Building High-Performing Teams

SASM · 84 questions

• The curb-management team waits for the director to assign every parking-sensor story before anyone pulls work. What characteristic of a high-performing team should the SM/TC coach toward?
• The vacant-property registry team is composed entirely of GIS analysts and cannot ship a resident-facing slice without waiting on UX, testing, and a separate web group. What should the SM/TC advocate?
• Tree-inventory developers spend the iteration polishing internal code structure while residents still cannot use the public tree map named in the PI Objectives. What should the SM/TC emphasize?
• After a missed beach-closure alert, teammates hide who skipped the notification check rather than inspect the process. What high-performing-team condition should the SM/TC restore?
• The farmers-market SNAP team closes many stories each iteration, but the work stalls in legal review and residents still cannot apply. How should the SM/TC define team performance?
• Rain-barrel rebate developers ship work but never inspect how they work—no retrospective experiments and no policy tweaks. What characteristic is missing?
• The special-assessment portal team cannot choose a validation message or split a story without a monthly steering committee. What should the SM/TC coach?
• After every playground-inspection defect, staff rotate blame among testers, inspectors, and developers. What should the SM/TC coach as a high-performing-team characteristic?
• The marina-slip reservation team is nice and never disagrees in refinement, so weak designs keep shipping. What should the SM/TC cultivate?
• Bike-share backend developers never talk to the customer-service clerks who hear rider issues. What performance trait should the SM/TC restore?
• The coach of the EV-charging-permit team still estimates every story for them to save time. What should the SM/TC recognize?
• Leaf-collection routing is labeled high performing only because two specialists work weekends to clear the board. What should the SM/TC conclude?
• The ADA-ramp-request team cannot demo because test and demo environments are always broken. What high-performing-team characteristic is missing?
• Cemetery-records staff still wait to be told the iteration goal by a supervisor. What should a high-performing team be able to do?
• The film-permit workflow team has no working agreements about WIP, Done, or how they swarm, and collisions and rework follow. What should the SM/TC establish?
• Noise-complaint casework is handed off through four groups who never sit together and are reassembled each project. What should the SM/TC recommend?
• Historic-preservation reviewers mock developers in Slack after every pull request. Throughput looks fine this week. What should the SM/TC address first?
• The short-term-rental registry team ships slices quickly, but nobody can explain the Product Goal or PI Objectives. What is missing?
• After-hours construction-permit staff cannot raise process issues because leadership says they already decided Scrum. What high-performing-team characteristic should the SM/TC protect?
• The mosquito-control dashboard team is fully staffed but almost never finishes a slice because every story waits on outside GIS and security specialists. What should the SM/TC treat this as?
• Council staff call the graffiti-abatement team high performing because every member attends every ceremony. What should the Scrum Master / Team Coach treat as the real signal of high performance?
• A developer on the 311-multilingual intake team asks, "Should we split this story?" and waits for the coach to prescribe the cut. What should the Scrum Master / Team Coach do?
• During a warming-center reservation team's retrospective, the coach opens with, "Why did you fail again?" What is the problem with that question, and what should replace it?
• The lead-paint-disclosure team is stuck on a vendor API. The coach is tempted to take the laptop and finish the call. What should the Scrum Master / Team Coach do instead?
• The Product Owner on the birth-certificate e-file team asks the coach to declare this iteration's goal so planning can finish faster. How should the Scrum Master / Team Coach respond?
• Closed yes-or-no questions such as "Did you update Jira?" dominate the public-housing-maintenance team's sync. What should the Scrum Master / Team Coach shift toward?
• After a missed culvert-inspection milestone, the coach asks, "What would 'done' look like by Wednesday?" Why is that a powerful question?
• The coach of the hydrant-flushing data team already knows the "right" answer and uses questions as a graded quiz. What should change?
• A quiet tester on the FOG grease-trap reporting team almost never speaks. How should the Scrum Master / Team Coach invite that voice?
• Directors ask the snowplow-GPS coach to "ask better questions so people volunteer for weekends." What should the Scrum Master / Team Coach refuse, and what is the legitimate use of powerful questions?
• The tree-removal-permit team is arguing solutions before anyone agrees on the problem. What powerful question should the Scrum Master / Team Coach ask?
• An intern on the compost-facility scale-house team is stuck. The coach could answer, but wants to build the team's network instead of becoming the hero. What should the Scrum Master / Team Coach ask?
• During PI Planning breakouts for the flood-warning ART, the team coach only asks, "Are you done yet?" What should those questions surface instead?
• The coach talks through 80 percent of a paratransit scheduling team's retrospective. What should the Scrum Master / Team Coach change?
• After a vendor blames the city GIS team for a failed parcel-layer publish, the team spirals into external fault-finding. What should the Scrum Master / Team Coach ask?
• The open-space trail-counter team asks the coach for the "correct" WIP limit. How should the Scrum Master / Team Coach respond?
• After a production incident on the state unemployment-claims portal, some managers want names. What should the Scrum Master / Team Coach ask first?
• A Product Owner keeps stacking the community-college waitlist team's backlog and asks, "Can you add this too?" What should the Scrum Master / Team Coach ask instead?
• The coach of the sharps-disposal map team fires five questions at once during refinement. What should change?
• Field staff on the hydrant-mapping team disagree about what "done" means. What should the Scrum Master / Team Coach ask?
• Leadership wants a laminated script of "powerful questions" read verbatim at every snow-route standup. What should the Scrum Master / Team Coach protect?
