On a Ride with Heroes (or Bad Apples)

I went back to work today and read two interesting articles. First one was about "bad apples" in teams. Probably quite many are familiar with these people. At least I can admit that I have seen these.

It is very odd that when the company is going through a challenging period of moving from old way of working into a more Agile way, some of the most senior people see as their divine right to protest. In the past these people have been the heroes of the company: solving the impossible problems at the last minute, making that needed fix in no time and knowing almost everything about their domain.

Somehow these company's finest become anti-heroes. They start to undermine the Agile adoption process by not sharing information with their team members. We often call these people "cowboys". And because of their superior knowledge (especially when dealing with complex legacy software), just showing door to these people is not the option that management is eager to take.

In my opinion, the option the company is left with is to motivate these individuals. Try to see what makes them tick and show them how Agile can work for them. And maybe pipe down about the process talk and concentrate on how they can maintain their status as experts also when working together with a team. But it is not easy for the team. That I can assure you.

The second article was about Ericsson adopting agile. It is always soothing to see others have some similar challenges and we are not alone with our problems.