Have you ever wondered what a great kick-off for a new Scrum Team looks like? This article is part of the series on “How to kick-off an amazing Scrum Team“. The complete Practical Guide includes the following steps:
- Invite for a Kick-Off Meeting
- Socialize
- Explain the theory behind “Agile”
- Clarify roles
- Find slots for regular Meetings
- Discuss Tooling requirements
- Agree on Estimation processes & Metrics
- Create your Definition of Done
- Conduct a Refinement Session
Clarify Roles
Purpose
Have you ever experienced a team debating about responsibilities? Well, I bet you have. More often than not, every team will have this discussion at some point in time. So, better to have this discussion as early as possible. Conflicts arise if expectations are not met or diverge too much. And if you clarify roles early in the process, you will help to create a common view on expectations within your team. Every step in your kick-off should help your team to create a shared mental model around their work. Because a high-performing team is a team that acts as an atomic unit. Roles are a profound structural element in your team system. So, they definitely should be a topic, when starting a new team. If you fail to create a common understanding of your structural elements in your team, it is pretty likely, that your team will fail too.
Clarifying Roles is also important in the interaction with the outside world. If your team is totally aligned internally, you can still have external influencers, that disrupt your team structure. Imagine for example a stakeholder addressing their requirements directly to a developer instead of the product owner. Your developers will become distracted with product discovery when they should focus on product delivery. Also, your product owner will miss important information about product discovery, when he should create a holistic view of product requirements. This information asymmetry can cause some serious trouble. But if you clarify roles not only for your team but also for your stakeholders, you can prevent most of this trouble.
Actions
This step in your kick-off is pretty straightforward. By just putting “Clarify Roles” on your agenda, you give this topic the required room to be discussed. And by just having a conversation about roles and responsibilities, you will create the common understanding, that you need. At least within your team. As explained before, you might want to create some type of communication artifact, to inform your stakeholders too. So, you should document at least the following:
- Which roles exist in your team?
- Who is taking which role?
- How much time is invested in which role? (aim for 100%)
Some of that can be prepared in advance of your kick-off. You could for example think of a minimum set of roles, that should definitely exist. Also, you could create some boundaries and rules for creating and defining roles. A rule could be, that every team member has exactly one role and you will avoid people having several roles.
When facilitating this session, remember that it is all about creating a common understanding and making expectations transparent. You don’t need to create a complete definition of every task in every responsibility. You just want enough detail, so that your team and stakeholders know what they can expect from each other. Writing down some tasks and details might help during your discussion. But the result should never be a document, but a shared mental model.
Key Takeaways
- Clarifying roles will help you to create a shared mental model of your team system and avoid trouble
- By planning time for this topic, you will give the required room for a common understanding to emerge
- Avoid falling into the trap of a too detailed definition of tasks and responsibilities and focus on transparent expectations instead
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