• A senior engineer always answers first on the PFAS-sampling LIMS team, and others go quiet. What question pattern should the Scrum Master / Team Coach use?
• Permit plan-check and fire-sprinkler-review teams only "collaborate" in a 90-minute weekly status call. What should the Scrum Master / Team Coach promote instead?
• The 911 CAD team and the RMS team discover a blocking dependency at System Demo. What should the Scrum Master / Team Coach push for next time?
• Benefits and housing-voucher teams share an identity service but have no forum, so their Scrum Master becomes the permanent messenger. What should the Scrum Master / Team Coach set up instead?
• Parks reservations and facilities-maintenance keep emailing blame about double-booked ball fields. What should the Scrum Master / Team Coach do first?
• The RTE asks every Scrum Master on the transit-fare ART to "just coordinate harder" so dependencies stop slipping. What should the Scrum Master / Team Coach prefer?
• Water-billing and customer-assistance (shutoff) teams never share the Team PI Objectives that touch the same resident journey. What should the Scrum Master / Team Coach do?
• The elections ART treats the System Team as an order-taker that only receives tickets after feature teams decide. How should the Scrum Master / Team Coach coach the relationship?
• Two school-information teams are each building a guardian-consent feature without talking. What should the Scrum Master / Team Coach promote?
• The library e-card team refuses to attend ART Sync because "we're fine." What should the Scrum Master / Team Coach do?
• Inspectors and developers on the elevator-inspection ART use different meanings of "done." What should the Scrum Master / Team Coach facilitate?
• Right-of-way permit teams only collaborate when a director orders a full-day offsite. What should the Scrum Master / Team Coach build instead?
• The coach is the only person who talks to the state DMV vendor that several civic teams need. What should change?
• During PI Planning, the flood-map team and the alert-notification team sit in different buildings with no shared board. What should the Scrum Master / Team Coach ensure?
• The 311 and GIS teams share a Component specialist one day a week, and work piles up in an invisible queue. What should the Scrum Master / Team Coach coach?
• Public-health immunization and school-nurse roster teams need to learn a shared data contract. How should they collaborate?
• Coaches on the housing ART never talk except at Inspect and Adapt. What should the Scrum Master / Team Coach use instead?
• A parks IoT team integrates with peer teams only on the last day of the iteration. What should the Scrum Master / Team Coach promote?
• Language-access and 311 teams argue over which backlog holds translation stories. What should the Scrum Master / Team Coach facilitate?
• The wastewater SCADA team never invites plant operators to refinement. What should the Scrum Master / Team Coach do?
• Two civic-broadband teams raise local velocity by delaying a shared fiber-splice window the ART needs. What should the Scrum Master / Team Coach coach?
• After a joint demo of the business-license plus payments slice, neither team records follow-ups. What should the Scrum Master / Team Coach want?
• A director rates the pothole team by hours logged in the time system. How should the Scrum Master / Team Coach assess performance instead?
• The permits team's story-point velocity rose after they inflated estimates. What should the Scrum Master / Team Coach do about using that number as the performance score?
• Leadership wants individual stack-rankings on the elections team. What should the Scrum Master / Team Coach keep as the unit of assessment?
• The shelter-intake team "hits every commitment" by sandbagging Team PI Objectives. How should the Scrum Master / Team Coach read that record?
• Flow time on vital-records requests improved, but production defects spiked. How should the Scrum Master / Team Coach assess the team?
• A new tax-payment team is still forming. How should the Scrum Master / Team Coach assess them relative to a four-year team?
• The only "assessment" of the team is a yearly HR survey that never appears in retrospectives. What should the Scrum Master / Team Coach use instead?
• A director wants a pass/fail competency audit of the GIS parcel-map team. The Scrum Master / Team Coach has measure-and-grow style questions ready. How should those questions be used?
• The 911-dispatch team delivers every iteration, but people are on-call every night and burning out. How should the Scrum Master / Team Coach assess the team's performance?
• Residents still cannot complete a housing-voucher renewal unassisted, but the team closed 40 stories this PI. What should the Scrum Master / Team Coach treat as performance evidence?
• Leadership ranks two teams on the same ART solely by story points after the last PI. How should the Scrum Master / Team Coach respond?
• The food-safety inspection team cut permit wait time after a WIP-limit experiment. A director asks whether that counts as performance. What should the Scrum Master / Team Coach say?
• The coach's assessment of the library-consortium team never includes the team's own view. What should change?
• Predictability on the snow-route team collapsed after a mandate to start every item labeled "priority." How should the Scrum Master / Team Coach interpret the drop?
• The parks tee-time team wants a dashboard of 30 metrics. How should the Scrum Master / Team Coach choose what to measure?
• After Inspect and Adapt, the grants team never checks whether last PI's improvement items actually shipped. What should the Scrum Master / Team Coach include when assessing improvement performance?
• A vendor partner on the court-case ART is treated as outside "our performance." How should the Scrum Master / Team Coach assess value delivery?
• The code-enforcement team looks "slow" this PI because they pulled a large compliance enabler. How should the Scrum Master / Team Coach read the throughput?
• Anonymous pulse notes say the vital-records team fears the Product Owner. How should the Scrum Master / Team Coach treat that data?
• Leadership wants to replace the whole recycling-route team based on one bad PI. How should the Scrum Master / Team Coach respond?
• Assessment results for the civic-engagement open-data team show they need more teaching on refinement. What should the Scrum Master / Team Coach do with that result?