Agile high performing team building stages – Key tricky Leadership styles of Worldwide Agile Coach across all Industries and all Verticals

Derived from Hungarian word for "Carriage" which is "something that takes you from where you are now to where you want to be".

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“A high performance Agile team is a committed team that has the right people, has been effectively empowered, has established trust, adheres to an effective process, works at a sustainable pace to deliver quality software of a quantity that reflects a consistent high velocity and factors in influences like capacity and support.”

Let’s break that sentence down to better understand it:

a.   Has the right people means that it all starts with hiring the right people if you are building a team from scratch or possibly making the tough changes needed within an existing team to ensure the right people with the right skills and attitude are in place.

 

b.   A committed team that has been effectively empowered means that every single team member is engaged and committed to the team’s success and accountable to their peers, and the team is self-organizing without command and control management getting in the way. Team members pull work in this model rather than having it pushed down on them.

 

 c.   Has established trust is a critical element as trust is at the core of a high performing agile team. Without trust there can be no open communication and without open communication there can be no team improvement over time.

 

d.   Adheres to an effective process captures the need to have a shared process with clarity on how work will get done and the state of progress regularly communicated.

 

 e.   Works at a sustainable pace to deliver quality software means that the team does not race to get things done leaving a wake of destruction in their path only to burn out, crash, rest and repeat. The team needs to do things right first (precision before speed) and work at a pace that every single team member can sustain. Many teams are now following a test driven development approach (TDD) to better ensure quality is built-in as the software is developed.

 

f.   Reflects a consistent high velocity is where things get a bit tricky. Whether you use velocity or track productivity with other metrics it is is important to be consistent and sustainable. However, one team’s high velocity may be an impossible level for another team to achieve. The key aspect here is that a team measures their output or velocity and over time it does not swing widely from high levels to low levels (i.e., low standard deviation). Velocity may start low as a team does the right stuff right and increase incrementally over time. A high performing team knows what they can commit to and their velocity will generally be consistently high.

 

g.   Factors in influences like capacity and support means that there will always be things like vacation, illnesses, unexpected support work, major company events etc… that can and will impact a high performing team. The best teams learn how to deal with these situations and organize themselves to continue to produce software (albeit in a reduced capacity) despite the impact.

 

As an ongoing process, team building is crucial to project success. Includes management and individual actions taken specifically and primarily to improve team performance & Team Velocity.

May vary from a five-minute agenda item in a regular status review meeting to an extended, off-site, professionally facilitated experience designed to improve interpersonal relationships among key stakeholders.

 

Five orderly development stages that teams usually progress:

 1.    Forming - This phase is the initial team coming together and project introduction.

In this stage team members have to decide how to work together. They should make sure to:

• Define roles and responsibilities using RACI. Teams should already have the right skills and mindset in place. Team values bring members together and should reflect future actions.
• Establish ground rules and norms to reflect needed behaviors and guide interactions using Project Team Charter. Aspects such as reporting structures, meeting schedules, and preferred etiquette should be well defined.
• Select methods and frameworks to plan and organize project workflow(Agile, Lean, Kanban, SCRUM, etc.).
• Select needed tools (project management software, communication channels, development tools, etc.).
• Establish day-to-day operations practices (meetings structure, communication, collaboration, etc.).

 

 2.   Storming - This phase initiates project work, begins collaboration

 As soon as team members begin working, they may realize the differences in personalities and attitudes. Many may not hesitate to assert themselves. Let’s face it, everyone has different working styles, opinions, and knowledge levels. At this point conflicts arise.

This is the stage that either makes or breaks the team.

So, here is what usually happens:

Confrontation

Let’s provide a situation where the team is gathered to make a decision. Everyone must agree on how to solve a problem. Different point of views can emerge here, and conflict may arise.

A salesman may see the opportunity to close more deals if a product has a certain feature. On the other side, developers may disagree, and see the work involved with little benefit to the end user.

