How, as a team, we made ourselves accountable!

In the past year, there has been many changes with the team members of Urban Turtle. It seems that the situation is finally stable. Since, we are working together to create an environment of dynamic collaboration. As a team, we face many challenges and it is as a team that we need to find solutions.

Team Responsabilisation

Reaction to a loss

We used to have a dedicated Scrum Master who left the team to take-up new challenges within the Pyxis Studio team. Alas, one day to the next, we found ourselves abandoned and without a Scrum Master. We lasted a few weeks without one until we took things into our own hands. As a team we decided that, alternately each one of us will play the role of SM in order to live and know the SM reality as well as have a better understanding of what a SM is confronted to on a daily basis. We will see own this goes for a while and then evaluate the results; where we will inspect ourselves and consequently adapt.

A cascade of questions

We have come to a point where we inquired ourselves on our work process. Are we an efficient team? Could we deliver more points per sprint? Could we schedule new version launches more regularly? We took our reflection even further and we started to question our current process, Scrum, and put it in the hot seat. Is Scrum made for our team? Does it slow us down? Are we just staying in our comfort zone, following the guidelines like a broken record on repeat? Have we created our own set of development boundaries in sticking so strictly to Scrum?

Our introspection results…

What actions can we take to start to change our ways? After long discussions, we came to the conclusion that a change would benefit the entire team. Not that we were not satisfied with what we deliver but rather that we know we can do even better! We have decided to move forward in trying to apply changes that have better fit to our reality. We have taken time to analyse and identify our pain points. This brought us in a consensus to increase the length of our sprints from two to three weeks. Hence, we will evaluate, in the next few months, the efficiency and the rhythm of our deliverables.

Isn’t it the foundation of Agility: To constantly inspect and adapt ourselves?