From Individual Stars to Team Players - Transforming Competitive Developers | Anh Vu

Summary

Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: From Individual Stars to Team Players - Transforming Competitive Developers | Anh Vu

Episode Overview In this insightful episode of the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast, host Vasco Duarte engages with Aang Vu, an experienced Agile Coach and Scrum Master, to explore the challenges and solutions associated with transforming individualistic developers into cohesive team players. Drawing from Aang's real-world experiences and his favorite read, "The Five Dysfunctions of a Team" by Patrick Lencioni, the discussion delves deep into the foundational elements that foster effective teamwork in Agile environments.

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1. The Foundation of Trust in Teams

Aang Vu emphasizes the paramount importance of trust within teams, stating:

"Trust will be the foundation. And it will be more important than any other process or framework or any fancy tool."
[02:15]

He advocates for trust as the bedrock upon which successful collaboration and high performance are built, transcending the reliance on processes or tools.

2. Case Study: A New Scrum Team in a Payment Company

Aang shares his experience working with a small Scrum team at a U.S. payment company tasked with developing a new POS solution alongside their existing online payment gateway.

a. Initial Challenges

The team was navigating unfamiliar technical stacks and physical device integrations, which inherently posed significant challenges. Additionally, the team members were newly acquainted, lacking established working relationships.

"We were just beginning the journey with that new product... and we also like pursuing the company structure that usually promote the people with maybe more feature delivery with kind of more code generated."
[04:00]

b. Emergence of Individualism

As pressures mounted, developers began to prioritize individual performance over team success. The desire to showcase personal value led to competitive behaviors detrimental to collective goals.

"People usually focus more on the individual tasks that finish their code that they generate and not really pay more attention to the end product."
[06:15]

This shift resulted in fragmented efforts, where each developer concentrated on their own tasks without considering the integration and overall functionality of the product.

c. Consequences on Team Dynamics

The lack of cohesion manifested in recurring issues such as unresolved bugs and code integration failures. Developers became reluctant to address problems that weren't directly their responsibility, further exacerbating team dysfunction.

"If it's not my bug, I will not fix that because I will want to spend my time to build the next feature from myself."
[07:30]

This behavior not only hindered product quality but also eroded mutual accountability, leading to a fractured team environment.

3. Identifying the Root Cause: Lack of Trust

Aang correlates the team's struggles to foundational trust issues, aligning with themes from "The Five Dysfunctions of a Team."

"The root problem is always about the trust... when we not really trust each other, we tend to avoid the conversation, avoid the conflict."
[08:50]

This absence of trust bred fear of conflict and inhibited open communication, preventing team members from voicing opinions or sharing innovative ideas.

4. The Role of the Scrum Master in Building Trust

Aang underscores the Scrum Master's responsibility beyond facilitating meetings and processes. Building trust requires active efforts to connect team members on both personal and professional levels.

"As a Scrum Master, we should spend time to really build the trust between the members in the team. Be the human, show the vulnerabilities."
[10:05]

By fostering environments where team members feel safe to express themselves and share vulnerabilities, Scrum Masters can cultivate deeper connections that enhance collaboration and mutual support.

5. Strategies for Cultivating Team Trust

Drawing from his experiences and learnings, Aang suggests several strategies:

• Personal Connections: Encourage team bonding activities that go beyond work-related interactions to build personal rapport.

• Vulnerability Encouragement: Create spaces where team members can safely share challenges and failures without fear of judgment.

• Transparent Communication: Promote honest and open dialogue to ensure that issues are addressed promptly and constructively.

• Shared Goals: Align individual objectives with team goals to reinforce collective responsibility and accountability.

These approaches aim to dismantle barriers, fostering an environment where trust can thrive and, consequently, team performance can reach its full potential.