As a team leader you can help them come to agreement. Will the team build an additional feature in the product or not? First the team will need to learn to clearly develop their argument to illustrate their ideas, while engaging in active listening with their colleagues.

This can be facilitated with open questions, to help team members better understand their opinions.

Competition

Now, let’s say you have few developers on the team with similar roles, but differing levels of experience. The team is about to build a certain set of features. Perhaps a developer with less experience has a more traditional idea, and another with more experience has a unique idea after working on a similar project. They do acknowledge each other experiences, but they still have the need to compete with each other for their own pride and status within the group.

Competition may come out in variety of situations. It can be positive, driven by energy and enthusiasm. Or negative, if those who are less experienced feel overshadowed or challenged.

As a team leader, you must help your team build trust and foster productive relationships. Team members must recognize the final result is the sum of individual efforts, and that a collaborative effort will produce more favorable results.

The best thing to do is to keep team members to working together. Allow less experienced members to learn from the more experienced members. Team members should work with each other’s knowledge to form better solutions than if created independently.

Eventually, team members will be proud of their collaborative efforts and achievements through open minded understanding of each other’s skills.

Tension and Disunity

Any conflicts happening directly or behind closed doors will eventually bring tension into the team atmosphere.

Imagine you brought the team together to plan the next milestone. You start the discussion with suggestions and directions, encouraging everyone to participate.

Now, it becomes interesting when you start to observe your team members. A variety of personalities and attitudes start to appear. The atmosphere in the room gets tight and it’s difficult for decision-making progress to be made.

Some may want to be seen agreeing with leadership, and hold back their own opinions. Or some will decide not to speak up and prefer agree with what the group is thinking. Another will act as blockers, by aggressively disagreeing with others or being only critical of other’s ideas. Some will take it easy, by withholding participation and leaving others to do all the work. And of course, at least one of the members will be the one playing jokes.

Similar issues may happen when they organize to work on deliverables.

Some may discover the initial plan cannot be reached, and processes set at the beginning don’t support workflow . Others may disregard their team members by working alone and not keeping the team informed on their progress. All together the team may start feeling frustrated with their progress, drawing focus away from tasks.

As a team leader, you can help them function as a unit. You will probably need to address certain conflicts among members, and solve them directly. Once teammates are all under same umbrella again, they should refocus on the goals.

Conducting 1-1 meetings with each team member is a great way to address challenges, and develop plans to overcome obstacles. Ask team members, what is working with the team and the processes and what is not.

Finding a pattern in these comments can lead to a solution on many problems. Asking your team members to collaborate with you to solve problems can foster a sense of camaraderie and teamwork, leading to better solutions.

Challenging Leadership

Frustration, open expression of disagreements, and confronting ideas may affect team motivation. Eventually, team members may question the original mission and start challenging your role as team leader.

This is a time to remain positive and help guide your team back on track. The team should get together and reiterate the initial setting of the roles and processes, making room for improvements.

Address questions such as: Where do we want to go? Where are we now? And what is holding us back? Getting past this phase is quintessential to leadership.

 

3.   Norming - The team adjusts work habits and behaviors to working together and learns to trust each other.

 As soon as team members start feeling acceptance of others on the team, recognizing a variety of opinions and personalities makes the team stronger. At this stage collaboration happens, and efficient workflows are learned.

Team members begin to trust each other and actively seek input from each other. They have learned to resolve conflicts together and give positive, constructive feedback. Team members are confident in their position in the team and relationships are strengthened.

Team members become committed to the goals and start to make significant progress. The main question they ask is: how can we get even better?

As a result of better cohesion, members start to feel good about what is going on and are invested in the team’s success. Sometimes they even forget about the tasks and start having fun.

So, now you may think this new harmony slowly leaves a team leader out of the game.

Well, you may not be as involved in decision making and problem solving since the team members are now finally speaking the same language and can take on more responsibility. However you can still participate in the whole process. Your team and its members will still get stuck occasionally and need your help.

