CHOW #65– Collaboration across teams – making SoS effective

Chow

Sunita looked anxious when she met me a couple of months ago.

She has been a successful Scrum Master and enjoyed her work. Her team respected her and held her in high regard. She also had a good working relationship with the Product Management team and the functional managers of team members.

Team members were very participative in discussions and were not hesitant in sharing their thoughts in any relevant discussion.

Based on her performance, she was asked to take on some additional responsibilities of making a strategic program for the company, more Agile.

She set up a Scrum of Scrum platform for all teams in the program to get together, for planning, tracking and resolving any dependencies.

While the initial meetings were well attended, the attendance and participation started reducing gradually.

She sensed it and wanted to do something to make the Scrum of Scrums also as effective as her Scrum team.

What guidance do you have for her?

Suggested solution

Sunita can address this in 3 steps.
1. get the business representatives [or the POs] to articulate he superordinate goal for the teams, that will identify the business outcome expected
2. share this vision with the SoS having the user or business representative discuss that, to get everyone to understand the expectations and identify how they can create the impact as a team
3. enable the SoS to define the team norms, just as a scrum team would have. This will help the team push and pull each other towards the impact expected

Leadership, Communication; Culture
Picture of Shiv Sivaguru

Shiv Sivaguru

Shiv has been active in the IT & Software Industry since 1980 and is an expert in Agile Transformation, DevOps Consulting and Technology Adoption. Shiv is the Practice Lead for PM Power’s Business Excellence, Knowledge Management and Technology adoption suite of services as part of the company's Business Excellence and Competency Development services.
What do you think?

16 Responses

  1. Thanks for sharing, Vishu.
    It is clearly seen that
    with great desires (manifesto), there is determination, discipline, devotion, and dedication to reach the destination.
    Neither a clock nor an agile process will work here, but a strong desire.
    So, where are we going next ? ☺️?

  4. Fantastic analogy. We should have the mindfulness to use these learnt lessons in situations we come across.

    On the lighter side, any Areas of Improvement.

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