Building High-Performing Teams

5 minutes 5 Questions

Building High-Performing Teams is a vital skill for Scrum Coaches and Trainers. They facilitate team collaboration and promote self-organization and cross-functionality - key elements of high-performing Scrum teams. Coaches also focus on conflict resolution, communication improvements, and eliminat…

Guide: Building High-Performing Teams

The concepts around 'Building High-Performing Teams' lie at the heart of any agile or Scrum environment. This guide will help you understand why it's important, what it means, how it works, and how to answer questions about it in an exam.

Why is it Important?
A high-performing team is critical to the successful implementation of any project. They can effectively deal with uncertainty, rapidly respond to change, and consistently deliver high-quality products. Building such a team is therefore, vital.

What is it?
Building high-performing teams refers to the process of transforming a group of individuals with varying skills and abilities into an efficient team that communicates effectively, collaborates seamlessly, and delivers high-quality results.

How does it work?
This typically involves creating an environment of trust, promoting open communication, implementing Agile methodologies (such as Scrum), facilitating continuous improvement and feedback loops, and ensuring that the team members feel valued and motivated.

Exam Tips: Answering Questions on Building High-Performing Teams
1. Understand key concepts: Make sure you are familiar with the basic principles and methodologies associated with building a high-performing team.
2. Apply Real-world examples: Examiners often look for practical examples that demonstrate understanding. During the exam, try to relate concepts to real-world situations.
3. Be Specific: Broad and vague answers often lose marks. Always answer questions with specific information.
4. Review your Answers: After answering questions, it's beneficial to review your answer and make sure you've addressed each part of the question.

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CSM - Building High-Performing Teams Example Questions

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Question 1

Your team's velocity has been erratic and unpredictable over the past few sprints, which makes planning more challenging. What is the best step you, as a ScrumMaster, can take to address this issue?

Just assure the product owner that the team is doing its best, and predictability is not always possible. Facilitate a retrospective meeting to figure out the potential causes of the inconsistent velocity and come up with strategies to improve. As a ScrumMaster, increase the team’s working hours to increase velocity. Introduce a performance-based incentive scheme to motivate the team to work faster.

Correct Answer: Facilitate a retrospective meeting to figure out the potential causes of the inconsistent velocity and come up with strategies to improve.

The best step a ScrumMaster can take in response to an erratic and unpredictable velocity is to facilitate a retrospective meeting to identify the potential causes and strategize for improvements. This is the most effective and collaborative action to take as it involves the entire team in addressing the issue. Increasing the team's working hours to boost velocity can lead to burnout and decrease in output quality which makes it an ineffective solution. Introducing a performance-based incentive scheme might be viewed as a coercive action by the team and can lead to unhealthy internal competition, decreasing team cohesion and output quality. Assuring the product owner that the team is doing its best and that predictability is not always possible doesn't address the issue at hand and doesn't work towards improving the situation.

Question 2

The team seems to perform poorly due to constant disagreement on approaches to work. As the scrum master what steps should you take to improve their performance?

Enforce your own method of doing things. Ignore the disagreements, eventually, they have to agree on something. Assign tasks to individuals based on their preferences and avoid any sort of team activities. Facilitate team building sessions and open discussions where everyone can freely express their views and reach a consensus.

Correct Answer: Facilitate team building sessions and open discussions where everyone can freely express their views and reach a consensus.

The role of a scrum master in a team is to facilitate communication, eliminate obstacles, and foster collaboration among team members. Therefore, facilitating team building sessions and open discussions where everyone can freely express their views and reach a consensus is the best approach in this situation where there are constant disagreements. This would help team members to understand each other's perspectives, align their approaches to work, and move towards shared goals. The other answers are incorrect because: Assigning tasks to individuals based on their preferences and avoiding any team activities would lead to a siloed working environment instead of fostering collaboration; ignoring the disagreements would not resolve the issue and could lead to further issues and conflicts; enforcing your own method of doing things wouldn't promote a self-organizing team, which is a key principle in Scrum.

Question 3

During a sprint retrospective, the team identifies that their daily stand-ups are often unproductive and lack focus. As a Scrum Master, what is the most effective approach to address this issue and improve the team's stand-up meetings?

Encourage the team to extend the duration of the stand-up meetings to ensure all topics are covered comprehensively, even if it exceeds the recommended 15-minute timeframe. Facilitate a discussion with the team to identify the root causes of the unproductive stand-ups and collaborate on defining clear guidelines and expectations for effective stand-up meetings. Ask the team to submit written updates before the stand-up meeting to streamline the process and reduce the need for verbal communication during the meeting itself. Mandate that team members strictly adhere to the standard format of answering the three questions during the stand-up: what was done yesterday, what will be done today, and any impediments.

Correct Answer: Facilitate a discussion with the team to identify the root causes of the unproductive stand-ups and collaborate on defining clear guidelines and expectations for effective stand-up meetings.

The most effective approach for the Scrum Master is to facilitate a discussion with the team to identify the root causes of the unproductive stand-ups and collaborate on defining clear guidelines and expectations for effective stand-up meetings. This approach encourages the team to take ownership of the problem and find a solution together, which is more likely to result in lasting improvements. Mandating strict adherence to the standard format may not address the underlying issues and could lead to resentment or disengagement from the team. Extending the duration of the stand-ups goes against the purpose of keeping them short and focused, and may not solve the lack of productivity. Asking for written updates before the meeting can help streamline the process, but it should not replace the value of face-to-face communication and collaboration that stand-ups provide.

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