PSM 1 Assessment "Change of Development Team Membership" answer
The answer to this is "As needed, while taking into account a short term reduction in productivity."
My question is how can you empirically know that a different team, doing a different task, has resulted in a loss of productivity?
I chose "As needed, with no special allowance for changes in productivity.". My reasoning being that the team has been changed to match the required skills for achieving the Sprint Goal and the Sprint Plan will define the most efficient/productive way of achieving this goal. Surely you are changing team members because the previous team's skill set would be less productive for the new goal. If the change of team members is expected to reduce productivity, then why would you do it?
That's not always the case, it's actually rarely the case when a change in the team immediately equals the same or even higher productivity. Typically if you decide to change membership because of team issues or lack of necessary skills, that is not done within the middle of a sprint. Most of the times, the change in team membership is due to an employee quitting or being fired. In those cases, there is a short term reduction in productivity 90% of the time.
The emphasis is on "short term". There are plenty of studies on the impact of changing teams.
Essentially, changing team members might be a reasonable strategy in the medium to long term, but in general it's not a magic substitute for poor planning.
I've seen projects that were behind schedule, and I've seen extra people added to those projects in the final weeks. I've never seen the team become more productive straight away.
+1 Simon
Even if you add someone for their skill set that the team needs; productivity can definitely be hindered simply because it's a new person. The team likely doesn't know the new person so they will spend a little time trying to get to know them while they collaborate (loss of production), or worse they won't communicate much at all. Maybe the new person is too shy to start up the convo, maybe the dev team sees the person as an outsider that replaced one of their close friends on the team; the list can go on and on. I agree with Simon in that there is ALWAYS a short term reduction in productivity when there is a team change. It can be small as in the velocity drops by 3 or 4 points for the sprint, or it could be large and the team just doesn't work at all for that sprint. You never know.
Hello Everyone,
I believe posting assessment questions and answers is against the site’s terms of use, which is stated at the bottom of the page. Although I am not sure if this also applies to open assessments items. I would assume that it is okay if it is from the open assessment.
Cheers,
Harley
Open Assessment questions are good, to my knowledge. The other thing, this isn't really just a "Hey here is the correct answer to such and such question on the exam"
This is much more a "I don't know that I agree with this answer, please help me and discuss"
I believe posting assessment questions and answers is against the site’s terms of use, which is stated at the bottom of the page. Although I am not sure if this also applies to open assessments items. I would assume that it is okay if it is from the open assessment.
It does seem that posting questions / answers from the open assessment is tolerated, as they're often discussed on the forum.
Scrum.org support did get in touch with me once to let me know that they had to remove a thread I'd responded to, because the original poster had included an assessment question. So we'll probably find out one way or another.
My question is how can you empirically know that a different team, doing a different task, has resulted in a loss of productivity?
This may not be possible with an immature agile team, where measures of productivity are unclear and/or erratic.
However, once agile practice has been normed and a team starts to achieve a consistently high level of collaborative performance, any change to team membership is likely to reduce productivity.
Productivity can be expected to recover along with collaborative potential as the team adjusts to its new membership. If a new team member brings a significant innovative capability, a long term net productivity gain may be expected.