Dealing with selfish team member(s)
- by thegreendroid
My team is facing a difficult quandary, a couple of team members are essentially selfish (not to be confused with dominant!) and are cherry-picking stories/tasks that will give them the most recognition within the company (at sprint reviews etc. when all the stakeholders are present). These team members are very good at what they do and are fully aware of what they are doing.
When we first started using agile about a year ago, I can say I was quite selfish too (coming from a very individual-focused past). I took ownership of certain stories and didn't involve anyone else in it, which in hindsight wasn't the right thing to do and I learnt from that experience almost immediately.
We are a young team of very ambitious twenty somethings so I can understand the selfishness to some extent (after all everyone should be ambitious!). But the level to which this selfishness has reached of late has started to bother me and a few others within my team. The way I see it, agile/scrum is all about the team and not individuals. We should be looking out for each other and helping each other improve. I made this quite clear during our last retrospective, that we should be fair and give everyone a chance. I'll wait and see what comes out of it in the next few sprints.
In the meantime, what are some of the troubles that you have faced with selfish members and how did you overcome them?
