Team Coaching Case Studies

Case Study 1:

George is an extremely friendly manager working with the IT production support team. He has a 10-member team. He is 15+ yrs. Of experience in the IT infrastructure support function. He is a 100% people person who always spends time with the team. The team has been working for the last several years on this production support ticketing and troubleshooting assignments. George is associated with each team member at the personal level. They regularly visit outside office parties and enjoy life. There is some attrition every year and new individuals join George’s team. But he preserves the same traction, support with the team. Technology has changed fast in the last couple of years, so there is a lot of pressure on the production support team owing to IT automation. Management wants to reduce headcount and 24/7 support through automation. This establishes a lot of pressure on George to increase pressure on the team members, reduce headcount, and deal with the latest competency issues among team members. George constantly inspires teams, though there is production support late at night, work at the weekend to satisfy the customer needs, but George manages everything to make happy his team members and constantly learns something new.

What few of the suggestions you would like to give to George to make him ready for the upcoming automation world?

Case study 2:

What problem we are solving?

I have been coaching many teams. I have been looking for a formula that can guide me to know what exactly I should be doing when I start preparing for a High-performance team.

What are the parameters I should be looking for when I start thinking about a team?

Most of the time I have seen it has to start with an assessment and followed by a working agreement with the team and next having a coaching session to improve the specific scenarios.

Let us explain a use case

A team that is developing a specific feature for the Mobile camera. The team is trying to improve the image quality once the photo has been taken. Though in the night photos have to be taken and it will be dark, but the image quality should be automatically improved.

The team has a 6-member team. Most of the team members are experience ranges of 4-7 yrs. of experience. Most of the team members are very sound in technical term about this domain.

None of these team members have any knowledge of agile ways of working. They know how to write better code and deliver their own solutions individually. The team lead is also a technical person, there is tremendous release pressure to meet the deadline. The team has defined their KPI based on the code check-in with respect to time. Every one of the team members is running to meet the deadline, whoever is reaching the deadline fast will get a very good hike. Though it is a team, and they support each other, but huge importance is given to individual delivery and execution speed.

The team is having attrition issues. The work was very good, complete innovating work. Team members are also willing to learn and do.

As a team coach, what do you think we should improve for this team? What are the few questions you will ask?

Case Study-3:

Team Alexa is having trouble with delivering committed features for the AI/ML Project. Team members are struggling with communication, competencies, and many other team issues. John is the lead for this project. He has 30 people working on this release. He is wondering what he should do for the upcoming days, which can help to improve the team's overall situation. John approaches various of his friends to guide him to chalk out a plan for the future. Scully has been appointed to coach the team to improve the overall situation. John and Scully have been frequently meeting and have started preparing a coaching strategy to address the situation. If you were Scully, what would be your few top 10 actions for the upcoming 3-4 months? What are the various team contexts you will look for to start your journey and improve the situation?

Case Study – 4:

Debolina is a new scrum master who joined this Scrum team named REG-Bank. Teams are functioning on important, tight regulatory requirements. There are many team members who are fresh into the team and there are team members who have been working with this team for a long time. Debolina can quickly spot conflicts among team members. The product owners are from Finland. There is a sync issue among PO, managers, and team members. There are many production issues that require fixing on an everyday basis. Priya is the coach for the team. The team is not effective at dealing with the release pressure. What are some of the steps as a coach Priya should take? What Debolina should glance into? What context should they look for?

Case Study – 5:

Sourav is working on a team that is developing an algorithm to optimize the memory footprint of mobile photos. There are many challenges with the team connected to competency. The algorithms are new, and it has to refine with data for several round processes is laborious and ambiguous. There is a timeline pressure to release the app into the market owing to competition. The manager of this team comes from a testing background in the network domain. He does not understand the underlying work. The team has many freshers from renowned engineering colleges, but attrition is extremely high, so the knowledge build-up is going down every 9-12 months. The product management team is in Hong Kong and all the technology directions are coming from the Hongkong team. There are cultural and communication barriers. This team also requires establishing themselves to continue performing and demonstrating they can achieve the remarkable milestone. The team has 5 members, 3 are freshers and 2 are experienced employees. You are a team coach and want to help the team by exercising the attitude of the team and enhancing ways of working.

