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Salum describes working with a grocery ecommerce team during COVID that fell into the trap of prioritizing individual convenience over team collaboration. Remote work led team members to design their work around personal preferences, with the lead developer becoming increasingly isolated and unresponsive to team communication. This anti-pattern of "what works for me" over "what works for the whole team" created significant dysfunction. Despite management intervention, the situation required creative solutions like organizing face-to-face sessions and shared working sessions with digital whiteboards to rebuild team cohesion.
One of the most important roles of Scrum Masters is to help teams develop themselves. Salum emphasizes that you can't tell the team what to do - you have to help them discover it themselves. "Agile Retrospectives" provides the foundation for running meaningful retrospectives that become the key tool for team self-development. The book's emphasis on variation and building retrospectives to match your team's needs and maturity level makes it essential for empowering teams to grow and evolve continuously.
Self-reflection Question: How might your team's current work arrangements prioritize individual convenience over collective effectiveness, and what steps could you take to shift this balance?
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Angela thought she was just there to coach a team. But now, she’s caught in the middle of a corporate espionage drama that could make or break the future of digital banking. Can she help the team regain their mojo and outwit their rivals, or will the competition crush their ambitions? As alliances shift and the pressure builds, one thing becomes clear: this isn’t just about the product—it’s about the people.
🚨 Will Angela’s coaching be enough? Find out in Shift: From Product to People—the gripping story of high-stakes innovation and corporate intrigue.
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About Salum Abdul-Rahman
Salum is an agile coach at Reaktor and experienced leader driving sustainable knowledge work. He is passionate about enabling teams to work with complexity and conflicts. Salum builds communities in and outside of work and has 18 years of experience working with software mostly as a consultant with the public sector.
You can link with Salum Abdul-Rahman on LinkedIn.