We are sure that, like most people, you have heard a lot about teamwork, and you might be wondering what new information we have to share on the subject.
As we value your time, we are not going to repeat the things you have heard a hundred times already. That being said, teamwork is still a very critical element on a Scrum project.
Even if you have had support from management and pulled together the best possible product backlog, you can still fail if your team members do not work well together. From our experience, we do not remember any successful project where the team did not work well together but still delivered.
For a short project, it may not be that important due to the limited duration. But when people are required to work together every day for a long period of time on a mid- or large-sized project, it takes more than luck to make good teamwork happen.
If a project’s team members do not get along and nothing is done about it, we have seen that the project almost always ends in trouble. This is true with traditional projects and even more so with Agile and Scrum since these two process frameworks rely heavily on team self-management and team accountability.
One of the Scrum engagement rules is that everyone is supposed to rely on everyone else to perform as a team. While this topic may sound cliché, nothing is more important to a Scrum project than to get team members to work well together.
In the following pages, we will provide you with some ideas and techniques we have learned throughout the years that will help you, as a team, avoid conflicts, or at least learn to resolve them as much as you can, before they break your project.
Before talking about the team, though, let’s talk about the individuals on the team because all teams consist of individuals.
Computers are complex machines, but there is nothing more complex than a human being.
Fortunately, learning more about humans has always been a subject of study, which has provided us with a good understanding of ourselves as human beings.
We won’t turn this book into a treatise on human psychology, but we will discuss those elements of human nature that can help the Scrum team work well together.
First, let’s mention the study done by Abraham Maslow, still known as Maslow’s Pyramid, or hierarchy of needs, which sheds some light on human needs as individuals.
Viewing the pyramid in Figure 10.1 from the bottom, we see that an individual must first satisfy some bodily needs, such as food and water.
Once these needs are fulfilled, one next needs to feel safe. Safety can be provided by a roof to live under or a place to protect oneself from weather or external dangers.
After this, the individual needs to have some social contact.
The last levels of the pyramid, the self-esteem and self-actualization layers, are what the Agile gurus and Scrum experts count on the most for a team to be empowered to do their work and self-manage. This is exactly why we ended up in Scrum with team self-management and empowerment to select their tasks and do whatever they like to accomplish their commitments.
So much for the individuals, but before we study the team in detail, let’s talk about the group.
Whenever an individual feels the need for some sense of belonging or to share a common need or ideas, he tends to find other people with whom he can associate.
A group, however, has no common goal that will unite individuals; no goal for which they will be held accountable.
Going back to what we understand about teamwork and team performance, whenever a project team fails, when it is not due to some other reason, it may well be because the project team has performed at the level of the group, not feeling accountable for something together.
When a group of people comes together to achieve a common goal, there is the beginning of a team. Whether the team is a high-performance team or a low-performance team depends on their ability to work together as a self-organized team and on the people who lead them in the traditional command and control environment.
As soon as we say that there is a team, or a group of people with a goal to accomplish, disagreements as to who should do what, how long, how much, and why will begin.
In paraphrasing Patrick Lencioni, in Five Dysfunctions of Teams, it is teamwork, not finance or technology, that gives us the competitive advantage.
Therefore, it is critical for all members of the team to know how to work well together.
Among all the things you can know about your teammates, nothing is more important than knowing their personality type. Having that knowledge enables you to communicate with teammates in such a way that they understand and accept what you say more easily. Likewise, this knowledge allows you to hear and more easily accept things from them. This will help you avoid misunderstanding and potential conflict.
Tracing the idea of temperament back to the ancient Greeks, David Keirsey developed a modern temperament theory, which is composed of 16 temperament types, called the Keirsey Temperament Sorter (Figure 10.2).
The Keirsey Temperament Types Sorter is designed to help people better understand themselves and contains a total of 16 temperament types:
Inspectors are careful and meticulous. These individuals are extremely dependable on following through with things, which they promise to get done.
Protectors are warm and kind-hearted. They value cooperation and are sensitive to co-workers’ feelings.
Counselors are gentle, caring, and highly intuitive individuals. Counselors are perfectionist, stubborn, and tend to ignore other people’s opinions, thinking that they are right.
Masterminds are introspective, pragmatic, and attentive. Masterminds observe the world to look for ideas and opportunities. Their minds constantly gather information.
Crafters have a compelling drive to understand the way things work. They’re logical and thrive on action. Usually fearless, crafters are very independent.
Composers are quiet and reserved, difficult to get to know well. They keep their ideas and opinions to themselves, except from those who they are closest to.
Healers are introspective and cooperative. They do not like conflict and go to great lengths to avoid it. If they must face it, they will always approach it from the perspective of their feelings.
Architects are introspective but pragmatic. Their primary interest is to determine how things are structured, built, or configured. They live primarily inside their own minds, and enjoy analyzing difficult problems to come up with logical resolutions. Not surprisingly, they are very tolerant and flexible.
Promoters are doers who live in action. Blunt, risk-takers, they are willing to jump into things and get their hands dirty.
Performers enjoy being the center of attention. In social situations, they are informative and expressive. Lively and fun, performers like to attract the attention of other people. They live in the here-and-now, keeping abreast of the latest trends.
Champions are enthusiastic people, typically very bright and full of potential. Champions like to make their thoughts known to the world. Big believers in possibilities, their enthusiasm often inspires and motivates others.
Inventors are less interested in developing plans or making decisions than they are in generating ideas. Intensely curious, they have an entrepreneurial character and are always looking for new projects.
Supervisors live in the present with their eye constantly observing the environment to make sure that everything is running smoothly and systematically.
