Look at this from the perspective of the other people in the team - for three years they've been 'doing Scrum' but not completing sprints and morale has been falling, so they want to stop doing it. Now a new person comes along and wants to force them to do it anyway. How would you feel? 'They complain.but don't do anything' - you are having retrospectives where people don't say what they think, because they don't see that things might change, so what's the point?

• Dealing With Teammates That Don't Work As A Team Software Engineering Program

Listen to your team, meet them where they are and focus on the values of agile working practices.–Aug 15 '17 at 10:05. You may have heard a lot of statistics about failed software projects and came to the conclusion that the failure is not of a technical nature.

Technological problems can be solved via hundreds of technical solutions, but solving problems in your workplace atmosphere by using Scrum is not going to work.My suggestion here is to completely stop looking at this as a technical issue. It's not about Scrum, it's not about daily standups, sprints, retrospectives or anything else like that. You need to get in touch with your team and find an effective way of working that satisfies them as well as you and your superiors.If they think dailies are a bad idea, you should not tell them to do dailies and try to punch your reasoning into them. Think for yourself what it is that dailies offer to you.

Check with your team whether they value those advantages as well. Find out why they do not share your understanding - as in understanding their point of view, not as in convincing them of anything. Then check whether dailies actually help your team, or if you can achieve more with some other mechanism. The funny thing about Scrum masters is that they are servants to their team - you may well serve them best by abolishing Scrum altogether.In summary, stop focusing on Scrum and instead get back to the basics of agility.

You may want to start right at the beginning with the: Value individuals and interactions over processes and tools. If the team wants to 'stop doing Scrum' and feels they are 'doing Kanban' anyway, why not do Kanban? I'm not necessarily saying you (Daniel Ziga) should do Kanban, but you certainly should consider it. That said, there should be specific things to do/not do in the retrospective. Nevertheless, starting the conversation with, 'hey team, how should we rework our process?'

May at least stimulate an interesting discussion and positions them to have interest and buy-in in whatever results from it (as long as it doesn't largely dismiss their concerns).–Aug 15 '17 at 10:00. In my experience, teams who are disillusioned need to start by having effective retrospectives. That's why in my opinion retrospectives are the only mandatory part of an agile process. Everything else is subject to change through the retrospectives.In effective retrospectives, you don't just complain about your issues, you choose at least one of those issues and identify possible solutions to it, then try that solution over the next iteration. At the next retrospective, you talk about how that solution worked or didn't work, and make further adjustments if necessary, or pick another issue to work on.When team members see they have the power to effect actual change in their process, they will become more willing to engage.The retrospective process is why if you visit all the teams at a company that does agile well, they all do it somewhat differently.

We have some teams that do Kanban, some that do XP, some that only do standups Monday Wednesday Friday.If your team doesn't like how you deal with hangovers, brainstorm some different approaches. I have won over very reluctant developers just by consistently listening in retrospectives and trying solutions. 'In my experience, teams who are disillusioned need to start by having effective retrospectives.' : Sometimes group dynamics can be improved by 'retrospectives' or other sorts of structured communication. On the other hand, some combination of team members just do not work, regardless whether you do retrospectives, daily stand ups, meetings or whatever. I think too many managers think that it is enough to introduce a new practice with a fancy name to allow people who cannot stand each other to work together.–Aug 15 '17 at 14:26. Ok so let's start rough - big part of the problem is with you - You hear, but you don't listen.

Your team is telling you clearly what the problems are. You need to address them instead of blaming your team.PlanningTo them, Planning is just a waste of time, because we just move overflow into the new Sprint and don't complete the work anyways, so why bother.Exactly. For example: To them, Planning is just a waste of time, because we just move overflow into the new Sprint and don't complete the work anyways, so why bother. This is afaik the exact opposite of how to do things.

In your sprint planning you plan everything you are going to get done. If you don't get it all done, you don't throw everything into the next sprint. Your sprint failed.

You have no deliverable for that sprint at all because you failed to manage it properly. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.–Aug 17 '17 at 19:38. You are wrong.

