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?
