Coach’s Corner
The development team is accountable for delivering high-quality increments of potentially shippable product every sprint. Nobody can tell them how to accomplish this work and they must have all the skills necessary to make that happen. There are no sub-roles on the development team because no role dominates any other. Collaboration is the fabric of a successful development team. They achieve the sprint goal and genuinely care about the quality of the product and of the underpinning architecture.
As a Scrum master, it’s extremely important to remember that the development team has ownership of their work—not you. It’s easy for Scrum masters to forget that they’re servant leaders, not taskmasters. If you find yourself dictating what your development team should do, step back and read Chapter 7, Embracing the Scrum Master Role for a reminder of what your role should be. It’s unhealthy and counterproductive for a development team to lack ownership over their process.
To help give the development team more accountability over their process, try this exercise during your next sprint retrospective:
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Gather the development team together. Ask each person to silently spend one minute brainstorming as many team improvements as they can think of (process, technical, and so on), and to write each idea on a separate sticky note. To get them inspired, try offering a phrase for them to complete, such as “In order for us to become a rock-star development team, we have to…”
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After the one minute is up, ask them to pair up with another person and spend two minutes collaborating and writing down yet more improvement ideas together.
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After these two minutes are up, have the pairs share an idea one at a time by shouting it out and placing it on a whiteboard.
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Ask the group to look for patterns, and if any emerge, group the related sticky notes together. Discuss all the topics for five minutes, paying specific attention to the patterns.
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Lastly, give each person three sticker dots. Tell them to put the dots on what they think are the most pressing items. They can place all three dots on the same sticky note or distribute them across various sticky notes.
Catalog the results and make them visible in the team area. Use the dots to help prioritize: Address the items with the most dots first. Choose one or two of these improvements to implement in the next sprint, and then revisit the list during the next sprint retrospective. Look carefully at the list for signs of impediments, and if there’s something going on that the development team can’t resolve on their own, be sure to take action.
You’ve just seen one of the many ways in which you can help ensure your development team succeeds. In the next chapter, we’ll dive into how you can truly embrace the Scrum master role and empower your team.