Linking motivation, high performance and Scrum together
Building high-performing teams within the Scrum Framework
My drive in getting into a leadership role was to be part of creating workplaces where people are motivated and happy at work. Ever since studying psychology, I’ve been interested in what motivates us as individuals to perform, and what’s needed to create great teams. Agile and the Scrum framework align with my values on leadership.
This text is written mainly for Scrum Masters but also for others who are interested in how Scrum can help in creating high-performing teams.
As a Scrum Master, you’re accountable for the Scrum Team’s effectiveness. Effective teams mean high-performing teams. Let’s start by looking at the link between motivation and high performance and what recurring elements Google found in high-performing teams. Based on this I then want to dig into some ways the Scrum framework itself, and how you as a Scrum Master, can help a Scrum team increase its effectiveness. I won’t go into any details, there are plenty of resources out there if something catches your interest and you want to know more.
Motivation and the link to high-performance
When the urge to perform comes from within a person we talk about intrinsic motivation, compared to extrinsic motivation which can come from rewards, fear of punishment or other external factors. It has showed that intrinsic motivation is much more linked to high-performance compared to external motivation.
Dan Pink describes the importance of intrinsic motivation in complex work environments in his TED talk on “The puzzle of motivation”. Intrinsic motivation makes us more creative in solving problems, thinking in new ways, and willing to try new ways. This is essential in the complex work environments Scrum Teams operate. Extrinsic motivation can work well for problems that aren’t complex because it helps us focus, but also narrows our way of thinking.
Dan Pink calls out three key factors that has showed to impact intrinsic motivation: Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose. Quoted from his talk:
Autonomy is the urge to direct our own lives.
Mastery is the desire to get better on something that matters.
Purpose is the yearning to do what we do in service of something bigger than ourselves.
To feel motivated, each of us may require different levels of those three factors to be satisfied. I know for myself that autonomy is hugely important for my motivation. Is there any one of them that is more important to you than the others? And what about your team members?
Photo by Jason Goodman on Unsplash
Google’s Study on High Performing Teams
A famous study “Project Aristotle” by Google showed 5 elements that were recurring in the high-performing teams they studied. Most of them can be linked to factors that increase intrinsic motivation.
The 5 elements were:
1. Psychological Safety
2. Dependability
3. Structure and Clarity
4. Meaning of work
5. Impact of work
Psychological Safety is the belief that you won’t face negative consequences or be humiliated when sharing ideas, concerns, mistakes, asking for help etc. This showed to be the most important element that is showed in high-performing teams.
Dependability is trusting your fellow team members to deliver high-quality work on time. Everyone on the team is responsible for the outcome and trusts each other to be the same.
Structure and Clarity was achieved by having defined roles, clear goals, and expectations. This was often found in successful teams.
Meaning of Work refers to that there is a sense of purpose to the work. Teams that had this sense of the work they were doing performed better. The purpose can come from the actual work itself or the purpose of a product a team is building. Google found that the meaning of work for individuals can also be found in helping others or exhibiting self-expression.
Impact of Work means there is a view and understanding of how the work impacts on a higher level. Where team members viewed their work to have a positive impact performed better.
I can see that some of these elements can be linked to the three factors; Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose, which Dan Pink calls out as impacting intrinsic motivation. In my view Psychological Safety can be linked to Autonomy, Meaning of Work can be linked to Mastery as well as Purpose and Impact of Work can be linked to Purpose.
Building high-performing teams within the Scrum Framework
How can we as Scrum Masters help Scrum Teams to become high-performing, by using the outcomes from Google’s study and the linkage to intrinsic motivation? I’m going to go through the 5 elements that Google found are recurring in high-performing teams and link this to parts in the Scrum framework. I will also call out what a Scrum Master could do besides establishing Scrum.
Psychological Safety
Since Psychological Safety and Autonomy are highly linked, increasing the sense of autonomy will also increase Psychological Safety and the benefits that come with it.
Sprint Planning
The whole Scrum Team decides on the goal for the Sprint which is to explain why the Sprint is valuable to stakeholders. Based on the Sprint Goal the developers forecast how much can be done within the Sprint and how the chosen work gets done. This increases autonomy for the Developers, and it is for the Scrum Master to make sure this process is followed. If others want to make these decisions some coaching from the Scrum Master around the importance of letting Developers do this themselves, to become a high-performing team, is needed.
