threatened to put on PIP

[titanic25]

DH is threatened to put on PIP via teams meeting, new to role and works as civil servant. Been with employer for 6 years.

what should he do ? he is informed over phone but no written notes or proper feedback to work on . I made him join union but he does want to think it through about next steps.
he is main earner. it's freaking me out but I also being supportive and can't show my emotions.

@tribpot

Does he have any mentoring from a more experienced scrum master? It's a different role from project manager and he needs to be supported. What's coming out during the retrospectives? I agree with him, regular one-to-ones aren't useful in a high performing Agile team, but here it feels there are issues to sort out that aren't being properly aired.

If he doesn't have a mentor, I would definitely recommend he asks for this.

no mentoring at all . He taught himself via tutorials etc but he closely worked with scrum teams before. He passed yesterday psm2 . bless him as he was preparing for it from last month but was not that happy as this recent feedback came out as shock. No retrospectives at all that needs attention. team wants to work on kanban and he put them on scrum sprint without proper consultation, i think personally that is causing issues. he should have ignored what other managers want and put his team first . But his line manager wants him to work closely with Product manager so team is getting uncomfortable and they must have complained.

oh gosh i learnt so much about this in last couple of days. had no bloody idea about this job before.

@laalaaleelee

Hi, can I ask what his targets are? What has he tried to change and received pushback / negative feedback on?

A scrum master is quite different from a traditional project manager, could well be a culture clash. Either the org resisting more agile ways of working and stuck in traditional project management mindset - or perhaps the other way round if that's your OH's background.

Being new to role, is there a community of practice he can get support from, either in that dept or cross gov? Could he get a mentor?

his targets to make sure team delivers on time which they are doing and no failed delivery. so he is receiving bonus for that. His job to act as mediator between team members and management to make sure product delivery is not affected. i think this is the toughest with management culture

his targets to make sure team delivers on time
Heh, so very clearly the organisation is Agile In Name Only (this is very typical in the public sector).

So he has no-one to advise him, has leant out of a book and has gone in and tried to move a team from Kanban to Scrum without consulting them? But has apparently also done it without introducing any of the Scrum ceremonies like retro (although all Agile teams should be doing retro regularly, regardless of the method). So it's not really surprising he's struggling and the team are unhappy.

Depending on the phase of work, Kanban may or may not be more appropriate. My team are doing it now as we are in the latter stages of the project, the system is live and we're doing a mixture of support and feature development. But Kanban can also make it easy for teams to just slack off, pick up tasks when they want to (do they story point them? I assume not) and not have to commit to delivering a certain amount of work per fortnight. It can get very drifty. If he thinks Scrum is the right approach, he needs to articulate that to the team - he's not the boss, that's not what the role is like.

If he's being threatened with PIP, his line manager needs to articulate what the issues are. But ultimately he needs to get the team on board, it kind of sounds like he's being asked to 'side' with the product manager against the developers - but there aren't any sides in that sense. The product manager prioritises and specifies the work but doesn't get to say how long it takes to deliver. The scrum master or a tech lead need to be making sure the estimates from the devs are reasonable and challenging them constructively if not.

I don't understand why or how a permie's been moved into this kind of role without any training.

@tribpot

his targets to make sure team delivers on time Heh, so very clearly the organisation is Agile In Name Only (this is very typical in the public sector).

So he has no-one to advise him, has leant out of a book and has gone in and tried to move a team from Kanban to Scrum without consulting them? But has apparently also done it without introducing any of the Scrum ceremonies like retro (although all Agile teams should be doing retro regularly, regardless of the method). So it's not really surprising he's struggling and the team are unhappy.

Depending on the phase of work, Kanban may or may not be more appropriate. My team are doing it now as we are in the latter stages of the project, the system is live and we're doing a mixture of support and feature development. But Kanban can also make it easy for teams to just slack off, pick up tasks when they want to (do they story point them? I assume not) and not have to commit to delivering a certain amount of work per fortnight. It can get very drifty. If he thinks Scrum is the right approach, he needs to articulate that to the team - he's not the boss, that's not what the role is like.

If he's being threatened with PIP, his line manager needs to articulate what the issues are. But ultimately he needs to get the team on board, it kind of sounds like he's being asked to 'side' with the product manager against the developers - but there aren't any sides in that sense. The product manager prioritises and specifies the work but doesn't get to say how long it takes to deliver. The scrum master or a tech lead need to be making sure the estimates from the devs are reasonable and challenging them constructively if not.

