great agile teams @ sdec13, winnipeg

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Great Agile TeamsOr where do they come from?


an agile team has different,often conflicting objectives,

depending on your point of view


“A team effort is a lot of people doing what I say.”

Michael WinnerBritish Writer and Film

Director


"What we need to do is learn to work in the system, by which I mean that everybody is there not for individual competitive profit or recognition, but for contribution to the system as a whole on a win-win basis."

W. Edward Deming


steps to forming a fantastic team

characteristics of an agile team


characteristics of a scrum team

cross-functional 7±2 peopleco-located


cross-functional teamsthe team includes all the skills necessary to deliver the end product (from concept to cash)


every team will have its specialists working together to deliver an end

product


scaling - too many people or too big of a product

sometimes you can’t because of:



different technologies, products, backlogs





limited availability of specialists, e.g. architect



scaling - too many people or too big a product


limited availability of specialists, e.g. architect then you need to

1. manage dependencies2. create knowledge



specialists exist on the team, but every team member pitches in to help

when necessary


a result of self-organization, not cross-functionality


optimum (agile) team size is 7±2 people

The Ringelmann effect refers to a combination of social loafing and coordination losses


the Ringelmann effect

The more people Ringelmann added to a group, the greater the decline in personal effort. Three people pulled at only 2.5x the average individual effort, and eight people pulled at 4x the average individual effort.


social loafing (and coordination losses)

increase with team size


the perfect size is...


co-located vs. virtual many aspects of distributed teams are still unclear


global market in labormeans distributed or virtual teams

are here to stay in many businesses today


many agile practices work just great with distributed teams


agile practices support distributed teams

“Teams in which leaders periodically gathered information about others and revealed information about themselves performed better than teams in which members did not do this.”

Suzanne WeisbandAssociate Professor


significant risk factors for virtual teams

• Insufficient knowledge transfer• Lack of project team cohesion• Cultural or language

differences• Inadequate technical

resources, i.e. hardware, processing availability

• Resource inexperience with company and its processes

• Loss of key resource(s) that impact the project

• Hidden agendas impact the project

Project Risk Differences BetweenVirtual and Co-Located Teams, Reed & Night


Harmony helps

disagreements can be good for a team

Six Common Misperceptions about Teamworkby J. Richard Hackman

common misperceptions: harmony helps


Dear ScrumMaster,

Remember: - don’t let it get personal- or get out of hand

YoursThe Team


Its good to mix it up

the longer a team stays together, the better they do


common misperceptions: its good to mix it up


again a fact of corporate life...


but get experience of excellence before breaking up teams

and try to keep a critical mass together


It all depends on the leader

the most powerful thing a leader can do is to create

conditions for self-organization, and launch the

team wellSix Common Misperceptions about Teamworkby J. Richard Hackman

common misperceptions: it depends on the leader


leadership challenge

“…most of the high-performance teams were not manager-led teams. They were teams where the management had deliberately stepped back, or was inattentive or where for one reason or another was totally absent, thus enabling the team to self-organize.”

Steve Denning


Teamwork is magical

It takes careful thought and preparation to stack the deck

for success


common misperceptions: teamwork is magical


Great Agile Teams• Cross-functional and self-organized• Size is important

(beware the Ringelmann Effect)• Collocated or known to one another• Beware of:

• striving for harmony• continually mixing teams up• team managers, not leaders• laissez faire team formation

thank [email protected] Scrum Coach (CSC)Certified Scrum Trainer (CST)

Slides: slideshare.net/davesharrockfollow me on: @davesharrock

great agile teams @ sdec13, winnipeg

Business

richard hackmancommon

average individual

productdifferent

rights reserved

backlogslimited

social loafing

people pulled

team