Transforming Workgroups into High-Performing Teams | Season Hughes

Summary

Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: Agile Storytelling from the Trenches
Episode: Transforming Workgroups into High-Performing Teams | Season Hughes
Host: Pasco Duarte
Guest: Season Hughes
Release Date: February 25, 2025

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In this insightful episode of the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast, host Pasco Duarte engages with Season Hughes, an experienced Scrum Master, to explore the challenges and strategies involved in transforming traditional workgroups into cohesive, high-performing Agile teams. The discussion delves into the critical importance of adhering to the Scrum Guide, the pitfalls of mislabeling workgroups as teams, and actionable approaches to foster genuine collaboration and efficiency within organizations.

Emphasizing the Scrum Guide: The Fundamental Resource

The conversation kicks off with Duarte inquiring about the most influential book in Season Hughes's Scrum Master journey. Instead of citing an external resource, Hughes passionately advocates for the Scrum Guide itself, emphasizing its foundational role in effective Scrum practice.

Season Hughes [02:26]: "The Scrum Guide is my true, authentic, honest answer. Scrum Masters are accountable for coaching Scrum, and yet not enough of us go in and actually reread it, understand it, and keep up with the updates."

Hughes underscores a common issue where Scrum Masters rely on misconceptions or incomplete understandings of Scrum practices, leading to "Agile fatigue"—a sense of burnout and skepticism towards Agile methodologies. She highlights the importance of continuous learning and strict adherence to the Scrum framework to avoid turning Agile processes into mere checklists.

Season Hughes [03:37]: "If you're a Scrum master and aren't in there understanding the foundations of Scrum, the processes, the intent of Scrum, I do not think you should be a Scrum Master."

Duarte concurs, recognizing the necessity for Scrum Masters to possess a deep and nuanced understanding of Scrum to effectively lead and coach their teams.

Distinguishing Teams from Workgroups

Transitioning to the episode's core theme—Team Tuesday—the discussion shifts to the differentiation between teams and workgroups. Hughes articulates a prevalent misnomer in many organizations where groups of individuals are labeled as teams without embodying the collaborative and unified spirit that Scrum necessitates.

Season Hughes [09:13]: "We are calling a group of people a team who are not actually a team. We often have what is actually a work group or a working group."

She delineates the characteristics of a workgroup: individuals working in silos, pursuing personal goals, and lacking a shared sprint objective. This disjointed approach often results in inefficacy during Scrum ceremonies, such as daily Scrums and Sprint Planning, where updates become mere status reports rather than collaborative planning sessions.

Season Hughes [11:39]: "If you are forcing these SCRUM events on a team that is not a team and has no incentive to do this highly collaborative way of working, you're killing this group of people here."

Hughes shares her experience with a 12-person workgroup comprising specialists in various domains like Android and iOS development. Despite their individual competencies, the absence of a cohesive sprint goal hinders their ability to function as an integrated team.

Navigating the Path to High Performance

Faced with the challenge of transforming a workgroup into a high-performing team, Hughes outlines two primary pathways:

1. Attempting Integration: Encouraging the group to collaborate by establishing shared sprint goals and fostering interdependence. This involves shifting the mindset from individual contributions to collective outcomes.

2. Reevaluating the Framework: Recognizing when Scrum may not be the optimal framework for the given context and exploring alternative methodologies like Kanban, which may better suit independent working styles.

Season Hughes [15:02]: "SCRUM is not the best fit for every organization. And that is fine."

Duarte echoes this sentiment, highlighting the importance of aligning Agile frameworks with the team's structure and the organization’s objectives. He suggests that in cases where teams are assembled based on administrative convenience—such as reporting to the same technical manager—it may be more effective to address the root causes before enforcing Scrum practices.

Addressing Organizational Challenges

The dialogue also touches upon the broader organizational implications, such as resistance to change and the potential disconnect between leadership goals and team dynamics. Hughes hints at future discussions on leadership's role in either facilitating or hindering the transformation of workgroups into teams.

Season Hughes [18:19]: "I have a very strong feeling that on another day of this podcast, we're going to get into why that happens. So stay tuned."

Concluding Insights

The episode concludes with Duarte and Hughes reaffirming the critical role of Scrum Masters in recognizing when Scrum is or isn't the right fit for a team. They emphasize the importance of honest assessment, flexibility in adopting alternative frameworks, and the ongoing commitment to fostering environments where high-performing teams can thrive.

Season Hughes [19:40]: "The reason I come to work is I want to coach high performing teams, which means to me, people that have what they need to get the job done and are supported and are working in ways that provide the most value to the customer and to the people doing the work."

