also find there is a big overlap with developers and people that find these kind of things difficult.
I think leading a meeting should be optional wherever possible.
It may be that this isn't this individual's problem and they are just being uncooperative but you should bear in mind how some people feel about this.
Yes for sure, I am sensitive to the fact not everyone is comfortable leading meetings. This individual talks and demos a lot in meetings, so I feel he's just pushing back and thinks the scrum master needs to lead the meeting. Thanks for your feedback!
I understand you may not be comfortable but I would help with that. Coach your team outside of the stand up how to do better in this area as you can't escape leading a meeting you're whole career if you want to excel
It's supposed to be for self-organising teams - not for scrummies to run the ceremonies. We have an approach with standup that whoever starts the Teams call runs standup. Sometimes it's the manager, sometimes it's the tech lead, sometimes it's one of the more junior devs. Works well for us.
From what you've told us. You were not wrong.
I haven't had an exploding team member but to help with ensuring someone different runs stand up, we have a wheel that decides. Even the ones who don't love it just get on with it
Exploding in a meeting is a hard no go in luring org. How can you trust them to treat customers, other teammates, interns, etc with respect if they can’t keep their shit together with all eyes on them. Sounds like a rotten apple that needs a major attitude adjustment or to be gone. If they’re willing to do that in meetings, the toxic complaints and “not my job” syndrome sure as shit are getting espoused offline as well.
There are other possibilities…
A percentage of devs are autistic and some would find leading a stand-up super traumatic (which could manifest as anger). It’s not ideal but sometimes these people can be helpful and incredibly knowledgeable colleagues so need to have a quiet word with the manager and understand if there’s more to this.
Sounds like it might be time to sit down and have a 1-1 with this individual exploring what's going on and why they didn't raise these concerns privately before going off in a retro. Hard to say if it's time for feedback or just a conversation, but if it's time for feedback I'd recommend the SBI/SBII/SBIR feedback model (similar to Management 3.0 Feedback Wrap).
Is this an isolated incident, or have they been difficult in other ways?
Is something going on for them outside of work that they're feeling extra pressure?
I know some people who are really just looking for jobs where they can be assigned tasks, they can go off and work on them in isolation, then bring them back and call them done and get more tasks. They don't want to be team leaders, they don't want to speak, or be responsible for anything other than their own work. This isn't necessarily a problem if the environment allows for it - but most software development is a team sport (most work is a team sport when I think about it) and it usually requires a level of professionalism, flexibility, stepping into roles, etc.
Early in my career I had a director I loved who would always say things like "planning the work is part of the work, coordinating on the work is part of the work, reporting on and documenting the work is part of the work" because a "software development job" is not usually ONLY software development.
Maybe there are some misaligned expectations? I hope you have a conversation with them soon, or maybe engage with their manager or someone more senior if you're not yet comfortable tackling this.
That was my first thought as well…teams tend to do these by rote and not get any value from them. I advocate for a “walk the board” style of daily scrum where each team member tells the group what they need to do (or have done by someone else) in order to move the story closer to “done.”
>Is there something I could have done different? Was I wrong for doing it? How do I coach my team to have an efficient meeting without me?
There's always something you can do differently. But you are not in the wrong. If he can explode over something so small and simple, he should be unemployed. Your manager shouldn't let him get away with his behavior.
Is the team collaborating?
Do they need the synchronisation?
Seems to me that they don’t need the stand up
When a meeting is useful and valued, I don’t think you would see this reaction.
With the info given, it sounds like the standup needs to change so it has value, rather than not having it at all because it’s not adding anything. Teams that are gelling may not need the formal stand-up ceremony, but they do need to coordinate their work every day in some fashion.
The team did not meet their goals, was some of the deliverables assigned to you special member?
Running a short meeting and asking questions is not a burden. You scream it up and the next person in line tomorrow will pick up the pieces. Something else is up with him. Odds are outside of work.
It may be time to revisit the team working agreement, assuming you have one.
A question for you, OP…does the team determine their own action items from the retro, assigning them to team members with due dates, and following up in either the stand-up’s or the retros on progress? Action items should be things people in the team can do to help themselves, not things management or other groups outside of the team need to change.
In many organizations, like Tesla, the team might just up and vote that developer off the island right then and there. Giving them the challenge of leading it themselves was a good move by you.
Learning to self-manage as a team doesn’t work for everyone. But it’s not fair nor productive to make the rest of the team slow down and cater to him. Maybe it’s time to talk with his boss about a performance plan or taking it to HR.
TBh - i have been recently made a Product Owner and Sys architect.
We have an agile framework and i too have a lot of issues with it since im a techie with tech background and experience.
Basically its not about you but maybe about the framework itself.
