The Distributed Agile Team That Hid Problems Behind Follow-Up Stories | Joshua McDonald

Joshua McDonald: The Distributed Agile Team That Hid Problems Behind Follow-Up Stories

Read the full Show Notes and search through the world's largest audio library on Agile and Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website: http://bit.ly/SMTP_ShowNotes .

 

"They started to separate and call each other out, which is definitely not Agile." - Joshua McDonald

 

Joshua shares the story of a 17-person distributed team spread across time zones, cultures, and communication styles. Some team members were direct and ready to challenge problems in public. Others preferred quieter, one-on-one conversations. Over time, those differences created a blame environment where people stopped asking for help and started hiding problems. Long-running work was closed and replaced with follow-up stories, then part two, then part three, until the real issue disappeared under Jira housekeeping. The result was not better flow, but delayed learning, missed upskilling opportunities, and a stressful team environment where quieter people stopped speaking in standups and retrospectives. Joshua explains what he would do differently now: split the team by communication patterns, listen to what each group needs, act as a mediator, and only bring the whole group together once people feel heard.

 

In this segment, we talk about different communication styles .

 

Self-reflection Question: What signals tell you that people are hiding problems because the team environment does not feel safe enough?

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