The Best Thing to Happen to My Scrum Team Was Me Breaking My Neck

A horrible sporting disaster for me, a massive win for my team

Jacob Harrison

Published in

Serious Scrum

6 min readNov 23, 2022

The Rugby Scrum Master

I’m not just a Scrum Master in my work career, but I also weave Scrum into my personal life where I play rugby union.

A few months ago I got hit by a very illegal high tackle which caused me to fracture my neck and have a severe concussion. Due to this, I obviously had to take a lot of time off work.

Naturally, I was worried about how my team would fend for themselves without me. I had been struggling to get them to self-manage, so how would they now cope without me?

Something interesting happened…

Ownership

Before my accident, I had recently read this article by Simon Klees about trying to get teams to take ownership and was facing some of the same issues he had raised within this piece within my team.

“Your team sometimes complains about stories that haven’t been refined ‘enough’
The whole Scrum Team is hardly ever complete at any given Scrum event
Your Product Owner or Scrum Master seems to be the only one who cares about resolving issues

There were a lot of points Simon raised that I could relate to, and I experienced some other issues within my team to add to the list:

Team members not participating in Scrum Events
Developers giving status updates in the Daily Scrum rather than discussing collaboration and blockers
Struggling to have a shared understanding of the Sprint Goal

I tried various coaching strategies to help foster some of these behaviours in my team. I had varying levels of success, but no breakthroughs.

Daily Team Life

My team was well-facilitated (even if I do say so myself), and I never did much of the leg work. I always encouraged engagement from my teams by prompting them with questions in certain scenarios instead of handing out instructions.

For example, instead of:

Our priority should be x

I would try

Based on this information, what do we think the priority should be?

I would lead by example when facilitating Scrum Events, before asking team members to volunteer as a facilitator. This way they get used to how facilitation is done before driving it themselves.

However, there was never any desire to drive this themselves. I always had to be the instigator, meaning they always saw me as the spearhead. I think you can agree, not an ideal position for a Scrum Master.

This was the commonplace behaviour for my team until I had a disaster…

Breaking My Neck, Fixed My Team

So why did such a bad personal circumstance have a positive effect in the workplace and on my team?

Well, the magic happened because of the time I had to take off work with zero warning. My team had no choice but to lead things themselves. I wasn’t there for them to turn to for answers, or be a facilitator.

They had to do it themselves.

Through that Friday, they looked to me for safety and comfort, someone who was accountable for running the Sprint Events. I then break my neck in a Rugby game on the Saturday, and come Monday, their safety net wasn’t there. I was gone.

Thankfully, I fully recovered from my injury after a few weeks. But on my return to work a few weeks later, I was pleasantly surprised to see the first Daily Scrum back, they were facilitating the meeting themselves.

The team was running on autopilot. They were discussing blockers, highlighting the Sprint Goal and how they could contribute towards it, and planning out the day. They were Collaborating, TAKING OWNERSHIP!

They carried this self-managing behavior throughout all the Scrum Events as they knew I still wasn’t 100% and wanted to help me out.

They were emulating the Scrum Values. Without fear they had the Courage to take ownership of elements themselves. While being Committed and Focused on their goals, they showed Respect for each other and to me and my situation.

Positive Changes

The positive changes that came out of this situation were fantastic for the spirit and health of the team.

Here are a few I’m most proud of:

Team Members Facilitating Scrum Events
Emulating Scrum Values
Collaborating on Alignment towards Goals

They have then carried this torch on forwards beyond my recovery (or should I say, ongoing recovery). It has given a new lease of life to the team that I hadn’t seen before.

How to Emulate This In Your Team

Now I’m not about to suggest you go and break your neck!

Let’s look at why the behaviour of the team changed.

It changed for the following reasons:

Their safety net was removed (me)
They had no other option
The team had to focus themselves (otherwise no progress would be made)

So how can you (without breaking your neck) emulate the above for your teams in day-to-day life.

Step 1: Removing Yourself as a Safety Net

I have seen a lot of Scrum Masters falling into the trap of being too hands-on unintentionally micro-managing, and being a servant rather than a facilitator, enabler and servant leader.

Most Scrum Masters inherently want to see people flourish. But you have to be deliberate in the way you actually help others.

Think of it like you would children, if you do everything for them, they’re never going to learn.

This is the same for anyone else at any stage in our lifetime. We need to enable and empower our teams to create the right choices and be there for them to coach in certain areas. But we shouldn’t do anything on their behalf.

I would advise you to take a more hands-off (or completely hands-off) approach. Inform the team of the directions they should stay clear of, and help them get to where they want to go.

Teach them what to avoid, and let them flow as they see fit.

Step 2: Stop Being an Option

After enabling the above behaviour you’ll already be halfway into this step.

However, your team needs to understand that you’re there to collaboratively problem solve with them, not to give them the answers.

Hold back on instigating conversations or offering help as much, only guide conversations if your team is going off track.

Don’t be an administrator for your team. Remove yourself as the default option for Jira maintenance and setting up meetings.

Step back, and your team will have to do this themselves.

Be there for them, but don’t shoulder their job to self-manage all on your own.

Step 3: Be Expressive About Focusing Their Behaviour

Most teams need some help to understand where they should focus their efforts.

Setting Product Goals and Sprint Goals and helping them understand their purpose will help align your team's focus.

Your team’s expectations of them will be clear if you supplement goals with quantifiable measures. This allows them to have a target to achieve.

Without a goal, how your team focus their efforts? and especially in the right direction.

Here’s a quick demonstration of how to write clearer and more measurable Sprint Goals:

Unclear Sprint Goals
- Enhance shopping cart functionality.
- Improve performance.
- On-board new market segment.

Clearer Sprint Goals
- Streamline purchasing process to enable an increase in conversion rates.
- Increase page load time by X%.
- Enable new market segment to purchase Service Y.

The above steps should be enough to put your team in a good situation for your team to feel trusted, empowered and focused.

This puts you, the Scrum Master, in a great position to lead your team to greatness.

Hopefully, this story and content will help you and your team in some way!