← Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: Agile storytelling from the trenches
Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: Agile storytelling from the trenches
When Daily Stand-ups Become Status Updates — The Warning Signs of a Team Falling Apart | Efe Gümüs
00:15:29
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- [00:02]
A
Hello everyone. Quick heads up before we start today's episode. The Global Agile Summit is happening on May 4th. Yes, May 4th. And even with a big blowout Star wars party, you have to join. It will be online and it's like always free to attend. We have four tracks this year that I'm really excited about and I think you will too. Stick around to the end of the episode to know what they are. If you want to check it out already now you can check it out at bit ly globalagile 26. That's the numerals 2 and 6 at the end. So one more time, that's bit ly globalagile 2, 6, all one word, all lowercase. And 2 and 6 are the numerals 2 and 6. So stick around till the end of the episode and I'll tell you what's in store. But for now, on to today's episode. Hello everybody. Welcome to our team Tuesday. This week with us we have Effe Gumush. Hey, Efe. Welcome back.
- [01:10]
B
Hey Vatsko. It feels good to be here again.
- [01:15]
A
Absolutely. And let's dive into some of those stories that you have to share. But before we talk about the team that self destructs, tell us what was the book that most inspired you in your career as a Scrum master?
- [01:31]
B
It's actually so weird that it's not related to Agile or Scrum, the book that it's more like a psychologic book. The book that inspired me the most is actually Psycho Cybernetics, which was also like, recommended by another Agile coach friend of mine. We were reading it at the same time. The book is all about building success mechanisms inside your own mind. And if you like when, when you are going like in a rough situation in life, in like where, where you actually feel lost, when you feel like you, you do not have like an ambition or like a, a goal that you want to reach to or like you lost everything. Like it feels that you're just stagnating. This book helps you actually, the applications inside the book actually helps you like create everything from scratch and redirect yourself in how to like have those like, I don't want to like say quick wins because like it's more like a corporate term. It's more like small pieces of progress, small pieces of action that made your mood better and it actually moves you forward. That's. That actually like had a huge impact. And how I reflected that book on Agile on like Scrum and like in, in these methodologies is like, if you think about it like every Single activity or like an event that we are doing is actually a small achievement, a small progress towards the other one. And like, as you progress, it's all going to come together and you are going to actually start moving on and it is going to be easier for you to also like set your goals. If you can actually set your life goal, then it's way easier for the team or for you to set your career goal or your team goal, sprint goal, product goal, whatever you want to call it.
- [03:56]
A
Absolutely. And all of those small things can actually have a great impact in our lives. The goal setting is a great example. I haven't read the book, so definitely on my reading list now. But the idea of having clear goals, it creates so much clarity for action which then unlocks a lot of the, I guess, fears, anxieties that we might have in specific situations. And they help the teams as well, of course. So thank you for the recommendation. The link is in the show notes everybody, so check it out. But now we talk about teams, jefe. So teams have their own way of developing. Sometimes they develop very productively, sometimes they kind of start going in the wrong direction and end up self destroying. That's the story we want to hear from you so that we may be able to recognize those symptoms early enough when we face them. So tell us the story of a team and walk us through how maybe those small little details, little behaviors evolved over time and eventually became a problem for the team.
- [05:06]
B
Yeah, when the team becomes self destructive, like the first cues or the first signs, of course it's always like different based on the context, based on what the team is working on. But I had a team before, like in my previous experiences where the problem was that what I saw like the attendance or like the participation is a better word to dailies, like started decreasing.
- [05:41]
A
And by participation do you mean that they were not showing up or that they were actually just not active or vocal?
- [05:48]
B
Some of them were not even showing up but like let's say half and half. Also like some of them were there but like not contributing to the conversation. When the dynamic became becomes like this. You see, people are actually like creating their own bubble inside the team because like they either don't feel safe or they don't feel relevant to what the rest of the team is doing. That's where you have to figure this out. Because there is always going to be different professions inside Scrum team and there is going to be different contexts or different skills that people are contributing to the sprint goal with. What you need to realize as A Scrum Master is do they have a common, common ground? Do they actually get together somewhere? And what I saw, we were like, we were like an integration team. So we had backend and front end and we were basically like trying to create the bridge in, in our like previous company. And we were also undergoing a microservice like transformation. So we were working on legacy components, we were working on a monolithic environment, a different one, and we were working on microservices. And if you do all these at once, you are going to see members having their own little projects throughout the timeline and not going to have that team spirit that we are talking about.
- [07:53]
A
So you're saying that there was a lot of work going on. Okay, that's true for most teams anyway. But that the work was divided into specific individual contributions.
