Breaking Knowledge Silos Through Strategic Skill Sharing | Joelle Tegwen

Summary

Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: Agile Storytelling from the Trenches

Episode: Breaking Knowledge Silos Through Strategic Skill Sharing | Joelle Tegwen

Release Date: July 16, 2025
Host: Vasco Duarte, Agile Coach, Certified Scrum Master, Certified Product Owner

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Introduction

In this compelling episode of the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast, host Vasco Duarte engages in an insightful conversation with Joelle Tegwen, an experienced Scrum Master and Agile Coach. The episode, titled "Breaking Knowledge Silos Through Strategic Skill Sharing," delves into practical strategies for dismantling knowledge silos within agile teams, fostering a culture of continuous learning, and enhancing team collaboration. Joelle shares a real-world case study from her consulting experience, offering listeners actionable advice and valuable lessons on change management in agile environments.

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The Challenge: Overcoming Knowledge Silos in a Complex Domain

[01:22 - 01:54]

Joelle Tegwen begins by setting the stage, describing a scenario where she was brought in as a Scrum Master for a project aimed at rewriting a legacy application. The existing system was plagued by slow queries and APIs, necessitating a complete overhaul to enhance performance. The project involved decoupling the frontend and backend, with an external team handling the frontend while Joelle’s team focused on developing a robust and efficient API.

Key Challenges Identified:

1. Geographical Disparity: The experienced team members were based in India, while new, talented developers were onboarded in the US. This geographical split led to knowledge silos, particularly concerning the complex medical domain and its associated regulations.
2. Domain Complexity: The project operated in the medical space, involving intricate business logic and stringent regulations, compounded by poorly structured databases that hindered performance.
3. Knowledge Concentration: Experienced members held exclusive knowledge of certain domain aspects, making them bottlenecks and causing uneven knowledge distribution across the team.

Joelle emphasizes:
"Even within the experienced members of the team, they had their knowledge silos too." [04:15]

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Strategic Interventions: Implementing a Skills Grid and Teacher-Student Model

[02:30 - 06:00]

To address these challenges, Joelle and her team embarked on a strategic approach inspired by the principles outlined in the Phoenix Project. The primary interventions included:

1. Creating a Skills Grid:
   Joelle introduced a skills grid to map out the major technologies, skills, and domain knowledge areas of each team member. This visual representation highlighted existing expertise and gaps, providing a clear roadmap for skill distribution.

2. Teacher-Student Model:
   Recognizing the dependency on key experts, Joelle implemented a teacher-student model. In this setup:

   • Experts (Teachers): Focus solely on mentoring, answering questions, and conducting code reviews without directly contributing to the codebase.
   • Students: Handle the actual development work, applying the knowledge imparted by the teachers.

Impact of the Teacher-Student Model:

• Initial Resistance:
  Senior and experienced team members initially resisted the change, expressing frustration over not being able to contribute directly to development tasks.
  "At first, the lead people complained a lot. No wonder I'm not doing any work. I'm so frustrated." [05:00]

• Long-Term Benefits:
  After a couple of sprints, the team began to appreciate the model as it facilitated knowledge sharing, reduced pressure on key experts, and diversified skill sets across the team. The collaboration led to improved code quality and a more resilient team structure.

Quote Highlight:
"They were getting to learn new things. They're finally released from being the only one to only work on this thing..." [06:00]

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Transformative Outcomes: Enhanced Collaboration and Team Autonomy

[06:35 - 09:53]

Joelle reflects on the broader implications of the interventions:

1. Empowerment Through Self-Selection:
   As the team grew, it was split into smaller, self-selecting sub-teams. Utilizing the updated skills grid, they ensured each sub-team included members from both India and the US, maintaining a balance of expertise and fostering cross-cultural collaboration.

   "We let the team self select. I had read the self-selecting teams book and I thought that was really cool and exciting." [07:10]

2. Continuous Improvement:
   The initial focus on skill sharing catalyzed a series of positive changes, including:

   • Reduced Dependency: Less reliance on individual experts prevented bottlenecks and facilitated smoother project progression.
   • Shared Responsibility: Team members felt more confident and supported, knowing that knowledge was distributed and collaboration was encouraged.
   • Enhanced Code Quality: Diverse perspectives from new team members led to innovative solutions and higher quality code.