What are the few steps you will pick up to challenge the prevailing conditions and improve?

Case Study -6:

You have started a coaching assignment with a team, and you have discovered the below situation in the team context.

One of the team members was profoundly motivated to accomplish a high-quality outcome, though two others were content with merely just gaining a pass, i.e., they were thrilled to put in minimal effort. This mismatch of expectations caused many complications and frustration for team members.

Two other team members were extremely competitive on this team, which neutralized the development of an interdependent team environment. They were extremely concentrated on our own tasks and were not sympathetic in helping others who may have been having problems.

The team showed little concern for each other and gave almost no assistance to others in troublesome times. Team members seemed unfamiliar and greatly surprised that they had upset other team members with their commentaries. They seemed to have not recognized they were hurting other’s feelings by their comments and the propositions taken to solve team problems. Comments made by team members demonstrated that peers were inconsiderate of their situation and problems, and were not inclined to review problems, as they would merely invite criticism and negative feedback. This resulted in team members not communicating freely or examining their problems that had potentially crippling effects on the team; this team was formed randomly. Three of the original team members had a quick discussion on the project and decided to make a team, and another few team member arrived a week later, so the team agreed to accept them in their team, as they were required to make a team of nine. Expectations and skills were not deliberately analysed; – the project manager happened to be the youngest in the team and didn’t command the respect needed. Team members often complain about team meetings being a waste of time, and also of team members being late or contributing effectively. One team member felt that he was not included in decision-making and did not receive all communication regarding the progress and development of the project from the project manager. The overall management of this team was realized to be unproductive by most of the team members.

What are the few steps you will start taking to improve the team coaching?

What areas to focus on for Exercise?

Case study 7:

Team UxMaximizer is supposed to deliver the working software at every certain interval. But deliverables are not happening at the right speed. The team is composed of 7 members, but most of these members are not up to the mark in terms of domain and technical knowledge. The required skill set is significantly lagging. The conflict among the team members is high as they are not able to solve the problem on time. The manager of the team is trying hard to resolve issues by sitting with each one of them. But it is not good enough. The team is undergoing a reskilling drive, but motivation is lagging. Team members are lethargic to take on the work.

Team member’s experience levels are right set. There is a mixture of junior and senior team members.

The support from top seniors’ leadership is not so good. They are constantly pressurizing and blaming the team for not performing at the appropriate level.

The Manager of the team trying hard but still getting the blame from senior leaders. The team members are not owning the overall responsibility. They have been with the company for 10 + years and they know the tricks of the game!

What do you think as a High-performance team coach, a few steps you will start?

How do you define your short-term and long-term goals to improve the team outcomes and output?

Case Study 8:

Team Diagnostic Monitoring is employed in developing an algorithm that should optimize the search. When voice search enables, the accuracy based on the accent has to be improved. The team consists of 4 members team. The scrum master and product owner are both goods in domain and technology. The team includes extensive attrition. The team members own the end-to-end product development. The team dynamics are appropriately set. There is a reasonable and learning environment. The share and care are properly distributed. But the team members are going out for a further opportunity. The new members are joining the team and overall delivery speed is coming down due to the immense learning curve. Team leadership is very good and servant leadership styles are visible.

You are the coach for this team.

What are all the varied actions you would prefer to pick up to improve the situation?

All the project-related meetings are followed in a well-crafted manner as SM and PO are extremely mature and they are the finest in the organization.

Case study 9:

One of my colleagues has recently joined one of the huge complex programs.
Let me explain briefly about the program.

It takes 10 yrs. To get the first drop of oil from an oil well.
The chance of obtaining the first drop of oil from the oil well is also 1 in 10. If we dig 10 oil wells, we may get 1 or 2 rigs where we will get oil.

So, what is the complication we are talking about? It takes several dozens of numerous expert engineers to function together for many years to get the initial drop of oil.
So what? How can an organization make money? The country’s jurisdiction is also playing a substantial role here. The geopolitical atmosphere also contributes to or risks to the business.
So what problem are we talking about? How can modern digital technology aid us to speed up the oil exploration business? Can we use big data technology? Can we use cloud technology? and we use UX to build solutions? Some of the question’s organizations have been asking for the last several years and have started building solutions around those.

