The prank that ignited my remote, agile team
I am a scrum master for a 100% remote, distributed team. Even though I’ve worked remotely before, I have not previously worked on an agile project. So you could say that I was figuring things out as I went along! My team suffered through the grief of covid with many personal and professional challenges. At my lowest, I felt like the idealistic promise of agile was nice in theory, yet in practice, it boxed my team into a framework for a transactional workplace devoid of empathy and connection. So as April Fool’s Day 2022 approached, I challenged the introvert in me to prank my team and disrupt the work environment.
My scrum team was constantly trying to deliver good work despite the usual challenges (complex dependencies, under resourcing, shifting customer needs, etc). We dutifully ran daily huddles focused on technical aspects of our work and planning meetings to refine our epics/stories. The work environment felt focused on outcomes over process. As a trained social and cultural psychologist, I wanted to uplift a positive team dynamic honing everyone toward both collaborative output and individual growth. I facilitated regular team cohesion sessions at the request of my client (a fun topic for another post!) that fostered the team’s investment in each other. And yet, as the keeper of scrum, I could tell my team of agile novices were varying in their acceptance of our project’s agile transformation.
As a trained social and cultural psychologist, I wanted to uplift a positive team dynamic honing everyone toward both collaborative output and individual growth.
I attended an agile practitioner conference, Agile Open Northwest, which was one of the most agile events I ever participated in! I could rave in another post on the refreshing conference format and participant ethos. It was an inclusive environment where folks openly debated intriguing, innovative ideas for applying agile. I was raving about little nuggets to my team for a week. This was the setup for my April Fool’s prank…
On April 1st, my team had a regular alignment meeting with one of our partner teams. During parking lot time, I proposed a new way to leverage the agile framework to make sure both teams were continuously improving our communication processes. I pitched “Quickfire Retros”! For watchers of the TV show Top Chef, you know Quickfire Challenges are high pressure, short-duration cooking events. I announced that I was prepared to push Outlook invites on everyone’s calendar for a 5 minute standup every hour throughout the day, so that we can chat on how our progress has been hindered over the last hour with the intent of committing to a new process tweak for the next hour. I reassured everyone that the “relentless pace of innovation” will expedite our ability to establish a much more supportive work environment by the end of the day.
I proposed a new way to leverage the agile framework.
I was also relieved when someone described my idea as “potentially horrifying” because I wasn’t interested in implementing the prank to its fullest expression!
My team tends to keep their cameras on and leans more towards collegiality over direct confrontation. It’s hard to describe how delighted I was watching everyone’s faces blanch. To their credit, my open-minded team entertained the idea and weighed its merits. They discussed how the idea might work in a service environment with a high volume of customer transactions. I was proudest of my most reserved team member starting the tide of pushback. I was also relieved when someone described my idea as “potentially horrifying” because I wasn’t interested in implementing the prank to its fullest expression! When I reassured the team that I was pranking them, it completely fooled them all. And even better, it opened the door ajar for the next iteration of pranking…
My Product Owner (PO) happened to miss that team alignment meeting and had to hear about the hijinx afterward. To my PO’s credit, there was a lot of receptivity with my attempt to extend levity to our team. Reflecting on the challenge of executing a prank in a remote work environment given certain standards of our organization was itself a team inside joke now. Our PO requested that I deliver another prank with the PO as the target. The challenge was to see how my PO would react because they were genuinely curious how they would’ve reacted to my Quickfire Retro idea. This was all the invitation I needed!
Naturally, team members show up each day with varying levels of energy, enthusiasm, and distress. We had all long established that the daily huddles gave us enough data points to affirm that we’re all conscientiously trying to get our work done. I had consistently role modeled trust in the team’s ability to perform, which opened up their willingness to share when they’re having a tough day filled with blockers. Our PO relayed that there were some tough stakeholder meetings lately. During one of our team cohesion sessions our PO had to miss, I invited the team to brainstorm a prank to help role model the level of lightheartedness we wanted in our work environment. The prank brainstorming afforded an opportunity to get to know each other’s level of creativity and to practice respecting each other’s comfort levels.
I invited the team to brainstorm a prank to help role model the level of lightheartedness we wanted in our work environment.
My team did not disappoint! We humored a range ideas from benign to scandalous and landed on each person doing something slightly off. It was meant to be a cascade of escalating irregularities during a meeting where our PO would review the plan for trying out an asynchronous work day (another fun topic that we eventually extended to a week!).