3. Organizational Support:
   The success of these initiatives was underpinned by strong support from management, which emphasized the importance of knowledge sharing and team collaboration.

Quote Highlight:
"Once we got to a critical mass where the team was too big and then we needed to split... things were working well." [08:25]

4. Sustainable Team Dynamics:
   The team experienced a transformation from a siloed structure to a cohesive, autonomous unit capable of handling complex tasks without over-reliance on specific individuals.

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Lessons Learned and Best Practices

[09:53 - 10:02]

Joelle summarizes the key takeaways from her experience:

1. Focused Interventions Lead to Broader Change:
   Tackling a specific issue, such as knowledge silos through skill sharing, can trigger a cascade of positive changes within the team.

2. Patience and Persistence are Crucial:
   Initial resistance is natural when implementing significant changes. However, sustained effort and clear communication of benefits can eventually lead to acceptance and enthusiasm.

3. Importance of Organizational Support:
   Successful change management requires backing from leadership, ensuring that teams have the necessary resources and authority to implement new strategies.

4. Continuous Learning and Adaptation:
   Encouraging a culture of continuous learning and adaptability strengthens the team’s ability to navigate complex projects and evolving challenges.

Final Insight:
"The little improvements snowballing to allow for bigger improvements in how they were doing things." [08:25]

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Conclusion

This episode highlights the critical importance of breaking down knowledge silos in agile teams through strategic skill sharing and collaborative frameworks. Joelle Tegwen’s experience underscores that focused, well-supported interventions can lead to significant and sustainable improvements in team dynamics and project outcomes. By implementing tools like skills grids and teacher-student models, Scrum Masters can empower their teams to become more autonomous, resilient, and innovative.

Listeners are encouraged to apply these strategies within their own teams to foster a culture of shared knowledge and continuous improvement, ultimately enhancing the effectiveness and agility of their projects.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• "Even within the experienced members of the team, they had their knowledge silos too."
  — Joelle Tegwen [04:15]

• "At first, the lead people complained a lot. No wonder I'm not doing any work. I'm so frustrated."
  — Joelle Tegwen [05:00]

• "They were getting to learn new things. They're finally released from being the only one to only work on this thing..."
  — Joelle Tegwen [06:00]

• "We let the team self select. I had read the self-selecting teams book and I thought that was really cool and exciting."
  — Joelle Tegwen [07:10]

• "Once we got to a critical mass where the team was too big and then we needed to split... things were working well."
  — Joelle Tegwen [08:25]

• "The little improvements snowballing to allow for bigger improvements in how they were doing things."
  — Joelle Tegwen [08:25]

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Final Thoughts

Joelle Tegwen’s story serves as a powerful testament to the effectiveness of strategic skill sharing in agile environments. By addressing knowledge silos head-on and fostering a collaborative learning culture, teams can overcome significant challenges and achieve remarkable outcomes. This episode provides valuable insights for Scrum Masters, Agile Coaches, and team leaders seeking to enhance their team’s performance and adaptability.

For more actionable insights and inspiring stories, stay tuned to the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast and consider joining the Scrum Master Toolbox Membership for exclusive content and community support.

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End of Summary

Transcript

[Vasko]

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[Joel Tegben]

Hello everybody. Welcome to our Wednesday the Leading Change episode this week with Joel Tegben. Hey, Joelle, welcome back.

[Joelle]

Hi, Bosco.

[Joel Tegben]

So we're looking at change because it is, after all, Change Leadership day here on the podcast. And we want to hear a story from you, Joelle, about a change process that you were involved with and, and how that went through or in time. Right. Like from the beginning to the end, what were the key events and the key activities that made that a success. And as you go through those steps, highlight for us the tools, the tips, the tricks and the techniques you learned back then that you still apply today.

