54% of software organizations use Scrum as their goto framework for getting agility. Although they struggle with creating the right environment. Here, I share some common dysfunctions I have seen with Scrum Teams.

1. Dysfunctions of a
Scrum Team
Piyush Rahate
Professional Scrum Trainer
RightMatter
www.rightmatter.org
www.piyushrahate.com

2. Agenda
Introduction
The Dysfunctional Scrum
Team
Common Dysfunctions
Q&A

3. About me
• Piyush Rahate
• Learner, Speaker, Blogger
• Professional Scrum Trainer from Scrum.org
• Lead Consultant (Agile) @ Infosys
• Love to read and write poetry, Play badminton
• Enthusiastic photographer
• @piyushrahate; in/piyushrahate

4. Dysfunctional Scrum
Team

5. Common Dysfunctions in a Scrum
Team

6. The Managing Scrum Master
Traits
Drives the show
Assigns the work to the team members
Takes daily status updates
Manages the JIRA board
Schedules the team meetings
Impact
No self-organization
Team looks forward to directions from
Scrum Master
If Scrum Master absent team takes no
initiative

7. The Distributed (Dislocated) Team
Traits
Scrum Master at onsite, dev team
offshore
Two members in location X; other two
in location Y and 4 more in location Z
Dev is done by one vendor; testing
remains with another
Impact
No completed/releasable work at end
of every sprint
No interactions within team
Focus on individual heroics; no
common vision

8. The Two Day Scrum Master
Traits
Attends a workshop and pretends
mastered Scrum
Master of ceremonies; sends MoM
after every meeting
Questions and argues with everything
which was not part of the workshop
Impact
No/less understanding of values and
principles
Runs agile in command and control
mode.
No perspectives/vision beyond what
was in the two day workshop

9. Unavailable Product Owner
Traits
All other meetings take
precedence.
Works only with end users;
customer facing.
Writes the user stories to be
worked upon and then disappears.
Impact
No shared understanding of work
to be accomplished.
Team works with assumptions and
delivers low quality, low value
deliverables.

10. I know “Scrum” Scrum Master
Traits
Bookish knowledge of Scrum
Dogmatic approach to implement
Scrum
Thinks – user stories, planning poker,
burn down charts are all part of Scrum.
Impact
Not open to improvements
No openness to look beyond Scrum
Loves practices over values and
principles

11. No authority Product Owner
Traits
Only writes user stories; or converts
business needs to technical requirements
Wait! I will get back to you on this.
I don’t know, let me confirm this with
stakeholders.
Impact
No clarity of direction; creates confusion.
People by-pass the Product Owner and
assign unwanted work to development
team.
Inability to create impact and maximize
value of product.

12. Improve productivity Scrum Master
Traits
Velocity is “The Metric”
Fixing Story Points to be
delivered every sprint.
Asking teams to take additional
story points every sprint.
Impact
Team is always under pressure
to take more work.
Gaming the actual story points.
Lack of transparency, loss of
trust.

13. Unprofessional Development Team
Traits
Development is done, testing is
pending.
Let’s release with X known
bugs; we will fix in next sprint.
Quality comes second. Tech
Debt is our first love.
Impact
Poor quality of the code and
product.
Lot of undone work impacting
releases and then stabilization.
Lack of transparency and loss
of trust.

14. “I don’t trust you” – Product Owner
Traits
Providing there own estimates
for work to be done.
Identifying additional work for
team.
Pushing team to create “Stretch”
Objectives every sprint.
Impact
Low morale of the team.
Team feels micro-managed and
pressured.
Lack of trust; lack of
transparency.

15. Everyone is Hero – Development
Team
Traits
Everyone is an individual contributor.
Knowledge hoarding and dependency
creation.
Personal agenda takes preference over
what is important from the team
perspective.
Impact
Creates silos, sub-teams within the team.
Focus is on individual KPIs instead of
achieving team goals.
Lack of accountability

16. Q&A