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Key Takeaways:

• Adherence to the Scrum Guide is paramount for effective Scrum Masters.
• Distinguishing between teams and workgroups can prevent misapplication of Scrum practices.
• Transforming workgroups into teams requires intentional strategies, such as establishing shared sprint goals.
• Flexibility in Agile frameworks allows organizations to choose methodologies that best fit their team structures.
• Leadership plays a critical role in enabling or obstructing the development of high-performing teams.

This episode serves as a valuable resource for Scrum Masters and Agile practitioners striving to build authentic, collaborative teams that embody the true spirit of Agile methodologies.

Transcript

[Pasco Duarte]

Hi there, Pasco Duarte here, your host. I wanted to share a story with you. You know how sometimes Agile just feels like following another checklist when like processes and frameworks feel more important than what we are trying to achieve and sometimes even like handcuffs. I was talking to a customer of the Global Agile Summit and he used a term that kind of stuck in my he said, I have Agile fatigue. And I've heard that a lot from people since then. But here's the thing, it doesn't have to be this way. So we started thinking and at the Global Agile Summit, which is happening this May, we're bringing together practitioners who've actually done that, who've broken free from this, you know, install the framework kind of mindset. We want to focus the summit on real life, first person stories of Agile all succeeding that inspire you to action. We're talking real experiences, practical solutions, and of course, amazing insights from leaders like Gojkoacic, who will be one of the keynote speakers, and Jurgen Apelo, who will be one of the keynote speakers as well. If you're ready to leave the Agile fatigue behind, just join us in Dalit. The early birth tickets are now available@the globalagilesummit.com and mark your calendar. We will have workshops on May 18th, that's a Sunday. And then the conference itself will happen on May 19th and 20th of 2025 in Tallinn, Estonia. So let's make Agile exciting again. And remember, go to agile globalagilesummit.com that is, and get your early birth ticket. Now, it will only be available until early March, so grab it now. And now onto the episode. Hello everybody. Welcome to our Team Tuesday. This week we have with us Season Hughes. Hey, Season. Welcome back.

[Season Hughes]

Happy to be back. Thank you.

[Pasco Duarte]

Absolutely. So, season on Tuesday, of course, it's Team Tuesday, we talk about teams. But before we dive into that, what was the book that most inspired you in your role as a Scrum Master?

[Season Hughes]

Okay, this answer, it's going to feel a bit like a cop out, but I have very strong feelings about this. And that is the Scrum guide and that is my true, authentic, honest answer. And here is why I feel so, so deeply about this. Scrum Masters are the people who are accountable for coaching Scrum, and yet not enough of us go in to this guide for Scrum to reread it, understand it, and most of all, keep up with the updates that are happening. I have talked to so many Scrum Masters out in the world about like, oh, what are your team's product goals, for example, and they'll look at me and go, product goals. I mean, we have sprint goals, but we don't have a. And sorry, this has been happening a little bit. When I say sprint goals, it sounds like sprinkles, which I find hilarious. A little bit of an aside because.

[Pasco Duarte]

It can sprinkle motivation and focus into.

[Season Hughes]

The team, onto that and collaboration. So, yeah, they know what a Sprint goal is, but a product goal or there are people who say, yeah, we're out there, we're doing agile, we're grooming the backlogs. And this one is a point of contention for me because I feel very deeply about inclusivity and inclusive language. And the Scrum Guide Agile alliance made a very stated, documented point of removing the word grooming from the vocabulary of Agile because it was making people uncomfortable. And they started using refining to have more inclusive language. And this is just like Seasons list of completes podcast. But like, please, if you're listening, don't do these things. Don't have a daily Scrum where it is just yesterday I did this today, I will do this tomorrow. Like I am blocked on. That's my trying to be a robot voice. If you look in the Scrum Guide, it's not. Those three questions aren't in there anymore. And it makes it very clear that a daily Scrum is for the developers, by the developers, to come up with a plan and discuss progress towards the sprint goal. Sprint goal. I just, I feel so, so strongly that we are the teachers and coaches of Scrum. There is this free guide on the Internet that tells you exactly what to do with it. And if you as a Scrum master, aren't in there understanding the foundations of Scrum, the processes, the intent of Scrum, I do not think you should be a Scrum Master. And I am whispering that because I'm very scared to say it, but I feel, feel that way, like that is your basic job.