It's definitely not all-or-nothing. Think about it, 5 men team, everyone gets their tasks done, but one person fails one task, and now what? You don't ship anything? It's perfectly fine to create a build out of features that you've finished. This is however area where Scrum has problems IMO, keep in mind that Scrum was first introduced in Manufacturing environment, so it works best for tasks and ocmpanies with low variance (eg. Wordpress shop, that produces several websites for small businesses).

That's why you have concepts like Spikes that reduce uncerteinity.–Aug 17 '17 at 20:40. One of major agile principle is to go back, and correct whatever is wrong. That doesn't only include code refactoring and bug fixes, but also fixing the development process.So, why don't you make a meeting with your team, and see how can you improve development process?

If that means, no scrum or standup meetings, then be it.Also you are breaking one of principles in: 'Individuals and interactions over processes and tools'.On the other hand, if your team thinks that iterative development is bad, then maybe you are doing it wrong. It doesn't matter if you do not finish everything you planed for one iteration - you can always move things to next iteration. That is also why you mark things as 'has to contain', 'nice to have', etc.

As long as you provide new functionality, you are doing it fine.Just a small rant: in my previous and current company we did and still do standup meetings. From my experience, they are massive waste of time, since every time they turn into 30+ minutes status report meetings, and to me provide little to no information. People talk about their problems, which honestly I do not care.In my previous company, they were smart, recognized this problem with standups, and stopped them soon after people started complaining.If you like to see a really good video about scrum, see '. As I priority, I'd look at tasks which keep getting carried over. Not meeting targets is hugely demoralizing. Are you committing to too much?

Are there fatlogs that should be broken down? Are there bottlenecks outside your control?

Do you have a clear definition of 'done'? Are the requirements clear? Are the hours per developer reasonable (i.e. Takes into account admin, standups, planning, retrospectives, keyboard breaks, non-project work).Next, ditch whatever isn't working.

Process without value is just a time thief. Standups can consume vast amounts of time if it isn't focused and doesn't provide value to the team. The hours might be better spent elsewhere. Maybe also consider splitting the team up if it is too big.Try to get a handle on what is demotivating the team. Have retrospectives and more importantly, act on the output. It is equally important to celebrate successes as well as looking at failures.Finally, you may want to assess the approaches of scrum masters who have gone before who may have damaged the brand so to speak.

I've worked under a toxic scrum master before where every problem that was raised got added to your workload whether you knew about it or not. End result: problems got ignored and everyone worked on their own little area with very little teamwork.

One thing is for certain that will happen throughout the span of your athletic life as you: You will have bad teammates, and depending on where you play, you may come across a lot of them. They are about as certain in athletics as death and taxes are in life, and almost every team at every level in life and athletics, have selfish teammates.Some of those teammates may be aware of their behavior and just don’t care because of their obsession in achieving their own success, while others may not know that they’re acting selfish. Whatever the case may be, selfish teammates generally exhibit the same behavior on the playing field, in the classroom, and at the office when you get older in life.Below is a list of seven of the most common selfish habits of bad teammates. If you have a teammate that is exhibiting one of these seven behaviors, you should reach out to them to find out why. They may be going through something serious away from the game and they’re expressing frustration because there is nowhere else for them to express their feelings. If that’s the case, they will appreciate you caring for them and you will build a bond.I have coached many players that didn’t realize they were acting selfishly and all it took was a conversation to realize why they were exhibiting that behavior.

Some of those players had actual problems outside of the game that was causing them to act the way they were and just needed someone to listen to their frustrations. However, there were players that couldn’t be saved. They were just flat out selfish and were only playing the game because it was a means to an end for them. Some of those players wanted a college scholarship so bad that they didn’t care about anything that was in their immediate life. Their current teammates, coaches, and supporters weren’t important to them because in their eyes, those people served as a stepping stone to bigger and better things.

