How to Navigate a Team that Does Not Involve You as an Agile Coach?
What are your options and next steps?
👋 Hello, I’m Vibhor, and welcome to the 🔒 subscriber-only edition 🔒 of my weekly Training Series powered by Winning Strategy. Every week, I answer one reader question and publish 2 posts about Agile Products, Role-Based Skills, and anything else that you need answered about your Career Growth. You can send me your questions here.
On to this week’s question
Q: Six teams work directly with end users. They basically work on configuring the product to business needs, and often, they are reluctant to adopt the Scrum framework completely. I'm not aware of their full day-to-day activities, nor do they involve me in any team activities to analyze and mention how they can adopt the Scrum framework. Please advise how to navigate these six teams.
Thank you for the question.
Let me tell you straight away that I can see what the problem is, and it’s a single phrase you’ve used in your question that makes it clear.
But just so it becomes clear to you, let’s understand this situation one step at a time.
First, let me break down your question:
you’re working with 6 teams
the teams work “directly” with the end user
the teams are reluctant to adopt the process you’re suggesting, i.e. Scrum
you have no idea what process they’re currently following
they don’t involve you in their activities, so you’re unable to analyze them
These are all the different elements of your question.
Often, the “answer” to a question like this is hidden in the question itself.
Can you see the answer now that I have written it this way?
Or at least can you see what the problem is here?
No?
Let me rearrange the elements of the question:
you’re working with 6 teams
the teams work “directly” with the end user
they don’t involve you in their activities, so you’re unable to analyze them
you have no idea what process they’re currently following
the teams are reluctant to adopt the process you’re suggesting, i.e. Scrum
If you have been in the Agile space for some time, I am sure you can now clearly see the problem and how it can be solved.
If you still can’t see it, the rest of the post provides a detailed walkthrough of the problem, your options in such a situation and the next steps.