The Five Dysfunctions of a team Archives - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Tanzil Choudhury: A great Scrum team that went bad because they were so good at following Agile

Tanzil had just kickstarted a new team that he helped hire. The start of the assignment went as well as could be expected. The team picked up the practices, and learned how to apply them as described by Tanzil. However, later on that became part of the problem. The team, sure of their practices, was unwilling to move beyond the original practices they had learned.

In this segment, we talk about The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team by Lencioni.

Featured Book of the Week: Everyone Communicates, Few Connect by John C. Maxwell et al.

This week’s book, is also an audiobook: Everyone Communicates, Few Connect: What the Most Effective People Do Differently by John C. Maxwell et al. In this book Tanzil learned several practices he could directly apply to his work, and go beyond the “process” aspects that a Scrum Master often works with. The book helped Tanzil move from thinking about product, to thinking and act with people.

In this segment, we also refer to Shift From Product To People, a book that helps Scrum Masters understand and apply that shift to focus on people and their behaviors, instead of sticking only to process and product.

How can Angela (the Agile Coach) quickly build healthy relationships with the teams she’s supposed to help? What were the steps she followed to help the Breeze App team fight off the competition? Find out how Angela helped Naomi and the team go from “behind” to being ahead of Intuition Bank, by focusing on the people! Download the first 4 chapters of the BOOK for FREE while it is in Beta!

About Tanzil Choudhury

Tanzil is a passionate Agilist focused on coaching individuals, teams and organizations towards the Agile transformation journey. Specialized in working with teams and organizations to help them overcome cultural hangovers.

You can link with Tanzil Choudhury on LinkedIn.

Alex Gbaguidi: Overcoming the skill silos in backend Scrum teams

When you are the Scrum Master in the backend team, and you understand that your team cannot deliver anything without other teams, what do you do? In this episode, we explore Alex’s story, and learn what he applied to align different teams that were organized around skill silos.

Featured Book of the Week: The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team by Lencioni

Alex shares with us a new edition of The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team by Lencioni, this is the Manga version of the book. As Alex puts it: the perfect edition for the visual learners among us.

In this segment, we also refer to the Fixing Your Scrum by Ryan Ripley et al.

About Alex Gbaguidi

Alex is an experienced agile practitioner, coach and trainer with twenty years of experience in IT consulting. He is passionate about helping teams discover the best ways of working adapted to their context. He’s worked in many different types of industries (Telecoms, Energy, Finance or Aeronautics) and provides training on many agile frameworks and practices all around the world in French & English.

You can link with Alex Gbaguidi on LinkedIn and connect with Alex Gbaguidi on Twitter.

You can join Alex Gbaguidi’s Agile Africa community.

Kim Hinsch: Helping a Scrum team come together to overcome huge challenges

Kim was working with a company in the middle of an Agile transformation. The team Kim was working mostly with was struggling with understanding what was required from them. They were working with a new product, for which the expectations and requirements were unclear. The Product Owner was also new to the job, and the team. Kim understood she needed the team to come together if they were to overcome the challenges they were facing. So, she took on the mission of making the team jell.

In this episode, we talk about The 5 Dysfunctions Of A Team by Lencioni, a book that has been mentioned several times here on the podcast.

About Kim Hinsch

Kim is an agile enthusiast, that has been stung by the power of games, communication, and psychology. Kim practices every day the fine art of making magic happen the agile way. And what makes her heart beat faster is supporting teams and organizations on their magical journey across the hills of excellence and effectiveness.

You can link with Kim Hinsch on LinkedIn.

Dahm Hongchai: Helping (executive) teams improve their collaboration skills

Dahm was working with an exec team, which was not able to collaborate. Scrum Masters are responsible for collaboration in the teams they work with, and executives are just as much a team as any other team.

Dahm explains how we can help teams learn to collaborate, and create a trustful environment. In this segment, we refer to the book: The 5 Dysfunctions Of A Team by Lencioni.

About Dahm Hongchai

Dahm Hongchai is an Agile coach, a Scrum Master, and a business consultant with 5 years of experience in high-tech and Startup industries in Silicon Valley, Thailand, and Australia. He was the first Thai to become a Scrum Trainer (ST) with Scrum Inc. Dahm also has 10+ years of experience with other approaches such as Lean Manufacturing and Six Sigma. And he is an Agile trainer and helps people to understand Agile via, for example, Agile Cooking.

You can link with Dahm Hongchai on LinkedIn.

BONUS: Troubleshooting your Agile adoption (and conversations) with Douglas Squirrel and Jeffrey Fredrick

We start this episode with a warning for Scrum Masters. The question Squirrel asks is: “what is the value the Scrum Master role brings?” If you want to hear my answer, you can listen to another podcast episode we recorded on the Troubleshooting Agile podcast with Jeffrey and Squirrel (make sure to check out part 2 of that conversation on the Troubleshooting Agile podcast).

In this conversation, we mention an article on the Scrum Master Toolbox podcast blog, where we talk about the Scrum Master as an apprentice role for future CEO’s.

Hacking culture through conversations: Agile Conversations book

One of the interesting points the authors make is that the conversations that happen (or not) in an organization are what defines the culture of that organization. In this segment, we talk about why we must pay special attention to the quality of the conversations, and why talking about culture, without talking about the conversations in an organization, is a dangerous pattern.

Finding and entering the right conversations in your organization

Why don’t Scrum Masters take a more active role in the conversations ongoing in their organization? We discuss the fear that drives the inaction of Scrum Masters and suggests some techniques we can use to get ourselves, and others to take an active part in shaping the organizational culture and conversations.

We talk about how “frustration” can be a resource for Scrum Masters to find and unlock important conflicts and related conversations. Scrum Masters must take an active part in finding that frustration, and using it to move the team, and the organization forward.

In this segment, we refer to Chris Argyris and his work on organizational development.

Tools for high-quality conversations that drive the right culture

Squirrel and Jeffrey present two of the tools in the Agile Conversations book and share how they help Scrum Masters improve their interaction skills, and learn to trigger better conversations.

We discuss the Four RRRR’s tool as well as the TDD for people tool. You can learn more about these tools in the book Agile Conversations.

In this segment, we discuss the Ladder of Inference (avoiding jumping to conclusions), and the TDD for people tool (audio).

A call to action: mine for conflict to help your team and organization grow!

We end this episode with a call to action. We discuss how mining for conflict (seeking conflict and using it to generate energy that drives conversations) can help you pave the way for a transformation in your team and in your organization.

We refer to The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team, to describe how to create a safe environment where conflict is seen as an opportunity, rather than a threat.

About Douglas Squirrel and Jeffrey Fredrick

Squirrel has been coding for forty years and has led software teams for twenty. He uses the power of conversations to create dramatic productivity gains in technology organizations of all sizes. Squirrel’s experience includes growing software teams as a CTO in startups from fintech to biotech to music, and everything in between. He lives in Frogholt, England, in a timber-framed cottage built in the year 1450.

You can link with Douglas Squirrel on LinkedIn and connect with Douglas Squirrel on Twitter.

Jeffrey Fredrick is an internationally recognized expert in software development and has over twenty-five years’ experience covering both sides of the business/technology divide. An early adopter of XP and Agile practices, Jeffrey has been a conference speaker in the US, Europe, India, and Japan. Through his work on the pioneering open-source project CruiseControl, and through his role as co-organizer of the Continuous Integration and Testing Conference (CITCON), he has had a global impact on software development.

You can link with Jeffrey Fredrick on LinkedIn and connect with Jeffrey Fredrick on Twitter.