Responsibility Model

One of the key aspects of agile is responsibility. This is what you are going to hear on every agile training and read in every article about scrum. And it is true because responsibility is a key to self organization. Despite it sounds like something obvious let's take a look at responsibility process based on how a human brain works as it was described by Christopher Avery. Human brain has a great ability to make quick decisions and whenever you face any trouble it brings options how to approach it. I'll borrow an example from Zuzi's book and I'll try to complete it with my experience. Let's say that you tried to park a car and you scratched the car in a parking lot next to you. 
Denial: "Nothing happened"
The first and the easiest solution that your brain is going to offer. You are going to be like "The sound was just my imagination and the car was scratched already. It was not me."
In a scrum team this can be the famous "It works for me..." or "It cannot be reproduced"...
Laying blame: "It's your fault"
If you're not fine with denial your brain offers the next solutions which is laying blame. "This is his fault because he didn't park straight."
In a scrum I've seen this many times as "This is PO's fault. I didn't have an acceptance criteria for this".
Justify: "It can happen to anybody"
If you still don't like the solution the next one is to justify it. "This could be anybody. These parking lots are too narrow."
In case of dev-team this is something like "Writing a software is a complex thing and anything can happen." Or "Setting up the environment is too difficult."
Shame: "I'm not good enough"
When you're not comfortable with the solution above the next one is shame. "It's all my fault. I will never learn how to park."
This can be a lack of cross-functionality of a scrum team "It is too difficult to understand this part of the product and it would take too long to learn it. We don't have anybody who can do it" They're actually saying that they're not good enough.  
Obligation: "I must do it"
The next one is obligation. Solve it as if it was your duty. "I have to call the insurance company and they will cover it".
This is about teams that follow scrum because they have to. "We have daily standup because we were told to do it." "We did it this way because somebody told us."
Quit: "I don't care"
You can quit the process any time because nobody forces you to take the responsibility. But you're tricking yourself.
Nothing from the previous levels is a real responsibility and no one of them will help you to make sure that the problem will not happen again.
Responsibility: "I will change"
The final stage is to take a real responsibility. "What can I do to prevent this from happening again to me." It can be anything from using the public transportation to practicing with cardboard boxes.
Responsible team will find a root cause and fix it. "We need to pay better attention to story grooming." "We will not take more stories to the next sprint than we really finished in this sprint".
1/17/2017

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