The “hero” anti-pattern and its many consequences for Agile teams | Allison Zimmerman

This team did not have a clear focus or vision of what the stakeholders wanted to deliver. The team leaders did not trust the team to deliver what was being asked of them. On top of that, the PO and the team did not have a good working relationship. Not surprisingly, all of these factors led the team to isolate themselves, and started to think that it would take more than 2 years to deliver even the “MVP”. Why did this happen? As Allison started to look into it, she found that the team was organized around one “hero” role. This person was the only one that was able to work with some critical parts of the product. Listen in to learn how a team can get into this anti-pattern.

Featured Book of the Week: Everything I Know About Lean I Learned in First Grade by Martichenko In Everything I Know About Lean I Learned in First Grade by Martichenko, Allison found how a teacher’s day can show many examples of how Lean can be applied in our organizations. In this segment, we also refer to Coaching Agile teams by Adkins and The five dysfunctions of a team, Lencioni.

How can Angela (the Agile Coach) quickly build healthy relationships with the teams she’s supposed to help? What were the steps she followed to help the Breeze App team fight off the competition? Find out how Angela helped Naomi and the team go from “behind” to being ahead of Intuition Bank, by focusing on the people! Download the first 4 chapters of the BOOK for FREE while it is in Beta!

About Allison Zimmerman

Allison believes that all people have the power to succeed when they work together. As a teacher-turned-scrum master, she has spent the last five years helping enterprise teams build on their strengths to deliver customer value. She also serves as a Scrum Master Community of Practice leader, supporting growth and development of scrum masters across many teams.

You can link with Allison Zimmerman on LinkedIn.