How do i improve team dynamics?

Question

I am currently tech lead for a scrum team. The team while in building phase over the past year did not have any form of scrum activity and focused on kanban style get the work done.

They have voiced wanting to participate in more planning and visibility into road maps. But they are very averse to any form of meetings. Even twice a week standup to identify blockers and solve issues is not acceptable to them. Showing interest in what and how the other team members are doing in my opinion can be helpful to improve networking and knowledge sharing but is being construed as micro managing and checking up on someone’s output productivity.

Has anyone been able to make standups acceptable and useful? Share any tips. Also how does one get the team to be more accountable to one another and communicate more frequently?

Rahul Pandey · Accepted Answer

First, wanted to call out that this is a great question to be concerned about as a Principal Engineer. Improving the team culture and dynamics is one of the highest-leverage things you can do, and you're probably in a position to make change happen given your level.

I think 2x/week standup is reasonable, enough will have happened for people to share updates.

A few questions I'd ask:

How many people are in the standup? Can you split it up into smaller groups where there's more relevance to each other?
Can you educate people on why standup is important and how people should share updates to make it beneficial for themselves and others? I made a video about this here: https://youtu.be/NmoNIkF6xOA

The goal, as you state, is to "improve networking and knowledge sharing." Standups are one way of doing that, but there are other solutions you could explore:

Define new/additional goals that are more team-oriented (e.g. build time, revenue, something which is more unifying)
Have weekly/bi-weekly knowledge-sharing sessions, where one person is chosen to present.
Invite senior leadership for regular meetings so the team feels involved and heard in planning and roadmaps.

How do i improve team dynamics?

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