I was brought in as a team coach to help a team with low morale, a few unhealthy conflicts, and little collaboration. At the same time, technical debt was increasing, and previous attempts to use Scrum had failed. The team was now expanding from 4 to 9 people, and it was essential to break this pattern.
During the 3 months, I trained and coached the team, and together with the team, we managed to:
- Establish the essential elements from Scrum to do iterative planning and continuously reflect and improve the development process.
- Gradually incorporated agile practices as the team identified the next issue they wanted to address.
- Restructure and simplify the Product Backlog with the Product Owner so that the entire team understands and uses it.
- An overview of all their systems categorized by their technical depth and criticality for the business.
- We have enhanced team awareness and empathy through several team-building and networking exercises. Everyone on the team now contributes equally to team events, and knowledge sharing is a central element of all team activities.
Together with the team, we introduced the new Scrum Master and discussed the expectations for this role to ensure a smooth transition for everyone.
The company experienced an uplift in team morale as a result of the intervention. The team’s high level of self-organization reduced the management effort required. The transparency of the Product Backlog was increased, making prioritization clear to all team members and external stakeholders. However, the most significant outcome was that the team took complete ownership of the changes and can now sustain continuous improvements.
