“What Is The Right Answer to Address Our Tough Scrum Team Issue?”

In complex environments, what works for one team doesn’t work for another team. There are no easy answers.

Some time ago, I conducted a Scrum Master training together with two colleagues. Most of the 20 participants had been working in Scrum Teams for years. It is safe to say that they knew the basics of Scrum before they joined the training.

Our training is packed with activities to let the participants discuss tough topics with each other, trying to uncover possible solutions for the problems that we put in the exercises, like:

• What to do when only one person has the capabilities that are needed for three teams?
• How to act when a member of the team doesn’t uphold the Scrum Values?
• How to respond to conflict in a team?

There was a lot of knowledge in the group and it was very effective to help them share that knowledge. Every time they came with more approaches than we could ever formulate ourselves in the same time-box. On top of that, participants learned more from doing than from listening to us.

Participant Frustration

About halfway through the training, I observed a pattern. Some of the participants wanted to hear from us what the best answer was from all their suggestions. They wanted to have a solution that they could immediately…