Self-organizing Scrum dev team fires its manager

Self-organizing Scrum dev team fires its manager

5 years ago
ian $I9xuH7PGU4

https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/112596/how-do-i-regain-managerial-control-of-my-self-organizing-team

I'm a manager of a development team. They have historically followed a very waterfall methodology and have been resistant to change. I'm a huge proponent of agile, so I hired a scrum master and said that we would be following scrum. I've stressed to the team the benefits of self-organizing teams and team empowerment.

After their first retrospective (which I was not a part of), the scrum master came into my office. He said that the team has collectively agreed to "fire" me as their manager. He explained that the team decided they didn't want or need me anymore, especially because they were now going to be self organizing. I told the scrum master that I'd like to talk to the team about this, but he was firm that they felt "intimidated" when I was in the room, and didn't want to discuss it with me.

If I could transfer to a different team in the company, I would, but it's not going to happen with the state of the company. My boss (and his boss) are both on leave for a few months, so I can't talk to my management about this (short of going directly to the CIO, which I'm certainly not going to do).

Other than resigning from my job, I'm at a loss as to how to approach this issue. How can I defuse this situation and re-establish my authority as their manager, while staying true to self-organizing and team empowerment principles of agile?