Daily Scrum
With the purpose of Daily Scrum being to inspect progress toward the Sprint Goal, the Daily Scrum is an opportunity to raise ideas, concerns, and impediments. The Scrum Master can help with ideas on how the Daily Scrum can be conducted, and to encourage people to call out what slows them down. This meeting is for the Developers and for them to decide how to run it. Bringing that autonomy to the team will increase Psychological Safety as well.
Sprint Review
The purpose of the Sprint review is to inspect the outcome of the Sprint and determine future adaptations.
In the Sprint Review, you need Psychological Safety between participants for the event to give the most value. In this event, the Scrum Team should collaborate with stakeholders who often could have a more senior position in the organisation. The team presents the result of their work and should be prepared to call out failures and learnings. Stakeholders will need to give feedback in a constructive way to maintain Psychological Safety. If feedback is given with a blaming attitude the members of the Scrum Team might be reluctant in bringing up issues again with the fear of facing negative consequences if doing so. The Scrum Master can facilitate the event in a way to keep it positive and productive. The Scrum Master will likely want to educate the stakeholders on the purpose of the event and the expectations on them to make the Sprint Review valuable. Often this event tends to turn into a presentation session or demo otherwise which the Scrum Team should avoid.
Retrospective
The Retrospective is a great event to use to try to increase Psychological Safety. Some things that you can do as a Scrum Master is to go through the Retrospective Prime Directive with the team. This sets the foundation of the Retrospective in being a positive and productive meeting.
Introduce an Ice breaker or play an agile game which increases the likelihood for people to be open throughout the Retrospective. Look for some questions that would get people to know each other better. You can make people share one thing about themselves and then for the others to guess who said what. We trust each other more when we know each other, and trust builds psychological safety.
Scrum Master activities
Some things that a Scrum Master can do to create Autonomy and Psychological Safety are:
Coaching the team and stakeholders on self-management
For a team that is new to Scrum and self-management, it might not come naturally to them if they are used to having goals and plans set for them or being assigned work on an individual level. Feeling that you as a team is trusted to plan out your work and delegate the work among you creates the sense of autonomy and as pointed out is highly linked to Psychological Safety. To take time to teach the team about self-management and about what they are responsible for and empowered to do as part of the Scrum framework is time well invested. This can be done in Scrum Events, specific meetings as part of teaching the team Scrum and in one-to-one conversations. Even if focusing on the team performance, individuals will need different support.
Coaching managers and other stakeholders on the importance of self-management might also be needed. We don’t want other to decrease self-management of the Scrum Team if not fully understanding the Scrum Framework.
Encourage teamwork and close collaboration with stakeholders.
Psychological Safety is built based on trust for each other, within the team but also with people outside of the team. To work on tasks together in the team can, apart from being an opportunity to learn from each other, also be a way of strengthening trust between team members.
To form great working relationships and trust with stakeholders we need close collaboration and communication, with more people on the team than just the Product Owner. One method is to have Three Amigos meetings with stakeholders where people are attending to represent the user/business perspective, development, and testing. I won’t go into the details here but it’s certainly a great way to increase collaboration and improve effectiveness apart from a chance of increasing psychological safety.
What else?
There are a lot of things the Scrum Masters can do to help the team increase Psychological Safety. Can you think of other things, that you might have tried or would be worth trying out?
Dependability
In trusting your colleagues to deliver high quality work on time the Sprint Planning, the Daily Scrum and the refinement of the Product Backlog helps on this. To have a Definition of Done for the Product Backlog items helps in keeping a high quality.
The Developers in the Scrum Team are dependent on the Product Owner communicating the Product Backlog items in a clear way. They are dependent on having enough information of the work when the Sprint starts to be able to forecast how much work they can take on and to plan out the work.
The Developers are holding each other accountable as professionals and make sure to deliver high quality work by creating a Definition of Done.