Guess what though – out of the 40 players that we sent on to play NCAA college hockey, zero of those selfish players moved on. ZERO.It’s not the end of the world if you’re acting like a selfish teammate, but you can guarantee that it will be damaging to your success if you realize you are acting selfish and don’t make an effort to change. Selfish Teammates Blame Their Coaches & TeammatesThe number one thing that bad teammates do is blame their coaches for their own shortcomings. They are the type of player that never sees eye to eye with their coaches and cause friction both publicly and privately between them and their respective teachers. Bad teammates can cause friction through two major practices – they either have conflict with their coach in front of everyone publicly or they undermine their coaches behind their backs in closed circles, with teammates one on one, or in the locker room. If they try to suck you in to have a conversation about your coaches, just do yourself a favor and walk away. It’s a no win situation for you.

Dealing With Teammates That Don't Work As A Team Software Engineering Program

You may become unpopular or be labeled as a “suck-up” for deciding to not listen, but just know that it will pass and that everyone will value your loyal values in the long run. Those types of conversations are always short term and usually occur because your teammate isn’t mature enough to realize that their problems stem from their current mentality.Have you ever heard “You should have given it to me!” or “I was wide open!” or even “You can’t make that play! Give it to me instead!” from one of your teammates? Odds are, they’re selfish.

You may think that their comments are constructive criticism, but when a teammate lashes out in frustration that the play should have gone to them instead of you, they are telling the entire world around them that they believe their athletic ability is superior compared to their teammates. It’s only constructive criticism when a teammates asks: “Did you see what happened there?” or “What did you see? Gotcha. Check this out, this is what we need to try to do.” The latter brings in an effort to try and connect, understand what their teammate saw, and then make a suggestion to change. The former is a tirade of frustration because the play “didn’t go their way”. That’s selfish behavior.

Their way isn’t more important than the team’s way. Selfish Teammates Make ExcusesBad teammates ALWAYS make excuses for their own short comings and blame someone else for their failures and never exhibit the quality of ““. They blame others for not allowing them to succeed or for not giving them a chance and they always fail to see that the reason why they aren’t getting the opportunities that they want is because they aren’t putting in the work. That, or they don’t have a great attitude and don’t realize that their bad attitude is what coaches don’t want to reward.

Instead, they go around and say that they aren’t getting what they want because someone “is out to get them”, “doesn’t like them”, or “isn’t fair”. News flash: life isn’t fair.

However, more times than not, people that have a great attitude and a solid work ethic are the ones that tend to make the most success for themselves. Players that make excuses like this are a dime a dozen, and you should realize that their mentality is toxic for not only sports, but for life in general.3. Selfish Teammates Could Care Less About Their Teammate’s SuccessThere is no bigger red flag of a bad teammate than the one that doesn’t get excited about their teammates success. Because they are all in it for themselves. THEY want the limelight, the recognition, and to be revered for their talents more than see their teammates experience success. Not only will you experience selfish players that want more, but I can guarantee that you will certainly come across those who ACT like they are truly happy for their other teammates but aren’t.

Selfish players usually act this way when they only have happiness for teammates that don’t compete against them for their own position.How do you deal with this? You don’t need to be a sports psychologist. You just need to realize that bad teammates have bad attitudes and to not get caught up in it. Truly celebrate your other teammates success because when they succeed, you usually succeed as well.4.

Selfish Teammates Put In Minimum Time With Marginal Effort“Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best you are capable of becoming.” – John Woodenand 10-Time National Champion has a different take on success. According to Wooden, success is about the effort that you put out on a daily basis and not about reaping the benefits from “being on the team”. Bad teammates are the ones that love everything that comes with being a part of the team: The swag, the fans (if there are any), and the “lifestyle”. However, they don’t value their self-improvement as a priority and always do the minimum required work just to “get by”.

Bad teammates are never the first ones to arrive or the last ones to leave from practice and they would rather be social than put in the time to practice. If you want to make progress every day, you shouldn’t be associated with teammates that are perceived as they don’t care and only do the minimum. Don’t expect to make personal gains or have exceptional results if you surround yourself with players that only dedicate a small amount of time to their own personal progress.These bad teammates are the ones that put in “marginal effort” too.