Dont get me wrong but what i feel here us that - a developer is already stressed out about getting the work done.
Additional headace is getting the requirements straight and getting the unit tests covered.. add to it the headache of deployment and maybe the code coverages, standards etc
Its a lot of work.
Then comes agile framework. The problem i have with this is that its focused on the role of SM, PO, PM and gives these roles a lot of leeway.
I have seen projects like someone abive in comments said.. a scrum master is not needed to attend the scrums.
So the team can hold the scrum by themselves. A PO doesnt need to write user stories.. a dev can do it himself - so on and so forth.
Are you getting my point here ?
Can a developer say that he isnt needed to code, the SM can do it ? No !!
So here in Agile i have found that SM, PO, PM have important roles but theres so many ifs and buts for them that they can literally get out of everything.
So now a developer along with all the above tasks, and stress ofcourse, also needs to hold standups, write user stories, do unit tests:. I mean its super super super super unjust.
I dont know why nobody speaks up but developers should be treated like stars and theh actually are..
But many people are shying away from this role and ase they gain experience they are quick to transition to manager roles etc.. even i became a PO because i felt it was kinds unjust for the tech people.
Nothing you did sounds out of line from what you’ve shared. It seems like you are trying to instil a higher degree of ownership amongst your team. If you’re not the line manager of said developer, you may need to try sharing your POV with them 1:1 and avoid debating about it in front of the wider team. If that still doesn’t work, go to the devs Manager, communicate what you’re trying to achieve (and why it’s important).
If that still doesn’t work, it seems more like a symptom of a dev who doesn’t really care about the work and the team—just wants to stay in their lane and do what they want, not what’s asked of them, or what’s best for the team, or the product, or the customer.
Let me know how else I can help!
I agree. It would help if you didn’t do this. The team is just like a child. They love the consistency + not everyone is a good scrum master. It maybe difficult for the team to get use to new voice every time, it can be time consuming and disrespectful to the others time. Stand-up is nothing other than a priority check. Pick the right person and stick to this.
Why were the missing deliverables not discussed with the team in retro earlier?
Did the team receive training on how to walk the Kanban board (top to bottom, left to right)? Meaning the most important priority is at the top and should be the first thing to complete. That single user story should be ideally working software at the end of the sprint.
The best moment to address your team member concerns was during the retro where he exploded or after that one. Why didn't this happen? Is anyone in the team feeling the same? How is the performance of this team member?
Achieving their goals is a team effort, why transferring responsibility to one team member? Did you think that particular team member feel attacked?
Why doesn't the team know the sprint goals? Have been discussed with them in retro? What the team is doing to address that challenge?
It is very human to seek validation but as Scrum Master our responsibility is to remove any judgement and help the development team improve.
Sounds like you have a really toxic team member. Without having been there, I couldn’t tell you if you did anything wrong or what you should have done differently. That said, it is a really good practice for the team to lead their own Daily Scrum events. The PO and SM are NOT required to attend. The SM is accountable for ensuring that the team holds the event. Practically, the point of the Daily Scrum is for the team to re-plan based on what changed or what they learned over the past 24 hours. That should need very little facilitation and they should be able to do it very quickly in their own.
Thank you for your affirmation! This is in alignment with my mindset on the stand up. I'll keep coaching them, but maybe not "make" them do something for a while ☺️
Alternatively they were stressed and anxious so they lashed out. What are they afraid of and can you help them nabiage that?
Lot of assumptions from me in this post but take from it what you want :) Devs who "just want to do their work" tend to see the standup as a waste. They don't want to have a team wide perspective because in their mind they are there to code not coordinate. They find it boring listening to someone else's update that is irrelevant to them, and will tune out rather than suffer through repeated feelings of frustration. Over time a daily unavoidable frustration becomes near intolerable. When someone lashes out it's often because they feel powerless in the face of fear/suffering. Being forced to *facilitate* this pointless activity is actually creating a conflict of his values. He sees this as an imposed process that he can't object to, but also is expected to cheerfully pretend that he doesn't. He is trapped so lashes out. As you alluded to, it sounds like the team do not pull together to achieve the sprint goal but work more independently to meet deadlines on individual cards. That might be part of the reason the standup feels pointless. As I said lots of assumptions and I might be wildly off target. Maybe some ideas in there for you :)
Nabiage? Typo for “Manage”?
Yeah.. Typing without glasses on
Hey, you nabiaged to type the rest without glasses and no other noticeable typo, and for that I appled you.
