How to make team member more involved in the product

Question

My team's run Scrum for 1 year.

The Product Owner (PO) determine the priority of tickets and Researchers/Developers (RD) develop it.

Of course, there's still a discussion in the planning meeting, but only for how to achieve tickets that PO brought into the meeting.

Now... my boss wants to build a new product.

My new leader wants the whole team to be closer and more involved more discussion. However, as things currently are, no one speaks.

Our team has 7 RD, 1 PM and 1 Designer. It's not balanced if we wanna discuss something.

I just feel confused, so I wanna ask PMSE. Do you have any relevant examples in your previous experiences that can be shared with me, regarding my following concerns:

1. How to make team members more involved in the product, and keep the development process smooth?

2. How to determine the priority of the ticket in a way that the team is highly involved?

3. Can any team member create a ticket? How to determine if the ticket has business value?

Answer 1

How to make team members more involved in the product, and keep the development process smooth?

Give them some control over the development process. Scrum, and Agile in general, is about self-organizing teams. It's just not going to work if you don't get buy-in from the Team, and you're not likely to get that buy-in if you tell them exactly how to do things. Discuss the process itself with the Team, and come to a mutual agreement as to how to structure things.

How to determine the priority of the ticket in a way that the team is highly involved?

The Development Team does not determine the priority, in a typical Scrum structure. However, what often happens in a Sprint Planning Meeting is a back-and-forth, with the Product Owner bringing in the highest priority Stories, the Development Team determining how many they believe they can accomplish that Sprint (which often reveals misunderstandings on one or both sides), and the Product Owner possibly re-prioritizing or splitting up Stories in order to get what s/he really wants into the Sprint.

In general... The PO decides the priority. The Development Team decides the amount of work.

Can any team member create a ticket? How to determine if the ticket has business value?

In general, the Product Backlog is under the purview of the Product Owner. While members of the Development Team could create Stories, they must work with the Product Owner, who is the one responsible for prioritizing said Stories. Likewise, the Product Owner should be equipped to determine business value. A possible exception is purely technical tasks, such as 'Refactor these classes', which are only understood by the Development Team. In such cases, you either need to keep them separate from normal Stories, or else work to communicate to the Product Owner the actual business advantage for accomplishing them.

Answer 2

How to make team members more involved in the product, and keep the development process smooth?

Have informal discussions with the team. Take them out for a beer or coffee and talk about what they think of the product or the latest/upcoming feature. Discourage technical discussions and if possible share the vision of the product and rough statistics of value(monetary or otherwise) it is generating.

People tend to see themselves as coders, managers or designers. They need to be exposed to the idea that they together are building something that has value in the real world. There is an owner, yes, but they too own the product in some way. There is more to it than just completing a task.

It is a mindset change and may take time to come by. Constantly pushing them to be more vocal will not help even if you continue doing it till eternity. Initially team members may also be repulsive of the idea about talking things they don't really need to know and find these discussions time-wasting. Hence, it is SM's task to make these meetings interactive and relaxing.

I normally tend to take the team by surprise shouting for an hour off and going out to parks, coffee places or bean bag room. There we just chitter chatter about the product. It is an unsaid understanding that whatever we talk, remains with us as a team talk. Nothing goes out to the management or anywhere.

What this exercise does is, it makes team members more aware of the product(than just code), they develop a sense of attachment to what they are building and that they understand they are playing an important role in increasing the statistics(business).

I have followed this experiment in my last three consecutive projects over period of 2 years. It works!

How to determine the priority of the ticket in a way that the team is highly involved?

Once the team is involved in the project, it will happen automatically. Just ensure to listen to everyone and give them a convincing reason for every 'no'.

Can any team member create a ticket? How to determine if the ticket has business value?

Yes. Let them create a ticket in the backlog. Discuss the feasibility of the ticket with the PO. If PO doesn't see any business value and wants to close the ticket, he should do so with a comment elaborating the reason for not considering the suggestion.

If team wants to create tickets, it is an indication that they are involving themselves beyond their primary task. They may not be as exposed to the market as business team, neither they may be business smart but the gesture deserves respect if nothing else.

Answer 3

This is an issue not just for product teams but for companies in general. Engaging your employees with the company goals, methods, and culture, among other things is a growing challenge for many businesses. You should look into research on "employee engagement" to learn more about that.

But, let's get down to some actual action items:

To create more engagement, which will facilitate increased discussion you'll need to first get some easy engagement wins:

1. Create an engagement strategy that facilitates involvement. This is similar to how community managers handle social media engagement --> In order to have engagement over the topics you're concerned with you first need to generate engagement on the topics that your audience is concerned with and have a clear opinion on. Once you create a culture of engagement around "fun" or "entertaining" topics you can then introduce the topics you want to have discussion around. it's a process but it really does work. In fact, if you're able to do this successfully the community will then engage itself without the need of an admin.

2. Once you've figured out the kind of engagement you'd like to create find the right tools for the job. Employee engagement tools and apps can do just that. Choose the one the helps promote your goals and satisfies your needs.

Good luck