questions allowed in scrum team

Question

Situation: - there is a specific team member who is not giving all his\her contribution - it has been communicated multiple times on the team level that we need to take initiative because we are responsible for picking up and finishing tasks. More we do, more respect (and therefore salaries eventually) is earned.

Given the fact that giving suggestion on team level is not working, neither is 1 on 1 discussions, in a scrum team, what kind of questions are allowed and who can ask them directly to the person in question? For example:

• What is taking so long to complete this kind of task every time?
• what you are not taking initiative?
• ...

EDIT:

To answer @yitznewton comment. This person unfortunately is from other department (QA) and we have strict policy not to interfere with other departments even though we have agile and work in scrum team. I can see that

• The task that would take about two hours almost every time goes to next day

• Even though I have suggested to the team that if you have other tasks we do should do them as per priority. I can see that still lower priority tasks are worked on first (I have started getting answers such as "I worked on other things so I didn't work on task I was supposed to." without any explanation about what "other things" are. but due to policy mentioned above, I cannot interfere much.)

• Even if there are enough tasks (so that we don't have to pull anything from next backlog), many times tasks spill over but since I cannot ask pointed questions, all I do is advise team in general what we should do as per agile process.

• When the task is finished, and there is free time, instead of pulling other tasks into the sprint (for example we usually have lot of studies to do), time is spent on anything but work.

• Every time, I need to assign work which I have explained multiple times that they can do that by themselves.

• Every time I miss to do that, it is taken as a chance not to work. While my mistakes are pointed out (and there are few) quite visibly, my help is not acknowledged at all.

• I can see that (even though I don't want to) inordinate amount of time is being spent on chatting to spouse, facebook, blogs, instagram.

When this person does work, it's a quality work, that's the only reason why I have been bearing this for long time.

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Alright, to start with, Scrum has 3 roles - Scrum Master, Product Owner and Development Team. Further, it has 4 or 5 events, depending on how you treat backlog refinement. Finally, it has a handful of rules and responsibilities. I mean, if your team doesn't have these in place, how do you conclude you have a Scrum Team?

Now, had this QA person been part of the development team, you would have found out what is troubling him or her during the Daily Scrum and the whole team could have helped accordingly.

However, you do not have a Scrum Team. It seems like you have a BDUF project manager bossing the staff around. When you boss smart people around, they get demotivated, they fight back, they don't feel committed to their work and they just resist.

I can see that: The task that would take about two hours almost every time goes to next day

So if you are so sure it would take just 2 hours, why don't you just do the task yourself? Why send it outside the team to someone you are having so much trouble with? I mean common, 2 hours is nothing!

Every time, I need to assign work which I have explained multiple times that they can do that by themselves.

That is tell-tale sign of what you have is anything but a Scrum Team. In Scrum, you don't assign tasks. Period. Now, one could still suggest some traditional project management ways to deal with this awful situation but you don't even have real authority on a person working in a different team. Do you?

I can see that (even though I don't want to) inordinate amount of time is being spent on chatting to spouse, facebook, blogs, instagram.

Why do you have time looking at what others are doing?

At the end of the day, assuming you are a project manager, I would strongly recommend you get some help from an experienced agile coach or scrum master and try to put your foot down if your management is forcing you to divide the QA team out.

If you are a developer who is supposedly acting like a Scrum Master (just a guess based on what I gathered from your question), then obviously this is not working and is creating problems between you and rest of your team. Again, maybe its better to go back to development and get help from a Scrum Master?

Either way, something's got to change big time. I hope you find this helpful. Take it easy. Take a day off and think about it. Read more about Scrum. I hope things work out for you.

Answer 2

You've answered your own question in a way.

This person unfortunately is from other department... "I worked on other things so I didn't work on task I was supposed to."

For all practical purposes, QA is an off team dependency for your team. This person has competing priorities and isn't really a member of your team. I am 100% positive that this person has a manager who is asking them to do work that is not related to your team or project. Put yourself in their shoes, you're "on a team", but your manager comes and asks you to do some unrelated work. Which work do you do, the work for the team or the work your manager asked you to do?

There are a few ways to solve this, but the best, in my opinion would be to get this person, or at least a person, whose time is actually dedicated to your team. Make them a part of the team. Otherwise, you'll be forced to treat QA as an external dependency to your team and your team's ability to deliver will remain at the mercy of things out of their control.

The rest of this is a people management problem, not a project management problem. If this person was a team member, the team should be empowered to request a different team mate from management though.