[Joelle]

Yes. So this was one of the places I was brought in as a Scrum Master. One of my consulting job stories brought in as a Scrum Master. And the situation that we were in was that they were taking a very old, slow application and they were going to rewrite it and they had an external organization that was going to do the front end. But, and the team that I was coaching was building out the API, the back end that would make all of that work. So they were trying to decouple from what they had. And their old system was the queries were slow and the API was slow. And so they really needed to get it to a place that was fast. One of the problems that they had was that everyone they had that was experienced was in India and they needed more people. And all the new people they brought in were here in the US and while the people that they brought in on the US side were experienced developers and they were very talented, they didn't know anything about the Domain, which was very complex. It's in the medical space, there's a lot of business logic and a lot of regulation that needed to be worried about. And the, you know, the databases weren't always well structured for, you know, fast performance queries. And so there was a lot of work that needed to be done on that side as well. And so what we did, we did a few things and it was really about channeling the Phoenix project. So you have someone who is really experienced at thing, knows all the things, and of course, everyone goes to them with the work. So we put an end to that, had them create a skills grid. So what were the major technologies, skills and domain parts for everyone on the team? And one of the things that came out of that was really interesting was even within the experienced members of the team, they had their knowledge silos too. And so the first thing we did was we implemented a teacher student model. And so if you were an expert on the thing, you couldn't do work on a story that involved that, that part of the domain. All you could do was be a teacher. Someone else would do all the work. You would answer their questions, you would help them understand the tables, you would help them understand the code base, you would do the code review on it, but you could not touch the keyboard. At first, the lead people complained a lot. No wonder I'm not doing any work. I'm so frustrated. I just want to do the work. There was about two sprints of a great deal of frustration from these very senior, very experienced people that they weren't able to do this work. But then even like three, four sprints down the road, they're getting to learn new things. They're finally released from being the only one to only work on this thing, and that's all that they can work on. They got to learn new things too, and they got to feel. And they had less pressure around being able to take time off because they knew someone else had it and they weren't going to get dragged back in off their vacation because somebody else knew how to do the thing. And the new people had different ideas about how to do it, which improved the quality of the code base. And they all ended up really enjoying this new situation of diverse skills.

[Joel Tegben]

One of the things that is really interesting from this story is this idea that you've identified a specific topic you want to tackle in this broader, bigger change, right? Like there's this, this idea, okay, rewriting the system, bringing in new people, spreading the knowledge. Those are all like, big changes that need to Happen. But once you focused on the skill matrix and you were able to implement the student teacher model, then all of the things started to slowly progress through a very focused activity. Is that how you saw it at the time?

[Joelle]

In retrospect, I do. At the time we were just trying to solve a problem because we couldn't have brand new developers not working. But it did end up leading to other, other greater changes. So once we got, we got to a critical mass where the team was too big and then we needed to split and so we let the team self select. I had read the self selecting teams book and I thought that that was really cool and exciting. Like, hey, these are all like pretty senior people. We could probably do this and got the organization to agree and we used that skills grid, an updated skills grid for them to do this. And one of the things that we agree they agreed on was that we had to have people from India and the US on each team because of still like, still knowledge gaps. You know, it takes months and months for people to come up to speed on things. So we always needed to have some expert on the team. And so the natural split would have been, you know, a US team and an India team. But that wasn't something that this team was able, this group was able to do at that point. But we were able to do that because we had, we had done the teacher student model and they had been able to demonstrate and they felt confident in how they were doing things and that things were working well. So like that, you know what we were talking about yesterday, the little improvements snowballing to allow for bigger improvements in how they were doing things.

[Joel Tegben]

Okay. I don't know if I would call that a small improvement to share skills across the whole team, but I would call that a strong focus. Right. And when you think about it like the wider changes, once as you said, you look at it in retrospect, they are quite big changes. But when you are in the moment trying to solve a problem, if you have this kind of tools, you know that you can trigger a lot of the other necessary changes by focusing on one specific aspect. And of course the people who were overworked, even though they might have felt frustrated over a couple of sprints, I'm sure they understood intuitively the benefit of having others be able to do the same work in the future, right?

[Joelle]

Yeah, absolutely. And that's why they went along with it to begin with. They knew that they couldn't be the only one who knew how to do a thing on a group, on a team. This large. And they, you know, they were receiving direction from their manager saying, hey, like, we have to share the knowledge here. And so there was that organizational support to do this. So. And they knew they needed to and it helped them, I think, work through that. Those frustrating sprints of not being able to do work like they wanted to do work.

[Joel Tegben]

Absolutely. What a great story. Thank you for sharing that with us, Joelle.

[Joelle]

Thank you, Vasco.

[Vasko]

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[Joel Tegben]

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[Vasko]

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[Joel Tegben]

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[Vasko]

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[Joel Tegben]

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[Vasko]

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