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Conclusion

This episode highlights the critical role of trust in transforming a group of talented individuals into a synchronized and high-performing team. Through Aang Vu's candid recounting of his experiences and the application of principles from "The Five Dysfunctions of a Team," listeners gain valuable insights into the intrinsic factors that underpin successful Agile teams. The discussion serves as a reminder that beyond frameworks and tools, the human element remains central to effective collaboration and sustained team success.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps:

• "Trust will be the foundation. And it will be more important than any other process or framework or any fancy tool." — Aang Vu [02:15]

• "People usually focus more on the individual tasks that finish their code that they generate and not really pay more attention to the end product." — Aang Vu [06:15]

• "If it's not my bug, I will not fix that because I will want to spend my time to build the next feature from myself." — Aang Vu [07:30]

• "The root problem is always about the trust... when we not really trust each other, we tend to avoid the conversation, avoid the conflict." — Aang Vu [08:50]

• "As a Scrum Master, we should spend time to really build the trust between the members in the team. Be the human, show the vulnerabilities." — Aang Vu [10:05]

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This comprehensive discussion provides Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches with actionable strategies to diagnose and address trust issues within their teams, ultimately steering them towards greater collaboration and success.

Transcript

[Vasco]

Hey there agile adventurer, just a quick question. What if for the price of a fancy coffee or half a pizza, you could unlock over 700 hours of the best agile content on the planet? That's audio, video, E courses, books, presentations, all that you can think of. But you can also join live calls with world class practitioners and hang out in a flame war free and AI slop clean slack with the sharpest minds in the game. Oh, and yes, you get direct access to me, Vasko, your Scrum Master Toolbox podcast. No, this is not a drill. It's this Scrum Master Toolbox membership. And it's your unfair advantage in the agile world. So if you want to know more, go check out scrummastertoolbox.org membership. That's scrummastertoolbox.org Membership. And check out all the goodies we have for you. Do it now. But if you're not doing it now, let's listen to the podcast.

[Host]

Hello everybody. Welcome to our team Tuesday. This week we have with us Aang Vu. Hey Aang, welcome back.

[Aang Vu]

Yep. Hi Vasco, Great to be back.

[Host]

It's a pleasure to have you back to talk about themes that self destruct. But before we dive into that, share with us. Aang, what was the book that most inspired you in your career as a Scrum Master?

[Aang Vu]

Yeah, I pretty like the book or really love the book. Five dysfunctional team. And this book like reminds us that like even we working, even I working in the software and IT industries but the basic thing for people to succeed is sometimes like very fundamental thing for people, the trust. So in this book I think it's will be necessary or helpful for every PM and SM in their journey. Like they will learn that for the success of any team, trust will be the foundation. And it will be more important than any other process or framework or any fancy tool. So people will succeed together with trust. So it is what I learned from my restructuring of team and my recommendation for everyone in the SM journey.

[Host]

Absolutely. It's a great book even for people that are not necessarily Scrum Masters. This is a book that I very often recommend to all the leaders that I work with. Especially because trust, which happens between people, trust is the foundation, as you said, for all the work that we do with others, whether it is our managers, our team members, our peers, whoever they are. Trust is how we build that foundation of collaboration and performance. So great recommendation. The five Dysfunctions of the Team by Patrick Lencioni. And the link is in the show notes for everybody to go and check it out and Talking about trust, sometimes that's where teams start crumbling, right where the lack of trust is there. And let's explore one of those stories, a story of a team that you were working with. Give us a little bit about the context and then walk us through how these small little behaviors or patterns in the team grew over time and eventually led to big problems for that team.

[Aang Vu]

Yeah, yeah. I will start with also my first project appliance Scrum. So at that point in time I'm working for a payment company in the US we building the payment gateway and also building the solution to provide the POS for the merchant. And I'm working in the small team with five developers and me as a sm. And at that point in time we also knew to Scrum we applying the framework to try to make the work kind of visible and transferring and also help us to deliver the work more effective with the business. And for my team at that time, we like just beginning the journey with that new product. Because previously our company not really building that POS solution, we simply building the online payment gateway and then we approached the new things and a lot of new technical stack and also the physical device we need to learn. And the other thing with causing the problem for the team is when we also newly working with each other, we not really know the way we work. We not really know each other. And then we also like pursuing the company structure that usually promote the people with maybe more feature delivery with kind of more code generated and some kind of kind of that when causing the behavior that from the people that they pursue the.

