Cheerleader

... development is underway, and at times, discouragement sets in.

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The pressure of development is often stressful, leading to discouragement and feelings of frustration or hopelessness.

The nature of Scrum is that it is a high pressure environment. Each Sprint can feel fast paced and even frantic. Normally there is no time between Sprints. Over time, this can actually demotivate individuals and cause burnout.

Many people do not have a good perception of their own successes and worth. They are “too close to the coal face” — too immersed in day-to-day work to see the worth of their contributions. Like watching plants grow, it is often hard to see progress from day to day. Likewise, people often have trouble seeing other people's successes.

It's easy to feel unappreciated by your organization. As Charlie Brown said, “Doing a good job around here is like wetting your pants in a dark suit. You get a warm feeling, but nobody notices.”

Therefore:

The ScrumMaster encourages team members, praises small successes, and makes them visible.

Although every team member can and should encourage each other, the ScrumMaster's role is to make sure it happens. In addition, the Scrum Master is in a unique position to be able to do it. Team members are not always in a good position to see each other's work and accomplishments. They are simply too close to their own work. On the other hand, the ScrumMaster should have a good knowledge of all the team members. In particular, through observation over time, the ScrumMaster can see changes in individuals' attitudes and work habits that may signal discouragement.

The ScrumMaster has another slightly perverse advantage for being a cheerleader. Because the ScrumMaster has one foot in development and another in the Product Owner camp, praise from the ScrumMaster carries a slight connotation of praise from the Product Owner.

Encouragement can and should be both individual and collective: the ScrumMaster can speak to the entire team; daily stand-up meetings are a good opportunity to do so. The Sprint Retrospective is also an important time for praise. The Scrum Guide says that the Sprint Retrospective is to “inspect how the last Sprint went with respect to people, relationships, process, and tools.”

Of course, cheerleading can happen at any time, particularly at an individual level.

Of course, any praise and encouragement must be entirely factual. Artificial praise backfires. And don't praise people for “working really hard.” People know that isn't a real accomplishment. Besides, do you want to send a message to people to work overtime, which is not a sustainable behavior? In addition, you don't want to reinforce a Happy Bubble that must be popped.

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Effective cheerleading has two related consequences. The first is that people feel better. The second is that because they feel better and more motivated, they produce more. As accomplishment can also be a motivator in what primes a self-reinforcing cycle.

This pattern is similar to Compensate Success (Coplien and Harrison). Compensate Success is typically aimed at rewards from outside the team given at the occasion of a major success; perhaps a release. Cheerleader comes from within, used during development.

There is an interesting tie to the Happiness Metric, as cheerleading can increase satisfaction in a job well done.

Like Knight of the Mirrors, this pattern is about self-awareness. Unlike Knight of the Mirrors, this pattern's focus is on encouragement and motivation.

Picture from: Presentermedia.com.