 

Coach the Team and Interactions

Now that we see the value of cohesion and have a lightweight method of measuring it, how do we grow it?

 Move the focus from just coaching an individual's development efforts (e.g. coding, testing, analysis), to coaching the whole Team. Place an emphasis on improving the interactions among Team members. Start by observing who each person interacts with and how.

 

Things to observe with each individual Team member

Do they face others during meetings or do they make an effort to hide physically?

? Do they speak loudly and clearly enough to be heard and understood by their peers?

? Is someone else on the Team dominant at the expense of others?

? Are the people who are isolated attempting to contribute and being ignored?

? Do they cutoff others and therefore discourage others from listening to them?

? Do they talk to only one other Team member?

? Is there a flow, or give and take, when they’re involved in the conversation?

 

Tactics

? Have regular one--‐on--‐ones with your Team members.

Use this time to provide feedback and help Team members see how their Habits and behaviors are seen. Our goal is to help people see their impact on the Team. I strongly recommend taking the meetings offsite – to change the power dynamic and to ensure no one else can see/hear what is being discussed.

? Give Team members tactful feedback on how much they face others, interrupt, how well they listen. Take time to praise the improvements you do see, as well as commenting on the changes you want.

? Model the behavior you expect of others, being open and honest about your Own failings. Mine include a need to interrupt before someone else has finished Speaking and weaker listening skills than I would like.

? Rearrange office seating to encourage Team members to interact with people They don’t otherwise talk with.

? Create opportunities to encourage social conversation.

? Consider a headphone--‐free time if many of your Team members use music

To shut out the world. Pick a couple of hours a day that are headphone-free times, and the rest are headphones allowed.

? If Team members have similar music tastes, bring in some speakers and have Team members take turns being DJ.

? With quieter or less confident Team members, consider:

asking for written input to a retrospective – allowing pairs to speak in Daily Scrum - practicing/rehearsing with the Team member what they want to say in Daily Scrum

? Change Team members only as a last resort.

 

4.   Performing -The team is well-organized, functions smoothly and effectively as an interdependent unit.

 

At this stage, the team has overcame obstacles and is ready for peak performance.

All those stormy days helped them to learn each member’s strengths and weaknesses. Going through those days has bound them enough to bring feelings of trust.

Everybody is now looking in the same direction. What brings them to the goal is hard work and high commitment. They managed to improve structures and processes, which help bring out their best work.

Team members collaborate effectively and have confidence to experiment in problem solving. Yes, challenges and disagreements will keep coming by – the difference is that team members are able to work through difficulties as a group.

What describes the feeling of being part of the high performing team is that what each member brings to the table is now greater than themselves. Who wouldn’t want to be part of something like that?

Given the team is now able to stand on its own feet, there is no need for you as a team leader to interfere in decision making or problem solving. The best thing you can do is to delegate as much as possible while keeping an eye on the progress.

Conclusion

When a team has come through the four stages of high performing teams, all members can really bring their best. To perform at high levels, they will need to remain stable.

However, reality scores another point here. The truth is, even the team has reached the performing stage, they still may revert back to another stage. And how? You thought they were unbreakable.

Imagine a team member leaves the group and to work independently, a new member joins a team, or some personal issues affect a member. In this way, you may find your team regressing.

The speed at which teams progress through stages varies. Some teams have instant chemistry and progress quickly with little tension along the way. Other teams remain stuck in the storming stage and delay reaching peak performance as a team.

 

 5.   Adjourning. The team completes work and moves on from the project.

 

  Reference(s) -

-         Icagile, SCRUM, Atlassian, AgileAtlas.org, microtool, Agilefaqs blogs & wikis

-         www.scrum.org, agivetta, agilealliance & solutionsiq blogs & Wikis

-         www.scaledagileframework.com

-          www.agilekrc.com, coachingforchange, izenbridge blogs & wikis

-         www.agiletestingframework.com, coachgrowth wordpress blogs & wikis

-         www.scrumalliance.org

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