Scrum Master activities
The Scrum Master can help with the dependability aspect. Some examples of what they can do:
Finding techniques for effective Product Backlog management so that the Developers can depend on the Product Owner to create product Backlog Items that clearly calls out the value they should deliver. When refining Product Backlog Items Product Owners and Developers can collaborate to add details as needed. Examples of techniques in making Product Backlog Items clear is creating User Stories. To add specific Acceptance Criteria to each User Story can together with the Definition of Done make sure that the delivery is of high quality and that everyone has a common understanding when the work can be considered done.
Making sure the developers put together a Definition of Done when the team first forms and remind them to evaluate it regularly.
Removing impediments and help the team focus on the work in the Sprint. To help the team focus could be by making sure other asks of team members’ time is transparent and to take actions to avoid it going forward.
Structure and Clarity
Structure and Quality can be achieved by having defined roles, expectations, and clear goals, both on an individual and team level.
The Scrum Framework provides structure and clarity in in terms of three roles and their accountabilities along with Scrum Events and Scrum Artifacts that are all there to allow for effective and value focused delivery.
Scrum Master activities
To provide structure and clarity in terms of roles and expectations the Scrum Master should make sure that the Product Owner and Developers are aware of their accountabilities within the Scrum Team. They can do this with promoting training on Scrum, conduct training themselves with the teams. The stakeholders also need to understand their responsibilities as part of the Scrum Framework. One important aspect is for everyone to understand the shift for Developers to follow a plan in traditional project methodologies to creating, following, and adjusting the plans themselves. Scrum Masters can conduct Retrospectives for the Scrum Team to inspect if they are working according to the defined roles as per the Scrum Guide or if the team needs to adapt in some way.
The Scrum Master can help the Product Owner with techniques on defining effective Product Goals as well as the whole team in defining effective Sprint Goals.
Meaning of Work
I believe that finding the Meaning of Work for people is highly dependent on individual differences. Some might find meaning in the product that the team is building, some in problem-solving tasks, some in being part of a successful team, some in helping others, some in getting better at certain skills etc. Most people can likely find meaning in various aspects.
Scrum Master activities
Since different people will have different things that motivate them in this aspect the Scrum Master can try to understand what creates Meaning of Work for each team member. This could be done by the team member rating how important various aspects are for them in making them motivated, and then having a chat on how this is fulfilled or not in the current setup to see if there are any actions to take.
The Scrum Master can work with the team to strengthen its identity as a team through team-building exercises. The Scrum Master is accountable for all Scrum events being positive and productive which also can help in this regard.
Impact of Work
For the Scrum Team to understand the Impact of Work, the Scrum Master can ask managers to clarify how the work the Scrum Team is doing feeds into higher-level goals and objectives in the organisation. When starting up a new Scrum Team and delivery of a Product it can be good to provide the context to the full Scrum Teams, in terms of users and their needs. In some cases, the team might want to create personas to understand how various users are likely to use the product.
The Product Goal being a long-term objective for the team should help the team to see their Impact of Work if stated in a way to support it.
With defining a Sprint Goal that calls out why the Sprint is valuable to stakeholders the team should understand how their work makes an impact in that Sprint.
The Sprint Review can also help the Scrum Team understand what impact their work is making to the stakeholders. This yields further motivation for the Scrum Team.
Scrum Master activities
The Scrum Master can facilitate that above happens and otherwise bring up as a discussion point in a Retrospective if deemed valuable to improve and also check with the team if they understand the impact of the work they are doing.
Wrap-up
There are a lot of things in the Scrum Framework that supports the creation of high-performing teams and the intrinsic motivation that is a great part of that. I have called out a few things that Scrum Masters can avail of to help teams become high-performing but there are likely many more. Some activities are more or less valuable too depending on the context.
Some questions you might want to ask yourself after reading this is:
- What actions can I take as a Scrum Master to help getting my team high-performing, in the context I’m working in?
- Can I think of other activities I can do as a Scrum Master with the aim to increase performance?
- Is there anything in the organisation that is impeding the team to work towards being high-performing? What can I do to help remove these impediments?
I would really appreciate your thoughts and feedback in the comments for additional insights to this topic. ❤️🤓✨
About the author
Lisa Griffin is a Senior Scrum Master at Version 1.
