I'm wondering how this works in a self organizing team. If people are taking tasks that aren't their strong suit, what can you do as a manager? Hand select stories?
We currently do that, partially because many of our team are newer to the company, but also because we think we can choose fairly well, since our team is somewhat splintered in our products (iOS in obj-c, android in Java, the rest in js).
It's possible to give the final say on task selection to the programmers while still allowing the manager to have useful input. Instead of bossing people around, the manager just offers their opinion, and the rest of the team respect it as being from a position of oversight. And if they really disagree, they can explain their reasons and the manager is better informed in future.
Self organizing teams only work well with the right sort of people. If your team is dividing up tasks in weird ways and for strange reasons they they need mentoring, a bad apple pared or are not actually capable of being a self organizing team.
I'm wondering how this works in a self organizing team. If people are taking tasks that aren't their strong suit, what can you do as a manager? Hand select stories?
We currently do that, partially because many of our team are newer to the company, but also because we think we can choose fairly well, since our team is somewhat splintered in our products (iOS in obj-c, android in Java, the rest in js).