[Pasco Duarte]

There's one coming back to that point that you made, that there's one reason to support the use and the attribution of certificates, and that is to certify that people know the basics. Now, many certificates are not given on that premise, so maybe they can be improved. But there is an argument to say that, okay, so there's this minimum set of things that people need to know. And if you're coaching the use of Scrum, whether you're a leader, a Scrum master, an Agile coach, or just a team member or a product owner, then of course you need to know the roles of the game. And I remember Many years ago there was this, I guess we could call it humoristic blog post called Scrumbut that kind of tried to illustrate what is not Scrum. Right. Like anything that requires a. But is not Scrum right. Now that doesn't mean that everybody should use Scrum. Obviously not. People are free to use other methods and practices. But I think that your point about Scrum Masters needing to know the basics about the Scrum Guide, I think that's a very important one. And. And maybe something we should do something about here on the podcast. Maybe create a free e course about the Scrum Guide. Yeah. Maybe we need to talk about that season.

[Season Hughes]

And I'm not saying that we need to go in and do Scrum. Do Scrum, if that's even a thing. Practice the processes of Scrum to the letter of the Scrum Guide. But I do think at a minimum you should know what they are and why they are there before you start doing any form of Scrum. But Yes.

[Pasco Duarte]

Yeah. And Scrum is a sufficiently deep and complex set of patterns that it is unreasonable to expect people to know why they are there before they read the gride first and then practice it for a while.

[Season Hughes]

Exactly. Know what it is so you can coach it and then be able to. It's like riding a bike. You know that basic mechanism of the bike. But maybe you're going to take it down some different paths or decorate your bike or do some wheelies like. But at least you know how to ride that bike. And you could teach someone how to do it.

[Pasco Duarte]

Absolutely, yes.

[Season Hughes]

All right.

[Pasco Duarte]

That was the Scrum Guide episode, everybody. Right, next we need to talk about teams. Right. Because Grum is there to support teams success. But sometimes teams create their own set of problems. Today is Team Tuesday here and we always talk about teams that somehow go down the self destruction path. How far they go on that path depends a lot on us and their leaders obviously. But let's explore that story there season. Tell us a little bit the context. So you know how big the team was, what kind of project they were working on and then what happened? Like what were those behaviors or patterns that developed over time and became a problem for the team?

[Season Hughes]

Yep. So I. The biggest thing I see here on Team Tuesday is we are calling a group of people a team who are not actually a team. And it was hard for me to come up with a specific story because I see this. I've seen this in every organization I have ever worked for. What's happening is we are using this word team very loosely and we often have what is actually a work group or a working group. And what a work group looks like is you have a bunch of people who are working on their own independently, with their own work and their own individual goals, and they're being rewarded to do that particular piece of work. You can tell you're on a work group because if you're forced to go to a daily Scrum as a work group, you're seeing everybody give their different updates about the work that they're doing, and it's just status updates like you don't care what the other people are working on. You have no incentive to care about it. You can tell you're in a work group because if you try to come up with a Sprint goal, it's almost impossible because you have no reason to work together as an actual team. And what happens in these situations when you're in a coaching role or you are a Scrum master, is you have two main paths ahead of you, and one is where you can try to bring people together as a team. So I am working on what we would refer to as a team, but what is actually a work group of about 12 people right now, and I am trying to take that path with them. They have different specialties and the areas that they work in. So some specialize in Android development, Some are on iOS development, some of them are on web development, and they're all working on different projects with different kind of product owners. They all have their own individual goals, and I've been challenging them to come up with a Sprint goal that actually brings them together as a team that they can work towards. So that's when they are.

[Pasco Duarte]

Are they originally a work group when you put that challenge to them?

[Season Hughes]

Yes. Yeah. I would very much describe this team as a work group. They are an amazing group of people and they're all individually doing interesting work. And I'm just wondering, can we bring them together as a team first through this mechanism of a Sprint goal? When we come into Sprint Planning, does it look like, okay, this person has their work and their full and this person has their work and their full and this has their work and their full. That's what Sprint Planning looks like right now. I'm trying to use the word our at Sprint Planning intentionally to move from my work to what is it that we can do together as a team and moving from I'm going to get my portion of the work done to what needs to happen from start to finish for us to be done with the work at Sprint Planning. Sorry, were you going to say something, Vasco?

[Pasco Duarte]

No, I was going to ask, like when you see those, I mean, when you're practicing those things that you just shared with me, how does it land confusion every time?

