Not All Voices Are Heard

On some Scrum teams, certain development team members do a lot of talking during the daily scrum, while others rarely say a word. Treating everyone with respect is a great way to resolve this problem. As the Scrum master, you should facilitate the daily scrum in a way that makes sure every voice is heard and that multiple viewpoints are considered. Especially when you’re working with a new team, you need to model this listening and receptiveness to various viewpoints.

For instance, say you have a team member who dominates the daily scrum. If this happens frequently, ask the other team members for their viewpoints and hold the space—keep your mouth shut—until someone speaks. The silence will get uncomfortable, but eventually someone will provide some insights about the issue the team is discussing.

Or try using a talking stick or a beach ball: The team member who holds the item has the floor, and then they pass it along to the next team member when they’re finished. Using a physical item to designate whose turn it is to talk can cut down on cross talk and side conversations. The focus stays on the work, and the team is respectful of the person speaking.

You can also consider using a liberating structure. For example, a good place to start is to try using a 1-2-4-All to facilitate your daily scrum so that all voices are heard. Here’s how it works:

1. Ask the development team members to spend one minute silently considering the following question: “What opportunities do you see for making progress on the team’s sprint goal?”

2. Next, have them spend two minutes working in pairs to generate ideas and build on their insights from the self-reflection they did in step 1.

3. Once they’ve explored these ideas in pairs, have the pairs form foursomes and spend four minutes sharing and developing these ideas even further, paying special attention to the similarities, differences, and patterns they notice during their discussion.

4. Finally, ask the team “What idea really stood out during your conversations?” Have each group share one idea with the entire Scrum team.

Notice how 1-2-4-All supports the Scrum value of openness. Each person has an opportunity to share their viewpoint and to have their voice heard while feeling safe sharing their ideas and the things they learned during the daily scrum.

Another technique you can try is Fist of Five voting, which is great way to get quick feedback about an idea during the daily scrum. Let’s say that you ask your team if there are any impediments, but you don’t get much feedback. You sense there must be a better way to gauge the mood of the team. This is a good opportunity to give Fist of Five voting a try. It’s a facilitation technique that can help you measure the team’s level of confidence in a value statement. (A value statement is the question or idea that you’re getting feedback about.) The name comes from team members using their fingers to vote on a scale from 1 to 5:

Five Fingers: Yes! I’m 100% aligned with the value statement. Four Fingers: I strongly support the value statement. Three Fingers: I want to discuss the value statement before giving my support. Two Fingers: I oppose the value statement. One Finger: NO! Absolutely not! The value statement is wrong.

For example, during a daily scrum meeting, you might ask the team, “How confident are you that we’re on track to meet the sprint goal?” Tell them to think about the question and come up with their answer on the scale of 1 to 5. Then have everyone show the number of fingers that represents their response.

Next, ask the 1s and 2s to talk about why their confidence is low. Ask them, “What’s stopping you from voting higher?” After their initial discussion, the Scrum team members can vote again and see if they’re more aligned than before.

This technique has several benefits:

• Low ceremony: It’s very simple to do—all you need is a question and a fist. After that, it’s up to the team members to discuss their scores and work toward alignment.

• Encourages participation: People who aren’t involved aren’t committed to the Scrum team. Fist of Five gets all team members involved in the conversation. The 1s and 2s get a nonconfrontational opportunity to express their concerns, allowing the team to learn together.

• Makes “no” easier: “No’’ is an incredibly hard word to say, especially when you have to say it to your teammates. Fist of Five allows Scrum team members the chance to disagree with the question being asked without being disagreeable. That’s the key to creating open and honest conversations.

• Creates alignment: An aligned team is a powerful team. The goal of the vote is to get the team to collaborate and converge on an agreed-upon number. Taking the time to address the 1s and 2s gets everyone involved.

• Leads to action: The alignment process tends to draw out the reasons why Scrum team members aren’t confident. For example, perhaps the automated build isn’t so automated, or maybe there’s a major flaw in the architecture that makes the sprint goal difficult. Knowing these impediments gives the team a clear list of action items to work on.

Fist of Five is a technique that you can use any time you sense that the team lacks confidence. The status of the current sprint, the likelihood of achieving the sprint goal, or even the state of the sprint backlog are all great topics for it. Hopefully, you’ll find that the numbers are really secondary to the rich conversations that your Scrum team engages in and the actions they ultimately take.