The majority of my experience working on scrum teams has been during my time in software development-related positions. Pretty much every role I’ve had in that field has involved some form of a sprint cycle, which made it very easy to prioritize tasks and allow the entire team to get behind impactful projects.
Working Separately
Since transitioning into the world of marketing, one thing I immediately noticed at the companies I worked at was how spread out each person seemed from the rest of the group. Weeks could go by where I wouldn’t need to speak to certain colleagues (even on a small team of just three or four people), and there were many things that went out our door that I hadn’t touched at all. While in some ways this allowed me to be more selfish with my own work and solely focus on getting my goals accomplished, it also led to a disconnect on a team level that made it hard to collaborate.
Our weekly group meetings would at times leave us more separated than we were beforehand, because it became clear during that half hour that we were each on different pages with our own projects prioritized. It also caused our net performance as a team to suffer, since we had many projects getting some people’s attention, rather than fewer very high quality initiatives that had been nurtured by the entire group.
Joining Stack Moxie and Transforming into a Scrum Team
Joining Stack Moxie has given me a huge boost of confidence in my ability to learn and put work out as an individual. Although I certainly receive a lot of help and collaborate often with the rest of the team, a lot of my work up until this point has been things that end up with my name on them at the end. Meanwhile, each other person also has their own list of things that they own that I often don’t touch, which means I see a lot of things marketing has created that I had no part in. Since beginning the transformation as a team into scrum, I’ve been most excited to have the opportunity to really move as a group and take a good look at our priorities and strategy.
Even just during this first week, I already feel like I have a clearer idea of what our master plan is and how each of us fits into that vision. I believe there’s a lot of potential in us all putting our energy into the big stuff, but have also appreciated the chance to continue my individual work and understand how it’s connected to everyone else.
Hopes for Our Scrum Team
My biggest hope for this change is that we’ll become better. I’m already extremely proud of our work as a team and the things we’ve been able to accomplish, and I’m excited to see how this shift in dynamic and strategy impacts that. Getting to work more closely with each person is also something I’m looking forward to, and I’ve already really appreciated the conversations we’ve had together about what we want to see out of this team.
Negative Outcomes
While I really enjoy the regimented nature of a sprint cycle, I want to avoid getting too wrapped up in making every single task we take on fit within that one week timeframe. I know we’re all going to work together and lean on each other to hit our goals and live up to our commitments, but I want to make sure that if there’s a particularly large and multidimensional project that just needs some more time to get right, we don’t rush it simply because we want to say we got it done within our originally allotted time.