I don't understand why or how a permie's been moved into this kind of role without any training.

he said he did a some sort of meeting and team was on board but later start complaining secretly if that makes sense , all sprints ran successfully so far and he is bringing more staff by negotiating with management in order to shift the work load. only couple of team members are causing issues , rest are on board as he has got all evidenced in email. another reason could be more developers are joining and some contractors ( developers) are not liking the idea but still moan about workload.

previous product manager left as he wanted dh to get involve in project management , it caused issues.
so dh might be trying to liase with new product manager to avoid previous situation but its not going good by the looks of it.
i think they are looking for scrum master who does contribute more but have advertised only scrum duties so either DH needs to be on board with them or he needs more clarity.
His line manager changed twice and team shuffling happened too

I'm not sure how he knows the sprints have been successful without holding any retros - sure, the right number of tickets may have been delivered but that's not the only measure.

The fact that some of the devs are anti the more structured approach of Scrum makes me suspicious that they are double dipping (charging two clients at once). This seems to be rife at the moment - it's happened on my project and a number of my friends have experienced it too.

So I'd be making sure:

• everyone turns up to stand-up
• everyone turns up to Show and Tell
• everyone is contactable during the day, I'd drop a few queries into Slack and see who responds
• everyone turns up to retro
• doing some light touch 'sprint' planning once a fortnight, even if doing Kanban

and assuming they are storing the code in a git repo, I'd be keeping an eye on the number of commits and the timing of them, how many of them seem to be working strange hours (all devs will throw code in at odd hours, I certainly do, but if there's a pattern of work being committed at 11pm it definitely suggests something's going on).

I really feel for him - the worst thing about Agile is the devs can run amok unless you know what you're doing. And in his first project as a scrum master this is a tough assignment, esp with all the management changes and usual problems of non-Agile people trying to interfere.

@laalaaleelee mentioned a community of practice - I'd be very surprised if there wasn't one, he really does need some support.

@tribpot

I'm not sure how he knows the sprints have been successful without holding any retros - sure, the right number of tickets may have been delivered but that's not the only measure.

The fact that some of the devs are anti the more structured approach of Scrum makes me suspicious that they are double dipping (charging two clients at once). This seems to be rife at the moment - it's happened on my project and a number of my friends have experienced it too.

So I'd be making sure:

• everyone turns up to stand-up
• everyone turns up to Show and Tell
• everyone is contactable during the day, I'd drop a few queries into Slack and see who responds
• everyone turns up to retro
• doing some light touch 'sprint' planning once a fortnight, even if doing Kanban

and assuming they are storing the code in a git repo, I'd be keeping an eye on the number of commits and the timing of them, how many of them seem to be working strange hours (all devs will throw code in at odd hours, I certainly do, but if there's a pattern of work being committed at 11pm it definitely suggests something's going on).

I really feel for him - the worst thing about Agile is the devs can run amok unless you know what you're doing. And in his first project as a scrum master this is a tough assignment, esp with all the management changes and usual problems of non-Agile people trying to interfere.

@laalaaleelee mentioned a community of practice - I'd be very surprised if there wasn't one, he really does need some support.

Thank you for providing this info. apologies i am not sure how sprints work etc as not from this background. so far he helped many teams to deliver ten products. Also if Pip was introduced next month or month after , what do you think he should do differently to keep evidence? as far he is saying no one speaks in daily scrum meetings about issues or emailing him. Sorry thats what i gather. i asked him to change job but that will be he thinks too early. i am thinking more about financial side of things if they fire him just in case

thinking more about financial side of things if they fire him just in case

If he really is permanent staff, in the civil service, there would be a formal process if he were 'managed out' which would take several months, if not years.

Especially in the IT world it's really difficult to demonstrate that someone is not performing. They are very likely to be offered a move 'sideways' (to a different role which might suit better) long before they are actually let go.

You really can stop worrying about finances in the short term and focus on supporting him, to help him as far as possible to enjoy his job. It's pretty horrible to have to show up every day to a job where you do not feel valued.

Good luck.

@finallyhere Thank you .Yes He is permanent so i understand it will be long process which works better for us financially.
He is been in IT for more than two decades , never had issues , it has definitely made me jump but I will be supportive like you said rather than concentrating on negative or worst case scenario.

@titanic25 all the best