- [08:04]
B
Yes, exactly.
- [08:05]
A
Okay. So when people got to the Daily they were like, okay, what others are saying doesn't really affect me, so why should I listen to it?
- [08:14]
B
Yeah.
- [08:15]
A
So what did, what did that lead to? That, that lower participation in the daily being kind of one of the symptoms. What that lead, what did that lead to?
- [08:28]
B
It's actually like daily. Daily Scrum became a status update event or like a meeting if you, if you want to talk about it. Also the time of the Daily Scrum is like increasing tremendously. Because think about this. If people do not know what the other person is talking about inside the same same team, then they're going to ask questions. And when people start asking questions also like product owner for example, like joining to the daily. Because it became a state update. Yeah, like it just like becomes longer and longer. Sometimes we had like 30 minutes, sometimes we had one hour. Basically like changing into a refinement session. It led to that the team performance also the motivation also drops because people get bored and they're basically wasting their time.
- [09:32]
A
Or if they are not, at least they feel they are.
- [09:35]
B
Exactly. Even, even if they don't like they are going to have this like so
- [09:40]
A
what, how did that affect the team? Right. I can imagine people being kind of disengaged, kind of working on my own stuff versus collaborating as a team. What was the consequence for the team later in, in that timeline?
- [09:54]
B
Yeah, honestly speaking, like it was actually near Covid also honestly speaking, when I first joined the team it was a super interactive and dynamic environment. Everyone was just like constant. Constantly talking about every like about their problems, like they were asking for help. Everyone was just like leaving their desk, like going to some someone else's and like they were collaborating together. And once these Things started to happen. Everyone became a little more individualistic, like silo. Like a silo inside. Inside the team. And the worst part was there was no one also having informal conversations. And that's when you realize that it's kind of like too late already because you don't have like, trusting environment anymore. You don't have a common goal. It's basically a group of people just gathered together and they're not a team at that point. And it's really hard to retaliate from that because you have to redefine what you have to work on as a.
- [11:14]
A
Yeah, you would have to reorganize the whole work.
- [11:17]
B
Exactly, exactly. And. Yeah, and that. That was like a really hard thing to go through. And after Covid, like, we all started working from home and like, everything became way worse because, yeah, there was no
- [11:32]
A
communication, there was no interruption to the pattern.
- [11:34]
B
Exactly.
- [11:35]
A
Yeah. That's a very telling story. And something that maybe I can take away from this story is this idea that the daily meeting is a great radar for the spirit, the motivation, the collaboration levels in the team. And that when we pay attention to that daily collaboration, the daily standup collaboration, how interactive it is and what we are talking about, are people bored or are they engaged and so on. When we pay attention to that, we get an insight into other dynamics which you describe as the work is being split into individual person tasks and so on. And that is, I think, for us, a great tool as Scrum masters and agile coaches to assess the state of a team by just looking at how they run their daily meetings. And what's the level of interaction and energy in the daily meeting.
- [12:28]
B
Exactly.
- [12:29]
A
Great story. Thank you for sharing that with us.
- [12:31]
B
Efe, thanks a lot for hearing. Actually,
- [12:37]
A
Hi there, friends. Thanks for sticking around till the end of the episode. So let me tell you what's coming on May 4th. We're running the Global Agile Summit. It will be online and I want you there this year. We have four tracks and each one is built around real conversations with practitioners. No slides, no keynote theater, just honest interviews with people doing the work, just like you. The first track is AI in organizations where practitioners show what actually works. No hype, just AI. That makes your Monday better. Happy Monday, everybody. And then we have the people track, honest conversations about putting humans at the center of how we work and keeping them there. And third is Agile in construction. And yes, I really mean brick and mortar construction. Lean and agile. Actual job sites, field leaders removing waste, teams transforming how buildings get built. Stay tuned for what I think will be a super track on Agile in construction and the fourth track is Agile in Gaming. How game Studios Ship without burning out Agile Inside the Creative Pressure Cooker over the years We've had more than 12,000 participants since 2017, the time of the first summit organized with the podcast, and this year we're making it easier than ever to join. You can register for free and get access to the summit sessions live during the event week. That's May 4th to May 6th. Or you can grab the Practitioner Pass and get immediate access to last year's keynotes from Jurgen Apollo Gojkoadi and Mirete Kangas right now, even before the Summit starts. So grab your Practitioner Pass and start learning today. Head on over to bit ly globalagile 26. That's 2, 6. The numerals 2 and 6 sign up and I'll see you on May 4th. And one more time, here we go. Bit ly globalagile 26. All lowercase, all one word and 26. That's the numeral 2 and the numeral 6. I'll see you on the conference floor.