Scrum Superstars are those who defeat team dysfunctions

In Nelson's Development Blog today, he discusses two of my favorite subjects: Scrum and Patrick Lencioni's book, Five Dysfunctions of a Team.

"A team member came in today wondering why he has never received our group’s MVP award. I just shook my head and tried not to say anything (I did manage to crack a joke, but quickly regretted it). For what it’s worth, I got to thinking about the Five Dysfunctions of a Team. Everybody on the team knows who the natural leaders and 'superstars' are, but everybody is expected to come up to that level, with or without routine feedback. Awards are best awarded to the team."

Nelson, I agree completely—as does Megan Sumrell, who reminded us today that some superstars prefer to shine, while others would rather fly under the radar, quietly knocking out the tasks assigned to them.

When the Decade Software Leadership Team sat down last November and asked: What can we do to enable 90% of our Envision customers to upgrade to EnvisionConnect by July 31, 2007—it didn't take long to figure out we were asking the wrong team.

With the blessing of Management—and following the suggestion of Business Guru John Dodson—I called together the team that would be doing the work, and we asked them the question.

In a short-time—thanks to Kevin Delaney—incentives and rewards were in place and obstacles were removed—and we hit our target. However—from the beginning—the team agreed that we were in this together. Everyone would succeed—or no one would. Everyone would be rewarded—or no one would.

We had setup rewards per team per sprint. Sometimes we didn't earn those due to our all or nothing stance, but when the race was over, we crossed the finish line and accepted the big reward together.

As Nelson described it, everyone on the team proved themselves superstars.