Our team does not have a norm of eating in meetings, let alone on camera. Our first team member asked if anyone objected to eating a late lunch. When no one objected, our teammate pulled into frame a giant tray filled with a quart of milk, a personal pizza, multiple whole pieces of fruit, and party bag sized packages of snacks. Some of the most hilarious moments included our teammate drinking straight out of the carton and picking up the full round pie and eating from the crust inward.
Another teammate consistently joins meetings from a basement office and turned on the camera for us to realize our teammate was joining by phone and walking the dog in the pouring rain. Anytime our teammate was in frame, we could see water streaming over a blurry, wet face! Meanwhile, we had a group chat running with each of us orchestrating when to try disrupting our PO’s pitch. No one could pay attention to the merits of asynchronous work at this point.
We also have a teammate who joins with the same canned background provided by our virtual meeting software. The camera frame tends to cut off the lower third of our teammate’s face. Little did our PO realize, the background image was replaced with a screenshot of our teammate with the background while our teammate was off camera. This teammate wins the prize for most composure of us all asking questions to our PO relevant to the meeting topic . The only way our PO would notice anything amiss was to realize our teammate was never blinking.
The only way our PO would notice anything amiss was to realize our teammate was never blinking.
After 15 minutes, most of our team can barely hold it together as we expressed our astonishment in our group chat. We had another couple of teammates playing an online game the team has played previously during team cohesion sessions. In our chat, one teammate told the other to steal the screen share from our PO. Surely our PO would have to comment on the disruption, right? Our PO informed us there should be time for fun and games as we’re almost ready to wrap up the discussion on asynchronous work and reclaimed screen share. Our teammate stole the screen share again to which our PO asks if I’m the one getting a game setup. I attempt not to burst out laughing and muster a quick head shake no. Now the team is asking me in chat to end this charade. Pretending to be someone who forgot to mute myself, I start to sing the Jigglypuff song. Shortly thereafter, we all jump in and ask our PO to please realize we are in the middle of attempting a prank!
Our PO explained that having multiple young children in the house, it’s not unusual to have something disruptive happening during the work day. Parenting honed the ability to concentrate and focus in the midst of chaos. There was an explanation in our PO’s mind for everyone’s behavior, except my laughing. I tried to hide my laughter by going off screen at times. My PO knew the topic of asynchronous work couldn’t possibly be that funny. We concluded our PO is unflappable. Respect.
My PO knew the topic of asynchronous work couldn’t possibly be that funny.
It was a relief the last prank I’ll mention was one I did not instigate or orchestrate. Our teammate whose chin occasionally disappears from camera and our PO were having babies around the same time. My pizza crust promoting teammate reached out to me with a plan to have a surprise baby shower. I applauded my teammate for being the kind of leader who role models a remote work environment characterized by authentic celebration, not something that feels obligatory or performative.
We decided the most cryptic meeting invite is to send a, “Hold for team meeting” with no agenda. “Addition to the team” and “Urgent announcement” seemed too heavy handed. I coached my teammate to deflect any inquiries with a, “I need to run something by the team and haven’t yet fully thought it through. I’ll give you a heads up before the meeting”. The meeting invite went out 4 days ahead of time. The day before the meeting, the meeting title was changed to “EVEN MORE URGENT ANNOUNCEMENT AFFECTING THE TEAM” with no agenda other than a lighthearted acknowledgement that the title might cause alarm, but fear not because it’s a happy announcement.
We decided the most cryptic meeting invite is to send a, “Hold for team meeting” with no agenda.
We chatted amongst ourselves convinced our PO was pranking our prank!
The day of the meeting, my pizza teammate joined the meeting first in order to signal the rest of us in a private chat when to join the virtual meeting. We all prepared our baby pictures as our meeting backgrounds. Only our disappearing chin teammate joined the meeting. Where was our PO? It was 3 minutes into the meeting and our PO was apparently letting the dog out. We chatted amongst ourselves convinced our PO was pranking our prank! Finally, once our PO joined the meeting, our pizza teammate sent us the signal to join, so that we can join in and yell, “Surprise!” We did a few baby related games including a baby pool, guess the emoji lullaby, and Codenames with a custom word pack of baby words. My teammate roasted our guests of honor with a few choice screenshots of their inquiries regarding the cryptic meeting invite.
The prank/celebration was a success. Our disappearing chin teammate was fully on camera and smiling the biggest smile. Our PO admitted it was another tough day, and this surprise completely brightened things. I felt immense satisfaction seeing a newly formed, remote, agile team learn how to rebuild a sense of community over the course of the pandemic. We have room to grow with fully adapting the agile framework. Likely we’ll never all be in-person together given our different locations and life circumstances. However, I’m glad we’re learning how to laugh at ourselves and retain the critical human element of empathy that feeds into operating as a fully functional team.