So, my friend joined the team where 150+ varieties of engineers are functioning together to deal with this complex problem.

Exploring by employing digital technology, can we build the solution?
It is a multi-year program, and he has joined as a scrum master for 3 different scrum teams to take care of.

It is a globally distributed team.

By reading all these parameters, what thoughts come to your mind? How do you want to guide my friend to start up his journey in a smooth and rapid manner?
What are the numerous team factors he should examine for the first month, 4 months, and 6 months’ timeline?
If you are a team coach, what would be your advice for him to embed him into a High-performance team?

Case study 10:

You are the Agile Coach of one of the freshly created teams. ScrumMaster is new, the Product Owner is a consultant, and also new to this team. Most of the team members are joined recently by this team. Some of the team members are subject matter experts and they have deep domain expertise in the system. The organization is making to develop a product that will solve a complex customer problem. The concept is not yet established. The product owner is also not too certain how the product will be expanding and introduced into the ecosystem where the data will be obtained and dispatched. The complete system is emerging. There is too much turmoil at the team level including the product architecture level. Everyone prefers to contribute and monopolize the meeting. The ideas are widely divergent, and we do not get to any conclusions. The team is a global team with many nationalities working with diverse cultures and backgrounds. You are the team coach for this team. Leadership is calling for help to uphold the team to traverse this perplexed state. Few team members are from the conventional world, and few team members know agile ways of performing.
What are the few steps you will start to reinforce the team in this forming stage?
What is your vision for this performing state?
What activities are you thinking of for the 3-month timeline?

Case study 11:

Ram is the team leader and manager for an old team that is taking care of the product, which is the centre of the business transaction. The system takes care of everyday transactions and reconciliation. There are 40 people work in this team.

The system is primitive and outdated, and the team is struggling hard to maintain the system. But there are fractures in the team as well as the system.

There are many issues in the team.

Most of the time, when many incidents take place, Ram loses his emotional control to fix the issue faster as every second’s cost is huge. As Ram as a leader is terrified, team members follow it.

Ram’s task accomplishment, the ritual of role, interpersonal relationships, and power, all are at stake.

Ram is supposed to show how to contribute constructively by taking care of key details, and by showing up to the wider purpose of the company, but it is not the case. Ram could not establish a sense of shared credit with others for achievements and likewise could not present an obsession with learning from impediments.

Ram is, as a leader, not competent to clarify boundaries between responsibilities, both horizontally and vertically. Most of the time, he is micromanaging. Ram cannot make sure that systems and procedures are designed by the people who use them, and all join in learning from others’ successes and failures in handling complex tasks. Ram turns an ignorant eye when people bend or ignore rules, formal channels, and procedures. It creates turbulence in the team. Team members are not able to share sensitive information about their personal encounters; are not apt to share with others. Which creates disturbance among team members. Ram is not accessible most of the time and does not provide enough attention to the team’s needs.

You are the team coach for this team. What coaching stunts will you create for this team to improve team performance?

Case study 12:

You are coaching a team. You have recognized some challenges in the team, and it is due to the command-and-control manager in the team.

You have a situation where the supervisor was creating complications and his employees were experiencing a troublesome time dealing with his employees.

Employees were frightened to open their mouths.

You know that when the problem is a manager, this presents an extraordinary set of complications for employees. Fear of vengeance is the number one reason employees cite for not coming forward with employee/manager workplace issues.

Employees realize that their managers will take it out on them if he finds out that employees have been saying things behind his backs.

Retaliation can be laborious to substantiate if it doesn’t involve whistleblowing or harassment, and no one else comes forward with complaints.

You figured it out that the supervisor had terrible people skills. In the same organization engineers or other technologists are elevated to the level of manager, but these individuals often lack any kind of people skills. Often, they're promoted because they are the ‘star pupil,’ but occasionally it is not a suitable fit, and can be a catastrophe.

