Hello everyone,

 

In a retrospective meeting today, tempers, voices, and issues were raised because of a team member wishing to set standards about using 'do not disturb' mode during sprint days.

 

The developer claims that to achieve his best velocity he needs to have a certain amount of time get his brain into gear, and once in this gear he is only getting fifteen minutes of work in before being interrupted (and once interrupted he needs time to get the brain going again).

 

He claims that such a process is leading to crappy development time and reducing the team's effectiveness.

 

His solution was to block out the entire team for two-hour stretches every day, sometimes leading to him having a total of six hours when he simply doesn't respond to team members.

 

Other team members claim that this is counter-productive, and that it is causing the team to fall apart. They claim that this behavior is counter-scrum, and that if anything there should be more team discussions, not less.

 

The 'do not disturb' developer is a senior engineer, scrum master, and partner in the company.

 

It seems simple to limit his 'me' time to one single two-hour stretch per day, but he doesn't see why he should accept this.

 

Personally I think that the team needs to feel the impact of interrupting this guy, and not just him. If we can achieve that then they will not interrupt so frequently.

 

But how to achieve it...?

 

Jacob