How does Scrum deal with bad team members inside the Scrum Team?

Scrum is a good thing, no doubt, and the Scrum mindset isn’t unreasonable. The short answer to the question is, there isn’t any perfect guide to solving this.

Although Scrum has not specifically any guide to how poor actors are treated on the team, as a Scrum Master with some creativity you can find a solution. One of the important and most valuable characteristics of the development team is self-organizing. Due to Scrum Guide™ (November 2017) “Self-organizing teams choose how best to accomplish their work, rather than being directed by others outside the team.”

Personality, I believe on the Development Team characteristics, as they will build greater Scrum squad. As the Scrum development team is self-organized, with clear understanding and listening to others, they are capable to find a way to remove internal incompetent and collaborate again.

But the question is where and when Scrum team can talk about lack of good cooperation and handle it? The best event for handling the bad team member(s) in Scrum is Sprint Retrospective. Referring to the Scrum Guide™ (November 2017) “The Sprint Retrospective is an opportunity for the Scrum Team to inspect itself”.

So, my recommendation for you is to inspect why team member(s) is/are not act well. Then, in the Sprint Retrospective meeting, let the Scrum team review their relationship.

it goes without saying that, Scrum Master is a Servant Leader to the team, so you should inspect the reason behind lack of proper cooperation of team member(s), conduct some coaching to the whole team and individual members for changes. I would recommend you facilitate an activity to coach them about the Scrum mindset with some interesting ice-breaking games. Based on my experience, it helps.

Last but not least, as a Scrum Master, you can try to do some root cause analysis (for instance: 5 Whys technique) too. But if self-organising and team-building practices not fixing the problem and it is affecting work, then it’s time to go outside the Scrum Team for help.