So recently I heard of a team that is using Scrum and their manager had decided to have a “Person of the Iteration” award for the person that completes the most points in a Iteration.
I think this totally misses the point of Agile being a team of people working together to get as much stuff “done” in an iteration to the highest levels of quality.
Do you have an incentive to help other people in your team complete work? No Way
Would you like to pick all the easy stories in an iteration to have a chance of getting the award? You betcha!
What happens if several people work together on a story – who gets the credit? Well firstly you’re not encouraged to do this to win the award and secondly I have no idea how that works.
Personally I’d be working with the team to address some of the root causes of their low velocity and helping them find ways to improve rather than introducing awards that drive completely the wrong behaviour.
As a result I’m running a “You know you’re not Agile when…” series on twitter to keep me amused (you can find me as kanbanjedi).