Providers are naturally interested in others. They like people and have a special skill at bringing out the best in others.
Teachers have excellent people skills. They understand and care about people, and have a special talent for also bringing out the best in people.
Field Marshals are natural born leaders. They live in a world of challenges and want to be the ones responsible for surmounting them. Their talent for contingency planning is only second to their ability to execute strategy or action plan.
Knowing your team members’ personality types helps a lot in learning to know one another and work well together, but sometimes that may not be enough to avoid problems and conflicts.
Depending on the stage at which the problem or conflict occurs, there are techniques that we can leverage to resolve conflicts, something we are going to review next.
But let’s review the various team stages and the different conflict resolution techniques before deciding which one would be the most appropriate to use for a good conflict resolution, depending on the team stage.
In 1965, Bruce Tuckman identified five stages a team goes through in coming together:
Forming: This is when the team is brought together for the first time. At this time, people tend to behave in a formal and reserved manner.
Storming: In this stage, team members start to position themselves against one another, often in a rather confrontational way. This is where the manager’s, or leader’s, role is most useful in helping to build the trust between team members. We will review this in greater detail in the next chapter.
Norming: This is when team members are confrontational with one another as they tackle project issues.
Performing: This is the time when team members become effective and productive working together. The trust between team members is high.
Adjourning: The adjourning stage is the last stage just before the team is released after the teamwork is completed.
Even though none of us likes to have conflict, it is unfortunately something we all have encountered or will encounter during our lifetime at work.
Many conflict resolution techniques exist, but among the most known is the following technique identified by Kenneth Thomas and Ralph Kilmann in the 1970s:
Accommodating. (ACCO): This technique indicates a willingness to meet the needs of others at the expense of one’s own needs.
Compromise. (COMP): This happens when everyone in the conflict gives up something to reach an agreement.
Competitive. (COMPE): This is a useful technique when there is an emergency and a decision needs to be made fast or when the decision is unpopular.
Collaborating. (COLLA): All the perspectives of the different team members are examined. This technique normally leads to a good consensus.
Avoidance. (AVOID): One of the parties refuses to discuss the conflict. This is an example of a lose-lose conflict resolution technique.
Now, let’s combine the team stage, the project life cycle, and the conflict resolution techniques into a conflict resolution matrix (Figure 10.3) to help guide team members when they go through difficulties.
According to this matrix, if the team is still at the forming stage, and if the project is still at the early initial planning stage, then the two most appropriate techniques to use are either accommodating or competition.
The reason for this is that accommodating will allow people to first get to know one another better, which may be the best thing to do in some cultures such as in Asia. Then, the next best technique to use is competition. Yes, competition, so that people can have a chance to challenge one another’s ideas based on factual data, which may be the best thing to do in Western cultures. When this happens early in the life of the project, the confrontation that results will not greatly affect the progress of the project. The good thing after this type of confrontation in the early stage is that people will learn one another’s opinion better and tend to move towards a more collaborative approach. If a project team is unable to resolve its own conflicts within the team itself, the ScrumMaster and the product owner should intervene, indirectly of course, to try to get everything on track again.
Work would be wonderful if there were no conflict, but since conflicts happen and they can hurt the team’s progress, what should we do to avoid it?
We have seen the same patterns emerge time and again. We call these patterns the (five) conditions of great teamwork, and they can be seen in Figure 10.4. These conditions help team members work well together.
As a team member, you should come to the team with a very open mind and think in terms of team rather than individual. Try to see things from someone else’s perspective and have the desire to learn about the other team members.
Only with this open mindset can you hope to blend successfully into the team with so many different personalities.
Secondly, you should care. You should want everyone to be heard and to have a chance to contribute. The more people feel they are listened to, the more likely it is that the team will function well.
Then, find opportunities to show respect for one another on the team.
Next, remember that trust is the glue we need to get everything to stick together for great teamwork.
Finally, we add job safety, or security, as the central condition of great teamwork because people can’t be productive or get along with others when they worry about losing their jobs.
This is where the ScrumMaster and the product owner can help by working closely with the team’s direct management to help team members feel safe working together, as we will discuss in the next chapter.
As a result of their collaboration, we can identify three types of teams, based on how successfully they work together: (1) the high-performance team, (2) the average-performance team, and (3) the mediocre or low-performance (political) team.
High-performance teams are fun, open-minded, and caring. By contrast, low-performance teams are usually characterized by silence in meetings, forced smiles, and a cover-up attitude. The team members on an average-performance team just go with the flow at work each day, doing only what is needed to turn in the hours and get paid, but they bring no value to the organization. The only difference between them and the mediocre or low-performance team is that they do not resort to cover-ups and political games.
The absence of a project manager on a Scrum project does not mean that this responsibility can be abandoned. Nor have we done away with project leadership.
Unlike a traditional project using the command-and-control style, the team is self-organized in Scrum. This means that they are empowered to decide for themselves how they would like to share in the work. No one, no project manager, will tell the team what to do anymore.
Because the team is self-managed, they should learn to resolve conflicts among themselves. This is the reason we have reviewed in this chapter, not only the different Keirsey temperament types for the team to learn to know one another, but also the different techniques for conflict resolution.
Because conflict happens, it is important to consider the stage at which it happens. A conflict that takes place when the team is formed does not require the same resolution techniques as a conflict that occurs in the middle of sprinting.
Because conflicts do hurt a team’s progress, we need to ask ourselves how to avoid them. One of the answers to this question is what we call the five conditions of great teamwork. Four of these five elements are Open, Trust, Caring, and Respect, while the last one is Job Safety. While team members have little control over their job safety, the product owner and the ScrumMaster may have more influence over it by working closely with the team’s direct management.