You have joined as a Scrum Master for a team and the lead engineer refuses to join the Daily Standup saying that he already has too many meetings and that if they don’t trust the team to do the job they can find another team to do it. What do you do ?
This well accepted practice is causing a conflict because of the difference in mindset.
What does INVEST properties of a user story refer to ?
Suggested INVEST properties of a user story refer to –
I – Independent – user story is not dependent on other stories or has very few dependencies
N – Negotiable – user story is negotiated between the development team and the product owner representing the business
V – Valuable – user story provides value to the customer
E – Estimable – user story is neither too large nor too vague to estimate
S – Small – user story can be done in a sprint
T – Testable – user story has a clear acceptance criteria against which it can be validated
A member of your Scrum team does not want to participate in the sprint planning meeting and considers the meeting as a waste of time. How do your deal with that kind of attitude ?
As a Scrum Master you need to find out why does the team member not want to participate in the sprint planning meeting. The plan should be to hold a private meeting with him
Having said that there are a few options before the Scrum Master:
If the member is new to Scrum then he needs to be trained on Scrum framework.
The member needs to be coached that a sprint planning meeting is one where all the team members collectively commit stories to meet the sprint goal.
He is a first class member of the team and his inputs are equally important as others.
The team has hit with a blocker. Should they wait until the next Daily Scrum meeting to ask for help ?
The team should ask for help as soon as possible. Waiting until the next daily standup will make the team lose nearly one full day that they can ill afford given the short duration of a sprint. The team should call for a quick face to face meeting and if this is not possible then should make use of instant messaging tools to leave a message to the wider group.
Would you make the Scrum team take part in product discovery meetings ?
The Scrum team should take part in product discovery meetings as this will make the team uncover technical challenges in implementation and potential risks, issues, dependencies at the earliest.
Also team will gain a mutual understanding of what is to be built and it will help the team to stay committed and get a implicit buy-in.
