--- title: What Leaders Do That Keep Scrum Teams Working Like... description: Leaders often blame teams for acting like individuals rather than collaborating, but the real cause is usually organizational structure: part-time staffing... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/what-leaders-do-that-keep-scrum-teams-working-like-individuals-f9qe3decd twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: What Leaders Do That Keep Scrum Teams Working Like Individuals | daily.dev og:description: Leaders often blame teams for acting like individuals rather than collaborating, but the real cause is usually organizational structure: part-time staffing... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/what-leaders-do-that-keep-scrum-teams-working-like-individuals-f9qe3decd og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/F9Qe3dECd.png og:image:alt: What Leaders Do That Keep Scrum Teams Working Like Individuals og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # What Leaders Do That Keep Scrum Teams Working Like Individuals **[The Mountain Goat Software](https://daily.dev/sources/mountaingoatsoftware)** · 12 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Leaders often blame teams for acting like individuals rather than collaborating, but the real cause is usually organizational structure: part-time staffing across multiple teams, individual utilization metrics, functional reporting lines that outweigh team goals, constant mid-sprint interruptions, assignment-focused questions, frequent team reshuffling, and reward systems that celebrate individual heroics over sustainable teamwork. Each dynamic is paired with concrete leadership changes, such as making shared staffing constraints visible, focusing on finishing work rather than individual busyness, aligning functional managers' incentives with team outcomes, making interruption tradeoffs explicit, asking team-level progress questions, treating team reshuffling as a real cost, and rewarding collaborative behaviors instead of last-minute heroics. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Why Your Scrum Team Still Works Like Individuals](https://daily.dev/posts/why-your-scrum-team-still-works-like-individuals-5fht2enou) · The Mountain Goat Software · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Creating Impactful Software Teams That Continuously Improve](https://daily.dev/posts/creating-impactful-software-teams-that-continuously-improve-j1vmdgdxn) · InfoQ · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Why Scrum Isn’t Working Even Though You’re Doing Scrum](https://daily.dev/posts/why-scrum-isn-t-working-even-though-you-re-doing-scrum-ye47p4nmo) · The Mountain Goat Software · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [We renamed everything thrice. Still, nothing improved.](https://daily.dev/posts/we-renamed-everything-thrice-still-nothing-improved--ps49ohj2n) · The Architect Elevator · 3 upvotes · 0 comments - [Blog: The Senior Engineer's Trap: When Your Own Expertise Becomes the Bottleneck](https://daily.dev/posts/blog-the-senior-engineer-s-trap-when-your-own-expertise-becomes-the-bottleneck-1urkzl6hb) · Wawandco · 42 upvotes · 3 comments --- Tags: [#leadership](https://daily.dev/tags/leadership), [#agile](https://daily.dev/tags/agile), [#scrum](https://daily.dev/tags/scrum) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/what-leaders-do-that-keep-scrum-teams-working-like-individuals-f9qe3decd) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"What Leaders Do That Keep Scrum Teams Working Like Individuals","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/what-leaders-do-that-keep-scrum-teams-working-like-individuals-f9qe3decd","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/what-leaders-do-that-keep-scrum-teams-working-like-individuals-f9qe3decd"},"datePublished":"2026-08-16T20:50:03.881Z","dateModified":"2026-09-13T19:57:25.866Z","description":"Leaders often blame teams for acting like individuals rather than collaborating, but the real cause is usually organizational structure: part-time staffing...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/199e82f409982089b2034057c826dd79?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/199e82f409982089b2034057c826dd79?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"The Mountain Goat Software","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"The Mountain Goat Software","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/t_logo,f_auto/v1/logos/47b64223da104952b955e360670b8371","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/mountaingoatsoftware"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/what-leaders-do-that-keep-scrum-teams-working-like-individuals-f9qe3decd","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":0},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"leadership,agile,scrum","timeRequired":"PT12M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The Mountain Goat Software","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/mountaingoatsoftware"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"What Leaders Do That Keep Scrum Teams Working Like Individuals"}]} ```