[Host]

So what you're describing is that this was a totally new team working with Scrum for the first time at least some of you working in a new stack with new devices. This sounds already like a lot to.

[Vasco]

Kind of grasp and understand.

[Host]

So what was it specifically that started happening in that team?

[Aang Vu]

Yeah, because we face the big problem and each individual first. I don't know the solution for that. I don't know the way to work through that. But then we also try to show off actually the developer. We want to show off that we are the most valuable people in the team or person in the team. And sometimes we feel that we want to compete with each other and we want to show more valuable and then we can get the return that for example the performance review and at the time the developer we're not really working well with each other as a team. So people usually focus more on the individual tasks that finish their code that they generate and not really pay more attention to the end product, like when all the code integrate with each other, whether it is a working product or working solution that can be delivered to the customer. So it is the surface of the problem. So people prioritize the individual performance than the team result.

[Host]

So you started seeing this trend where developers were kind of doing their work, quote unquote, their tasks really well, maybe even really quickly, but then the code wasn't integrating, there were bugs, whatever. Is that what you're describing?

[Aang Vu]

Yeah. And also the other symptoms, like those very small little details is kind of that when we solve the bugs at the end of the stream. So people will try to figure out that bugs from which developer. And if it's not my bug, I will not fix that because I will want to spend my time to build the next feature and then I can deliver more feature from myself as the author and then the other dev will need to solve that issue by themselves. And sometimes it causing more issues because we impact the other piece of the system. So it is kind of the moment when I realized that it is a big problem when people not prioritize the team result and we somehow prefer to stick with individual tasks and we stick with the individual performance. So it is a big problem for the team and yeah gathering even kind of breaking up. And when I learned from that book like the five dysfunctional team, I also understand that it's just the symptom of the root problem. So the root problem is always about the trust. Like when we not really trust each other, when we not really care about the other members of the team, we tend to avoid the conversation, avoid the conflict. We don't want to really show our opinion, really show our ideas to help others improve. Because sometimes somehow we like fear that it will causing issues and problem and people will not like each other like to each other. And then it's the fundamental problems is about the trust, the lack of trust causing to the fear of conflict or like causing people to not talking with each other enough. And then because we're not talking with each other enough, we not share our ideas or share our opinion and then we not commit with that team direction. Because if I don't share my ideas or share my opinion so it's someone else, someone else direction, someone else decision. Maybe the PM or the PO or sometimes the sm. He wants that. But it's not really my job if something fail it is there.

[Host]

Yeah, it creates this separation. Right. Like it's. It's almost as if they were no longer a team. They were kind of pushing the blame on each other and leaving each other alone to fix stuff that maybe they could have helped with. So what you're describing is kind of this process of disintegration for the team.

[Aang Vu]

Yeah, yeah. And then at the surface we will see that this is like a group of people, but they just pursue the individual performance and they not pay attention to the accountability for the team and they not pay attention to the result from the team. They just want to finish their task and then throwing that into the world to someone else and then, yeah, it's safe for them, but not success for the team.

[Host]

And it's a really good call out that very often this kind of behavior surfaces because of a lack of trust. Now it might not be because they don't trust each other anymore. It could be because they never actually built that trust on which collaboration can grow. Right?

[Aang Vu]

Yeah. And it's also my kind of responsibility as well. Like as a supermarket. We should not always focus on the surface of that. Like only facilitate the conversation, facilitate the meeting. But sometime we need to spend time to really build the trust between the members in the team. Like be the human, show the vulnerabilities and like let people to connect with each other at the personal level in parallel with the professional level. And only when we able to build up trust, we can expect the team to work well with each other and care for the success of other members in the team so we can form the good team. So it's not only about the process, but about the way we cultivate the trust and the connection between the members in the team.

[Host]

Very well said. Thank you for sharing that study, Aang.

[Aang Vu]

Yeah, thank you, Vasco.

[Vasco]

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