The manager used retaliatory practices to get back at employees who complained about him. People would complain that he would castigate them in front of other employees during staff meetings. He played favourites among the employees, allocating exclusive concessions to those individuals whom he admired.

Other employees called these people ‘suck-ups.’ His team suffered from low morale and would transfer out of his area as soon as another opportunity presented itself.

As a coach, what are some of the steps, you think you should take to improve team performance.

Case Study 14:

The Reno bank attributes the fruitful collaboration between their Development and Product support/Maintenance teams almost exclusively to their unique approach to hiring.

During interviews, team members seek a collaboration mindset. It is not entirely the main consideration for hiring candidates but is also applied to company-wide for team building and daily communication. Interview techniques are exclusively based on the life experience achieved based on the organization’s defined values. Another focus area is also to peek into thinking attributes (Analytical, structural, Social, and conceptual) and behavioural attributes (Expressiveness, assertiveness, and flexibility) that are fundamental.

The several rounds of interviews with the various panel members to substantiate all the collaboration aspects.

The Human Resources department also seeks to hire individuals with a diversity of thinking patterns, as well as cultural, gender, and ethnic diversity. Employees are also leveraged in interviews to ensure that the candidates will be beneficial to that team’s unique culture and skill set. The process is not standardized but customized for every position.

Weekly meetings and cross-training programs are key internal processes that are also responsible for the Reno bank’s commendable collaborative environment. The development and maintenance support departments understand their role in the greater organization and therefore work hard to show appreciation for other teams and accommodate their needs. Personnel also showed commendable levels of personal accountability.

Development personnel are not afraid of getting their hands dirty and will often take care of small matters themselves rather than calling maintenance to do so. The organization also makes a point of celebrating its successes together.

·       You are the team coach for this team, what are all aspects you will look into to start your coaching?

·       If all the things are going well, what role are you going to play?

Case Study 15:

Jack is the Lead Manager for the RPA (Robotic Process Automation) department. Jack has been hired to establish this department and start this initiative in the organization. There was a deal to enlarge the team to cater to international needs.

Due to the pandemic, recruitment has been suspended. Jack is supposed to take care of himself on his own. There are few team members given who are interested in knowing Robotics process automation, but they are not the experienced person RPA. They will be learning with other RPA experts and performing the assignment. Jack is on this assignment for the last 6 months and there is no recruitment hope. Jack has been challenged to take care of the current manpower. There is insisting to demonstrate the work progress!

Jack has presented the roadmap and has set up the strategy of what to be done and how, but the right manpower with the skill demand is missing. There is tension among team members that they will not see what will happen to this new initiative. They are not able to perform any substantive work as they are not skilled. There is a persistent conflict as pressure is high to show some improvement. The organization does not have any sign of further expanding the investment in RPA. Several attempts with leadership failed to show any sign of progress. Leadership wants to run the show with the existing members and show improvement before investing further. There is a deadlock situation. Jack is under pressure and collapsing his energy

You are the team coach for this team, which consists of 6 people, including the lead manager Jack.

·       What is your coaching strategy and guideline for this team?

·       How can you build this team a high-performance team?

Case Study 16:

Jayavel is the Product Owner. He is a remarkably brilliant product owner. He is working on a datacenter-to cloud migration program. It is an exceedingly big, massive program where the organization does not have much proficiency. He engages one vendor to do his assignment. But it touches on many other departments to be on board with this process. Jayavel was egotistical, and it was his brainchild, the cloud migration work. He does not want to give credit to others for this work! Without engaging the other department entirely, he engages the transformation work entirely with the vendors. He has a good repo with the department head. The department head trusts his capabilities. He has almost established the strategic plan to migrate all units to the cloud. But he was missing support from the other team, as he was not eager to give the credit to the other product owners. The conflict increases among the other scrum teams and members of the Jayavel team. The upper management has to dissolve the transformation work, as tension has heightened to the top level.
The organization is absolutely aware that they have to perform the cloud migration as the license fees for the data centers and operation costs are not sustainable.
You are the team coach.

·       How do you bring in a High-performance team in the whole setup?

·       What strategy will you employ here to build a collaborative team?