I have my very own Scrum team right at home. There are seven of us in the family. I love each and every one of my family members equally, but that does not mean that each one of my family members is the same nor would I treat each one exactly the same. Of my three boys, each has their own wants, needs and desires that I need to help fulfill on a regular basis. One needs extra help for their homework, one needs extra time to help them with their driving lessons and my youngest just needs me to spend as much time as possible with him even if we don’t do much of anything (though we always seem to have something). In other words, in order to have a highly functioning family (team) I have to treat each family member (team member) a little differently. I don’t hand the car keys over to my five year old nor do I hold hands when I walk down the street with my twenty year old.

I have two second families right now, the two scrum teams that I have the pleasure of being acting scrum master for. Like my own family at home, both of these teams is comprised of individuals with different levels of Agile maturity. One team is close to highly functioning while the other is just now taking the first tentative steps into Agile. One team can handle nearly all their sprint planning while the other needs a great deal of time. One has tasks assigned to the team (and chooses tasks based on availability during the sprint) while the other goes through the effort of making sure that tasks are chosen during planning to ensure that they don’t over-commit.

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