The Slippery Slope from Personal Task Assignment to Lack of Team Ownership and Commitment

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Pinterest
WhatsApp

Sprint planning is an important event that has a significant impact on the team’s effectiveness and productivity during the sprint.
The most critical aspects of successful sprint planning are the level of the team’s commitment to the goal of the sprint and handling the sprint backlog.
To encourage the team’s commitment to the sprint, the Scrum Master (SM) should include all the members of the team in planning the sprint and, together with them, craft a challenging sprint goal and estimate the tasks involved. Another important mission of the SM is to prevent managers from putting pressure on team members to take on more than they can deliver and commit to.

By following these guidelines, the team can create a challenging but achievable plan for the sprint and so improve the team’s commitment to their jointly devised plan.

During sprint planning, personal tasks are often assigned to specific team members based on the estimated time they need, until the full capacity available for the sprint is reached.

This practice is supported by ALM tools (like Jira, ADO, and others) that help create a linkage between the team members and their tasks. These tools help each team member to filter their own tasks, making their efforts more comfortable and convenient to them and, by doing this, they create new habits.

So, what’s the problem with doing this?

The practice of assigning personal tasks may give the team members the wrong impression that the sprint backlog and the tasks are personal; however, they should not forget that the main goals of a sprint planning event are to determine the team’s mission and to encourage the team members to take ownership of tasks.
If each team member focuses on completing just their own tasks, they tend to perform more like a “group” of people working side by side than an actual team.

This situation impacts team productivity from different aspects:

  • It loses the advantages of working as a team. Aristotle said: “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts”. This pearl of wisdom is especially relevant when it comes to working within a team.
  • It creates a high level of Work in Progress (WIP) – Each team member focuses only on their own tasks, which increases the cycle time and reduces the team’s overall velocity.
  • Measuring personal performance – It creates a need for micromanagement and harms motivation.

How should we handle this situation?

The SM should understand that task assignment is solidly connected to the level of the team’s maturity and must be handled based on the team’s actual maturity and experience.
In the early days of the team, the practice of assigning personal assignments can be used to give the team more confidence in the process and in the sprint plan itself. However, throughout the sprint, the SM can challenge the team members by advising them to switch tasks with other members, while still focusing on the overall goal of keeping up the team’s commitment to the sprint and conveying the message that “backlog items are not personal items”.
As the team grows and matures, the SM can guide them to the next level by assigning only the first few tasks that the team should start working on in the first days of the sprint and leaving the rest ready to be picked up by the next available free member.

In summary:

The SM plays a significant role in helping the team to increase their sense of accomplishment.
SMs need to make sure that the members of their team do not confuse “personal assignment” with “personal ownership”.
By ensuring that the team is focused on the overall goal of the sprint and the team’s mission, the SM can help their team to achieve a much higher level of satisfaction, effectiveness, and productivity.

The team’s motto should be: “Do more in the same amount of time”.

Subscribe for Email Updates:

Categories:

Tags:

Built-In Quality
Professional Scrum Master
Agile Release Management
The Kanban Method
SAFe
PI Planning
Scrum.org
Sprint Retrospectives
Video
Scrum Master Role
Spotify
Scrum Master
Agile Israel Events
Achieve Business Agility
TDD
Lean Agile Basics
NIT
Scrum
Agile in the Enterprise
Presentation
Software Development
Legacy Code
Frameworks
Program Increment
Agile Mindset
What Is Kanban
Software Development Estimation
Systems Thinking
Kanban Game
Scrum With Kanban
Agile Release Planning
POPM
Acceptance Test-Driven Development
Portfolio for Jira
Kanban 101
AI Artificial Intelligence
Kanban Basics
A Kanban System for Software Engineering
ARTs
Jira admin
predictability
Artificial Intelligence
BDD
Kanban Kickstart Example
Nexus and SAFe
Scrum Guide
Nexus vs SAFe
Product Management
EOS®
AI
Reading List
Process Improvement
RTE
ART Success
Introduction to Test Driven Development
ALM Tools
Daily Scrum
Agile Delivery
Self-organization
Manage Budget Creation
Lean Agile Organization
Nexus
Agile India
Games and Exercises
Legacy Enterprise
Agile Contracts Best Practices
Business Agility
PI Objectives
RTE Role
Tips
Agile Games and Exercises
Certification
Effective Agile Retrospectives
Advanced Roadmaps
Webinar
Code
RSA
Story Slicing
AgileSparks
Agile Product Ownership
Continuous Integration
QA
Agile Development
Kanban
Slides
Agile Project Management
Large Scale Scrum
Planning
Lean Software Development
Lean Startup
Agile Program
Agile Community
Jira Plans
Agile Project
Lean and Agile Techniques
LeSS
Amdocs
Agile Techniques
SAFe Release Planning
Scrum Primer
Limiting Work in Progress
Kaizen
SPC
Lean Agile
ATDD
Lean and Agile Principles and Practices
SAFe DevOps
Tools
Accelerate Value Delivery At Scale
Elastic Leadership
Agile
Engineering Practices
Scrum Values
WIP
Enterprise DevOps
Lean Agile Leadership
ATDD vs. BDD
Continuous Delivery
Perfection Game
Agile Risk Management
agileisrael
Lean-Agile Software Development
Agile for Embedded Systems
Change Management
System Archetypes
Agile and DevOps Journey
ROI
Agile Testing Practices
SA
Managing Projects
speed @ scale
Agile Marketing
Applying Agile Methodology
Jira Cloud
Operational Value Stream
Lean Budgeting
Development Value Streams
Risk Management on Agile Projects
Professional Scrum with Kanban
Jira
Continuous Improvement
Agile Basics
Lean-Agile Budgeting
Test Driven Development
Certified SAFe
Agile Product Development
An Appreciative Retrospective
Continuous Deployment
ScrumMaster Tales
Agile Outsourcing
Introduction to ATDD
Scrum and XP
Pomodoro Technique
GanttBan
Lean Agile Management
Continuous Planning
Agile Exercises
Hybrid Work
Quality Assurance
LAB
Principles of Lean-Agile Leadership
Release Train Engineer
Atlaassian
Nexus Integration Team
Agile Israel
LPM
System Integration Environments
Lean Risk Management
Agile Assembly Architecture
Value Streams
Coaching Agile Teams
Kaizen Workshop
DevOps
IT Operations
speed at scale
Agility
Product Ownership
Nexus and Kanban
lean agile change management
System Team
Sprint Planning
Risk Management in Kanban
Covid19
Professional Scrum Product Owner
The Agile Coach
Rapid RTC
Agile Games
Atlassian
Risk-aware Product Development
Managing Risk on Agile Projects
Implementing SAFe
Scaled Agile Framework
Releases Using Lean
Sprint Iteration
Implementation of Lean and Agile
Entrepreneurial Operating System®
AgileSparks
Logo
Enable registration in settings - general

Contact Us

Request for additional information and prices

AgileSparks Newsletter

Subscribe to our newsletter, and stay updated on the latest Agile news and events

This website uses Cookies to provide a better experience
Shopping cart