I was reading “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team” (Patrick Lencioni) last week. This is a book that I would say is high-value reading for any scrum team member. It’s written in the form of a narrative, which is great for those like me who prefer to read a story rather than an encyclopedia. 

There is a supplementary book to the original called “Overcoming The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Field Guide” (same author) which describes some techniques for identifying and overcoming those dysfunctions.  Within the chapter called “Mastering Conflict” the author talks about how a team needs to comfortable in dealing with conflict when it happens – and encourage it to happen.

We have all been in laborious meetings where time seems to stand still. And usually those meetings tend to become more interesting when a disagreement or contentious issue arises which creates an emotional response. As humans we crave the heightened tension around conflict but rarely want to get involved ourselves and prefer to observe from a distance.

Patrick Lencioni talks about meeting facilitators (scrummaster or otherwise) stealing a well-known technique used by movie screenwriters. A well-written screenplay will look to capture the attention of the audience within the first 10 minutes, or risk losing the audience’s interest for the entirety of the movie. This is known as “the hook”. A good ‘hook’ usually revolves around good vs. evil, or a relationship between two people for example.

“The Kings Speech” won 4 Oscars in 2011, including best original screenplay. Without wishing the spoil the film for anyone who hasn’t seen it yet, the opening sequence shows the future King George VI addressing thousands of people at Wembley Stadium, but is unable to utter a single word. This largely silent opening still manages to perfectly illustrate the leading characters internal struggle with a speech impediment, but also his relationship with his deeply loyal wife and an uninspired British public. This captivates the audience for the full two hours and in the UK there were reports of standing ovations in cinemas at the end of the movie. This only comes from the audience caring enough about the characters to hold their attention throughout.

Within a meeting where a scrum team gathers, the ‘hook’ needs to be a subject or issue that gets the teams attention and encourages emotional responses. A product owner passionately defining a sprint goal at the start of sprint planning is great example of this. “The Big Issue” at the outset of a daily scrum is too. I have found it harder to find ‘a hook’ for Sprint Retrospectives – especially where the team has been sprinting for a while and retrospectives have become a little stale. As a scrummaster try and set a retrospective goal as the meeting kicks off.

An example from personal experience would be one team I coached with was having difficulties with one particular member of the team constantly bickering and even occasionally upsetting other team members.  I confronted that issue at the start of the next sprint’s retrospective by writing a single word on the flipchart paper “teamwork’. Subsequently we discussed questions such as “what makes us a good team?” and “what makes us a bad team?” These questions were very difficult for anyone to answer given the conflict that would inevitably follow. This is where a scrummaster comes into there own by helping the team find conflict and then deal with it in a constructive way without fracturing the team or alienating team members. 

"A team consists of people under pressure to do their best. Conflict is natural and the team needs to know how to deal with the conflict and have resources to draw on when needed." – Ken Schwaber