How to get the team lead out of their heads
Hello,
I have some years of experience with Scrum myself, but for the first time I am accompanying a complete, long-established team in the transition to agile development methods. There have been 3 development teams before, all of which had a team lead. We deliberately left these teams unchanged in the transition to Scrum, since the team sizes fit and the developers worked well together. The only change we made was that we split the previous test team into the development teams.
In general, the transition is working very well: all employees are committed and two out of three teams are already working successfully in Scrum after just one sprint.
We have abolished the role of " team lead" - the previous holders of this role also agreed with this.
The problem is: In reality, they are still team leads. Everyone turns to these people first with questions, and it even happens to me that I quite naturally hand over the moderation of the dailies to the respective team lead.
Therefore my question: Do you have experience with such constellations? What can I do to help the team - and myself - to forget the role of team lead? For central coordination meetings between the teams, we have already started to send a different team member every week. Do you have any other hands-on tips?
Thanks a lot!
I quite naturally hand over the moderation of the dailies
What "moderation of the dailies"? Why "naturally"?
If you're talking about the Developers' Daily Scrum it sounds like you need some kind of presence, at least for now, in order to coach that there should be no moderator at all. Perhaps that's the best place to start.
What are the former team leads doing to help "level up" the people around them? Instead of just answering questions or helping out in other ways, these team leads should be able to help others develop the knowledge and skills needed to not have to turn to a former lead as often to help get answers or solve problems.
What is the rest of the organization doing to help make sure that the former team leads have the skills needed to help the people around them level up? Not everyone is a good teacher or mentor to people. There may need to be an investment in these skills to give the team leads the tools needed to make the people around them successful.
Just like a Scrum Master, these "leads" need to learn the art of servant-leadership. Instead of leading, they need to learn how to serve the rest of the team. Serving does not mean telling people how to do things or why they need to do something in a specific way. Serving means helping other to make the decisions on their own. Be there to listen, help them do things but don't do it for them. As an experienced Scrum Master, you should be able to help them learn the skill. Having someone on a team that is a first contact with questions is not a bad thing. Unless that person does nothing to help others learn so that they are no longer the first contact.
I also got stuck on your comment about moderation of the dailies. Why would anyone moderate a Daily Scrum? It is an opportunity for a group of self-managed, self-organized professionals to discuss their plan for the coming day with the focus being on achieving the Sprint Goal. It is a gathering of the Developers and no one else participates. So if you, the Scrum Master, have been attending and moderating, you are corrupting the purpose of the event. How they choose to organize the event is entirely up to them.
You said you are ' accompanying a complete, long-established team in the transition to agile development methods' and it sounds like you are very hands on if you are attempting to preside over the dailies for all groups. As Daniel pointed out that might not be the best way to establish a true version of scrum, although I appreciate your thinking is likely that you are easing them into the Scrum framework...worth reflecting on.
The key thing for me is that these are 'long-established team' which means that they have (as you have seen) long established ways of doing things. You need to break up that routine, mix up the groups. Start by sharing your concerns with them and the reasoning behind the concerns, explain fully how a scrum team function ("self-managing, meaning they internally decide who does what, when, and how") and allow them to organise themselves in the best way for them within the scrum framework.
Can't really tell from your post what your role actually is, will you continue to work with the teams or move on when the scrum has been established? If its the latter then I would say as well that you should move away from the very central role you've put yourself into, so you can guide from the side lines and not establish a new reliance.