Scrum: Resistance is (not) useless

Question

I am the second developer and recent hire here in the PHP / MySQL store. I was hired mainly because of my experience in bickering some process out of a chaotic mess. At least this is what I did in my last company .;)

Since I was here (a few months later), I brought aboard my boss, my product manager and several other key figures (but mostly chickens if you forgive Scrum-based stereotypes). I also helped give some visibility to the development cycle of a large product that had lagged for more than a year. People love it!

However, my colleague (the only other developer here yet) is not included in this. She prefers to close the door and focus on her work and stay alone. Me? I enter into all the flexible approach of cooperation, cooperation and openness. Without her input, I started practicing Scrum (daily fights, burned-out graphics and other things that I found that worked for me and my previous teams (Al H. Kniberg's wall chart curve). During our daily stand, she glides and ignores us as if we really weren’t standing right outside the door (we really are). This is quite surprising. I have never seen such resistance.

The question is ... how can I get it on board? Peer pressure does not work.

Thanks from Scrum-borg,

beaudetious

Answer 1

While Scrum of other agile methodologies like him embodies many good practices, sometimes giving them a name and doing it (as many bloggers have commented), the “religion” that needs to be adopted in the workplace is likely to give away a lot of people, including me.

It depends on what your options and obligations are, but I know that I will be much more involved in accepting ideas because they are good ideas, and not because they are winners. Try introducing / bringing her to practice one at a time, showing her how they can improve their life and workflow.

Programmers love cool things that help them get stuff. They hate being preached or invited aboard what they see as a winner. Imagine this as the first, not the last. (Of course, make sure that he is actually the first)

Edit: another question

I have never worked in a place that used a certain flexible methodology, although I am very happy where I am now involved in the fact that we include many flexible practices without hype and dogma (best of all worlds, IMHO).

But I just read about Scrum and is it such a system that is even useful for a two-person team? Scrum really adds a certain amount of overhead to the project, it seems, and this can outweigh the benefits when you have a very small team where communication and planning is already easy.

Answer 2

Without her input, I started practicing Scrum (daily fights, burned-out graphics and other things that I found that worked for me and my previous teams (Al H. Kniberg's critical wall chart). She crawls while standing up daily and we ignore us as if we weren’t actually standing right outside her door (we really are.) It's pretty amazing. I have never seen such resistance.

The question is ... how can I get it on board? Peer pressure does not work.

Hop! Who ever wants to work in such an oppressive environment? If you are lucky, she will send her resume, and you can hire someone who is on board your development process.

Assuming you want to hang on it, I would refuse (or turn off) the rhetoric and work first on being a friend and collaborator. If the project is late for a year, it cannot feel good about itself, and it seems that you are not afraid to trumpet your success. This can be intimidating.

I don't know anything about Scrum, however. I just imagine how it will look in your shoes for colleagues.

Answer 3

baud buddy

I would really suggest you read Steve Yegge's blog entitled "Good Agile, Bad Agile . " It is old-fashioned, but good, and I think that it should be read for everyone, like me, about 2 months ago - whoever receives a little, let him say “too impatient” to speed up his workplace. Agile offers many good practices, but you should take them all with salt and take what you are missing and give up all other rabbits that may not be suitable for a particular situation - for example, a daily fight. If your colleague just wanted to code in silence (read Peopleware, why is it good) and she, being a productive member of the team, stops listening to it with the help of your problem, let it work the way she likes best.

People are usually less “hostile” about these practices, if you just approach them and just say, “Do you have a second? Listen, communication is really a problem right now, I feel I don’t know, and I really don’t want to step on your toes and spend two days on what you already did last week, so let's work on it. I would like to try X, what do you think? " Be compassionate and do not tolerate "bad apples", which literally, as I was expanding my workplace, and many problems began to evaporate. We are by no means a 100% XP or 100% Scrum compatible place, because we just use whatever we want.

Answer 4

Simple Do not talk about the battle. Do not use a scrum on it. Instead, take the basic principles of the battle (for example, the goal as opposed to the application) and create different approaches that match its way of working, but have subtle shades of the battle.

All people are different, and many programmers do not like the fight. I would not impose this on them, as that would be simply counterproductive. I would suggest identifying problems during the development process (in a relaxed manner), see if you can make her accept that the problems exist, and then ask her what she thinks is a good solution. Her cooperation and contribution to this process is important for her cooperation, if she does not have a buy-in, she will not become a citizen.

From there, you can hope to create a kind of quasi-hybrid battle + its approach to the process, where you can agree on the way forward.

Answer 5

I think the key is to help her understand why you do Scrum in the first place. You probably have your own reasons, so why not tell her? You will probably encounter resistance to any changes if the people involved do not understand why there are changes or what they will benefit from it. If you can explain your reasons for using Scrum and the following benefits for her in a way that relates to her daily work, I think she is more likely to adapt a more positive attitude towards her.

If she does not see any value in the Scrum process or does not understand how she relates to her, she probably does not care about it.

I think one of the most important concepts for understanding Scrum is the fact that you work as a group and take on your project as a group, not as individuals. For many people, this is the most difficult to understand, because they are so used to living in "their own world."

Answer 6

I'm not sure Scrum is the central issue here; I guess that she is threatened by a new guy, bringing a ton of new ideas and exciting. I have been in this situation before, when a new person brings a new perspective to life, and sometimes it is simply difficult to immediately bring these existing people to a new way of thinking. This often requires a culture shift that does not happen overnight.

Try to get into it as much as possible and evaluate things and try to show that you respect, that she has been in the team longer than you. If after some time she is still not participating, then all you can do is to mention this to your manager and let them take it from there.

Answer 7

Continue your efforts to engage another developer. Remember that you are the one who wants to make this change. Get help with your problems. Invite them to a daily meeting. Currently, I plan to get up daily, and I make sure all pigs and chickens are invited. If you are leading a project, you will solve the problem and take a chance. Put yourself there.