I'm cursed with the blessing of a highly performing Scrum team.
One of the benefits of this team is that they function as a very cohesive unit. Each team member is bringing their own particular strengths, but they focus on the team's success.
As a result, it's proving difficult to figure out a way to give them a sense of career progression since it's hard to figure out how to promote individuals. Nobody is "standing out" because they're all standout performers.
The rest of the company maintains a more tiered approach to work and this lends itself nicely to a tiered org chart.
I've been asked to establish appropriate tiering for my reports, but it just doesn't seem to fit with the approach we take to our work. However, if I unilaterally reject tiering, I'm concerned that my team will see their peers following clear career progression paths.
Does anybody have any experience with dealing with this issue? Any examples of techniques that have worked? One approach I'm looking at is delineating tiers based on the impact that my team members have outside of the team (providing training for others, spending time helping other team with issues). Has anyone taken this approach? Did it work out?
Clarifications
- This is the only Scrum team in the company. The rest of the teams in the company are structured in more hierarchical ways which lend themselves nicely to a hierarchical org chart
- I'm not mistaken in my assessment that my team is made of standouts. There is no dead weight in the team. Week to week, one individual or another will stand out, but no one person stands out persistently over the others.
- My primary reason for wanting to fit in with the company-wide approach is so that my team members don't stall by being in my team and, when the time comes for them to move one, they're well positioned to do so.