[Season Hughes]

I mean, I'm describing this particular team, but this plays out in the same way every single time. It feels like this. And I'm not saying that one work group versus team one is better or worse than the other. They're just two different circumstances. And being a team certainly lends itself better to the processes and foundations and mentalities of Scrum because it requires that collaboration and working together. So if you are forcing these SCRUM events on a team that is not a team and has no incentive to do this highly collaborative way of working, like you're. You're killing this group of people here. And what I see is confusion about why are we here, why are we planning this sprint? Why do I have to hear about this work that doesn't relate to me? We have too many meetings. That's a big thing that happens when you're a work group and you're making them do all these daily Scrums and retros. The other path here is to just stop, stop forcing Scrum onto a group of people that works better, more independently. Explore something like Kanban, which really lends itself well to a work group of people where you're limiting your work in progress, where you are taking first in, first out. There's a whole different set of metrics around that too. But I. This is what I see the most in the field is calling something a team and forcing Scrum onto a group of people that SCRUM is not the best fit for. That, like I'm saying it here, SCRUM is not the best fit for every organization. And that is fine.

[Pasco Duarte]

One of the kind of questions puzzles in those situations is of course, why are these people somehow gathered as a group? And I mean, there could be very good reasons, right? Like it doesn't need to be an accident, it can be on purpose. Like for example, they all report to the same technical manager. That's a very common, we could call it convenience, reason to aggregate people within a work group. But of course, one of the things that you said, Scrum may not be the right approach for them. I think it's very important for us to recognize that also because it diverts from other work that we need to do. So for example, in this example that I shared, where people are aggregated around a technical manager rather than working as a team, then maybe we need to work with that Manager first and understand their goals and see if there's an opportunity to help them reach their goals. Because if there isn't, Right. Like, if everything is great as it is, then maybe we should move on to another team. Right. And the other thing that is really puzzling is. And you've said it right, like, we've all heard this, there are too many meetings.

[Season Hughes]

Yes, Right.

[Pasco Duarte]

And what is puzzling is, okay, so we. We feel there are too many meetings, but we still keep coming into these meetings. And I don't mean like. And I don't mean like the team members are coming. I mean, they are being asked to come to those meetings. Right. And then we have to ask. But, okay, but what is the reason for us to have these meetings? And coming back to this example that you said, like, can we come up with a sprint goal that is shared by all of us? One of the kind of. I have two rules to use scrum, and one of the rules is that there's one team, right? Everybody's wearing the same jersey. There's no random colored jerseys in the team. I know who to pass the ball to. I know who will pass the ball to me. And then one goal. Right. And I very often use the metaphor of a basketball game where imagine that you go into a basketball game and everybody's wearing a random jersey, but there are four other people on your team. You just don't know who they are. Then the baskets were somehow moved, so they're no longer there. There's no point in trying to, you know, shoot a basket because they aren't there. And you can't count points anymore because there's no basket to go through. Like, and then you start to say, okay, but then there are no conditions to play basketball, so why are we.

[Season Hughes]

Trying to play basketball? Let's do something else that's better for the team and provides more value to our customers. Yes.

[Pasco Duarte]

Yeah. So it is really, I think, for us as grandmasters especially, it is a very trying position to be in, to recognize that, hey, I'm actually hired to do a job that can't be done and shouldn't be done in this particular workgroup.

[Season Hughes]

Yes. And I think I have a very strong feeling that on another day of this podcast, we're going to get into why that happens. So stay tuned. Listen.

[Pasco Duarte]

Yeah, no spoilers. No spoilers.

[Season Hughes]

Little leadership. That's what we'll talk about later.

[Pasco Duarte]

Yeah, but that is definitely one of the critical anti patterns. And it's not just scrum. I heard the same anti pattern back when I was a project manager.

[Season Hughes]

Exactly.

[Pasco Duarte]

And we had to, quote, unquote, coordinate people who were not working on the same things.

[Season Hughes]

Exactly. So there's no. If there is no coordination available in the work, it's why. The question of why are we here? And at the end of the day, why we are here is to coach high performing team. Or the reason I come to work is I want to coach high performing teams, which means to me, people that have what they need to get the job done and are supported and are working in ways that provide the most value to the customer and to the people doing the work. And sometimes we are just prevented from doing that in different ways and it's.

[Pasco Duarte]

Okay to then recognize it and move on or suggest other ways. Like Kanban.

[Season Hughes]

Yeah. And the response that you will get from the people that you bring that up to can be very telling about the organization.

[Pasco Duarte]

Well, that's another episode. Stay tuned.

[Season Hughes]

Exactly.

[Pasco Duarte]

It's coming up. Susan, thank you very much for sharing that story with us.

[Season Hughes]

Thank you. I'm glad that we got to discuss something that's very true to my heart here. Thank you.

[Pasco Duarte]

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