They just do enough to meet what is required of them and never go the extra mile. Being at team functions is sometimes a nuisance to them, and they are constantly checking the clock to see “how much time is left until practice/workout/film is over”. These types of teammates are drifters through life and ever really take anything seriously, unless if it is on their own terms.

You don’t want to associate yourself with these types of teammates because they will never inspire you to achieve more in life. Sure, for a majority of the time they are harmless, but being harmless is extremely harmful to you and your team making progress. Selfish Teammates “Know It All” & Contemplate Quitting When Times Are ToughWhen your team hits a rough patch, bad teammates are easy to identify because they are the ones that try to point the finger of blame. They will claim that they know why everything is going bad and they usually choose either the coaches or players that they are in competition with as a scapegoat to the lack of team success.

The problem with this is that is divides the team rather than bring it together, but bad teammates don’t care about that or the team. They only care about being right and would rather be right in their own minds than admit that they don’t know the answer and have to lean on their teammates for success. Stay away – these players ALWAYS end up alone because they push teammates, coaches, and supporters away due to their narcissistic personality.They other thing that they do is bring up the possibility of quitting because “its not fun”, “the team sucks”, “I don’t want to play anymore”, or “I’m wasting my time”. As an individual, you cannot get sucked into their way of negative thinking because it is TOXIC. The Golden Rule: Never quit just because things aren’t going your way. Playing sports is all about managing the mental ups and downs while you continue to stick to the process.

You will never teach yourself anything about loyalty, sacrifice, determination, or perseverance if you quit because of your negative mentality. In times of rough patches, you should be thinking about how lucky you are to have the opportunity to play the game. Think about how many people would love to have the opportunities that you have in life and realize that you need to work to hone your skills instead of taking things for granted.Don’t get caught up with Energy Vampires (bad teammates).

They’ll suck the life out of you.6. Selfish Teammates Are Always “Tired” & “Busy”Teammates that don’t have any time for the team aren’t teammates at all – they’re just people that happen to play on the team. Being a teammate means that you put your peers and your coaches around you before yourself. You make sacrifices to keep the life of the team in tact and you don’t do anything to put yourself in front of the team and upset the apple cart. That’s what it means to be a “team player”. Selfish teammates don’t do any of these things. They are the type of player that can’t attend team building functions on the weekend because they’re “busy” or have “other commitments”.

They are the ones that don’t go the extra mile to form team functions themselves because they care about themselves and what they are doing more than creating relationships and building bonds with their peers. Their lazy, me-first mentality is toxic and can usually pull in one or two more players to adopt their lazy mentality, but the largest that they will ever grow to be is a “clique”.If you have a teammate that doesn’t have to make time for you, your coaches, or your fellow teammates, then they don’t understand what it means to be a teammate at all. You don’t want to associate with people that think that their time is more important than the greater good of the group.

No matter how hard they try to make it look like they don’t care what you think, they really do. So, don’t get sucked in to the complainer’s mentality of being tired from doing so much and that there is not enough time in the day to make the team a priority. Instead, side with those teammates that want to make the team their priority – You’ll find that most people will side with the team. If you have a teammate that doesn’t want to put the team first, that’s their problem and not yours. 7. Selfish Teammates Look Out For Themselves (Number One) Before Anyone ElseFinally, you guessed it – selfish teammates put themselves before anything else in life. They are usually the people that have all the materialism that they can buy, but none of the substance or camaraderie that they have to sacrifice their materialism for.

These are the teammates that don’t treat people well, always ask for things and expect people to solve their issues at the drop of a hat, work hard only when they feel like it, feel that they don’t have to pick up the locker room, are above doing team laundry and filling water bottles, don’t feel that it is important to wear the apparel that team gives you for team functions – I can keep going on. Selfish teammates are easy to sniff out. Just look for the players that don’t have pride in the logo that you play for and don’t treat everyone around them with mutual respect. They only care about what they think, how they feel, and what they want to do. Sacrifice, loyalty, humility, and appreciation are not in their vocabulary.

They’re always tuned into their own radio station WIIFM – What’s In It For Me. The problem for them is, nobody wants to listen to that channel.Success is a choice. This book will change your life on understanding what it takes to be successful in life.