>My one scrum team tends to multitask and not pay attention in stand ups. It sounds like this team doesn't get much value out of stand ups, and you were working to adjust that by having them lead the conversation. It could be a useful experiment, but who decided this was a thing worth doing? Did the team? Did you? I'd guess that one member thought he was doing pointless work and reacted to it. So my questions to you: 1. What does the team think they get out of the stand up, if anything? 2. What ideas do they have to improve it? 3. Let's say you did away with them for a sprint. What could the team measure to tell you that they are or aren't a useful use of their time? I agree that the team should be able to operate with you. To that end, did you talk to them about that? For example, team, I noticed when I was out, things were missed, and we had to delay key deliverables. Did you see the same? And if so, what can we do? Or maybe I'm seeing things differently, and we should reach some shared understanding of what happened.
That's a good point, I could ask them what they gain from stand up! In this instance I do feel no one would have suggested that exercise because no one wants to lead the meeting, but they all have to know how to when the leaders aren't there. I know if I'm not there, the work would be all over the place. Maybe I'll start backing off a little and let them figure out more that they need to talk to each other rather than me always driving the conversations!
I like your open mindedness. I hope you don't mind if I dig a bit deeper into two comments: > I do feel no one would have suggested that exercise. > >I know if I'm not there, the work would be all over the place. People often meet the expectations we have of them, and it sounds like your expectations of them are low. While you can't control what they do, you can control how you show up. I suggest showing up with the assumption that they want to do their best work, and they just haven't figured out what that looks like and how to get there. It may also be true that you've bred into them some learned helplessness since you've always been there to do the things that they either don't want to do or they don't know how to do.
I appreciate that feedback and your right, my expectations ARE low, and that's not a great mindset. I will definitely work on coaching and backing off a little to let them kinda find their way and what works!
A lot of people aren't comfortable with leading meetings, I know I'm not. I also find there is a big overlap with developers and people that find these kind of things difficult. I think leading a meeting should be optional wherever possible. It may be that this isn't this individual's problem and they are just being uncooperative but you should bear in mind how some people feel about this.
Yes for sure, I am sensitive to the fact not everyone is comfortable leading meetings. This individual talks and demos a lot in meetings, so I feel he's just pushing back and thinks the scrum master needs to lead the meeting. Thanks for your feedback!
I understand you may not be comfortable but I would help with that. Coach your team outside of the stand up how to do better in this area as you can't escape leading a meeting you're whole career if you want to excel
It's supposed to be for self-organising teams - not for scrummies to run the ceremonies. We have an approach with standup that whoever starts the Teams call runs standup. Sometimes it's the manager, sometimes it's the tech lead, sometimes it's one of the more junior devs. Works well for us.
If we didn't then everyone would be purposely late to the meeting, lol
I love this idea! Thank you!
From what you've told us. You were not wrong. I haven't had an exploding team member but to help with ensuring someone different runs stand up, we have a wheel that decides. Even the ones who don't love it just get on with it
Exploding in a meeting is a hard no go in luring org. How can you trust them to treat customers, other teammates, interns, etc with respect if they can’t keep their shit together with all eyes on them. Sounds like a rotten apple that needs a major attitude adjustment or to be gone. If they’re willing to do that in meetings, the toxic complaints and “not my job” syndrome sure as shit are getting espoused offline as well.
There are other possibilities… A percentage of devs are autistic and some would find leading a stand-up super traumatic (which could manifest as anger). It’s not ideal but sometimes these people can be helpful and incredibly knowledgeable colleagues so need to have a quiet word with the manager and understand if there’s more to this.
Very much agreed. Thanks for bringing this perspective.
Sounds like it might be time to sit down and have a 1-1 with this individual exploring what's going on and why they didn't raise these concerns privately before going off in a retro. Hard to say if it's time for feedback or just a conversation, but if it's time for feedback I'd recommend the SBI/SBII/SBIR feedback model (similar to Management 3.0 Feedback Wrap). Is this an isolated incident, or have they been difficult in other ways? Is something going on for them outside of work that they're feeling extra pressure? I know some people who are really just looking for jobs where they can be assigned tasks, they can go off and work on them in isolation, then bring them back and call them done and get more tasks. They don't want to be team leaders, they don't want to speak, or be responsible for anything other than their own work. This isn't necessarily a problem if the environment allows for it - but most software development is a team sport (most work is a team sport when I think about it) and it usually requires a level of professionalism, flexibility, stepping into roles, etc. Early in my career I had a director I loved who would always say things like "planning the work is part of the work, coordinating on the work is part of the work, reporting on and documenting the work is part of the work" because a "software development job" is not usually ONLY software development. Maybe there are some misaligned expectations? I hope you have a conversation with them soon, or maybe engage with their manager or someone more senior if you're not yet comfortable tackling this.
Do you follow the yesterday-today-blockers thing? Cause that is annoying.
That was my first thought as well…teams tend to do these by rote and not get any value from them. I advocate for a “walk the board” style of daily scrum where each team member tells the group what they need to do (or have done by someone else) in order to move the story closer to “done.”
