The Stubborn Team

Agile Team challenge 2 — How to deal with a team that would rather work traditionally

In my two previous articles, I’ve described, from my own and colleagues’ experience, five common challenges that Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches face on a regular basis in everyday customer environments. This week, I’ll be handling challenge number two, a stubborn team.

You will probably recognize the following common challenge from your own work environment.

Within the team, there is disagreement on the use of Agile methods. There are multiple team members who would rather work traditionally, diving under, and popping up months later with the end result.

You can encounter this tension in any team. Many people, young or old, have, for one reason or another, a preference for a traditional project management approach. You are, however, more likely to run into this sort of disagreement in teams that have members that have worked in traditional environments for many years already. Those members have gotten used to traditional project management planning and execution, and some have actually thrived exactly because of that.

So, how do you respond to this situation as a Scrum Master or Agile Coach? You certainly have to take into account that it’s hard for the experienced…