April Open Cafe in Brno – Poor performer in Agile team. Is it even possible?

Really nice group of Brno agilists met at our usual venue last week on Tuesday. We are meeting regularly every second Tuesday every even month.

At first, we decided to run a small experiment, generate ideas and vote for topics for the evening. There were few suggestions and we agreed on: Dealing with poor performers in Agile team followed by User story slicing theme. The winner was the poor performer.

We have discussed in two groups for approx. 40 minutes. The discussion was very vital touching broad topics from general motivation, PO role, planning, etc.

 

When the discussion was finished the teams shared their thoughts across the entire group. Main takeaways are following:

There are several ‘types’ of poor performers e.g.:

  • ‘Too perfect’ type – searching for perfectness as his personal ‘defence’
  • Poor performance due to knowledge – general and domain
  • Unmotivated one

To avoid previous situations you might focus on:

  • Good communication of product vision from Product owner
  • Be open to development team suggestions
  • Good planning and understanding of Scrum Events
  • Open, supportive environment

And we have a role to make sure that all goes the right way, don’t we?

The feedback from individuals was very positive and there were voices marking this Brno Cafe even best ever 🙂 Hope we beat expectations again during next one on Tue 13th June. The topic for the evening is following – How cross-functional can the Agile team be?