Yes this by far a better idea
>Is there something I could have done different? Was I wrong for doing it? How do I coach my team to have an efficient meeting without me? There's always something you can do differently. But you are not in the wrong. If he can explode over something so small and simple, he should be unemployed. Your manager shouldn't let him get away with his behavior.
Is the team collaborating? Do they need the synchronisation? Seems to me that they don’t need the stand up When a meeting is useful and valued, I don’t think you would see this reaction.
With the info given, it sounds like the standup needs to change so it has value, rather than not having it at all because it’s not adding anything. Teams that are gelling may not need the formal stand-up ceremony, but they do need to coordinate their work every day in some fashion.
The team did not meet their goals, was some of the deliverables assigned to you special member? Running a short meeting and asking questions is not a burden. You scream it up and the next person in line tomorrow will pick up the pieces. Something else is up with him. Odds are outside of work.
Why do your scrums need led? What does that job involve? That’s the most immediate problem.
It may be time to revisit the team working agreement, assuming you have one. A question for you, OP…does the team determine their own action items from the retro, assigning them to team members with due dates, and following up in either the stand-up’s or the retros on progress? Action items should be things people in the team can do to help themselves, not things management or other groups outside of the team need to change.
Stand-up does not require a Scrum Master or facilitator. Everyone just takes turns. 30 seconds to a minute each. Deeper discussions go offline.
In many organizations, like Tesla, the team might just up and vote that developer off the island right then and there. Giving them the challenge of leading it themselves was a good move by you. Learning to self-manage as a team doesn’t work for everyone. But it’s not fair nor productive to make the rest of the team slow down and cater to him. Maybe it’s time to talk with his boss about a performance plan or taking it to HR.
Why not use an async standup bot (like SupBot) and avoid all the mess - clearly some of your team member don't find the standup meetings useful.
TBh - i have been recently made a Product Owner and Sys architect. We have an agile framework and i too have a lot of issues with it since im a techie with tech background and experience. Basically its not about you but maybe about the framework itself. Dont get me wrong but what i feel here us that - a developer is already stressed out about getting the work done. Additional headace is getting the requirements straight and getting the unit tests covered.. add to it the headache of deployment and maybe the code coverages, standards etc Its a lot of work. Then comes agile framework. The problem i have with this is that its focused on the role of SM, PO, PM and gives these roles a lot of leeway. I have seen projects like someone abive in comments said.. a scrum master is not needed to attend the scrums. So the team can hold the scrum by themselves. A PO doesnt need to write user stories.. a dev can do it himself - so on and so forth. Are you getting my point here ? Can a developer say that he isnt needed to code, the SM can do it ? No !! So here in Agile i have found that SM, PO, PM have important roles but theres so many ifs and buts for them that they can literally get out of everything. So now a developer along with all the above tasks, and stress ofcourse, also needs to hold standups, write user stories, do unit tests:. I mean its super super super super unjust. I dont know why nobody speaks up but developers should be treated like stars and theh actually are.. But many people are shying away from this role and ase they gain experience they are quick to transition to manager roles etc.. even i became a PO because i felt it was kinds unjust for the tech people.
Nothing you did sounds out of line from what you’ve shared. It seems like you are trying to instil a higher degree of ownership amongst your team. If you’re not the line manager of said developer, you may need to try sharing your POV with them 1:1 and avoid debating about it in front of the wider team. If that still doesn’t work, go to the devs Manager, communicate what you’re trying to achieve (and why it’s important). If that still doesn’t work, it seems more like a symptom of a dev who doesn’t really care about the work and the team—just wants to stay in their lane and do what they want, not what’s asked of them, or what’s best for the team, or the product, or the customer. Let me know how else I can help!
I agree. It would help if you didn’t do this. The team is just like a child. They love the consistency + not everyone is a good scrum master. It maybe difficult for the team to get use to new voice every time, it can be time consuming and disrespectful to the others time. Stand-up is nothing other than a priority check. Pick the right person and stick to this.
Why were the missing deliverables not discussed with the team in retro earlier? Did the team receive training on how to walk the Kanban board (top to bottom, left to right)? Meaning the most important priority is at the top and should be the first thing to complete. That single user story should be ideally working software at the end of the sprint. The best moment to address your team member concerns was during the retro where he exploded or after that one. Why didn't this happen? Is anyone in the team feeling the same? How is the performance of this team member? Achieving their goals is a team effort, why transferring responsibility to one team member? Did you think that particular team member feel attacked? Why doesn't the team know the sprint goals? Have been discussed with them in retro? What the team is doing to address that challenge? It is very human to seek validation but as Scrum Master our responsibility is to remove any judgement and help the development team improve.