Business Agility - Role of the Team

Introduction

For most of us, especially if you are a fan of March Madness, getting one Team to win consistently is hard. When you go up against the best competition.

And your team should go up against the best competition they can find. Not to be destroyed, but to become better. And prouder of their accomplishments. (Ok, for beginner teams, the competition is how they did the last 5 sprints.)

Building a great team is hard, and it is fun. And, if you have some success, immensely rewarding.

But our topic today is not normal Team success, but rather, how does a business build in "business agility."

Last time we defined four activities in "business agility": Identify, Evaluate, Select/Implement, and Feedback.

Where does an Agile Team fit in?

First, I think an Agile Team is part of the answer, but only part.

Let's first talk about where the Agile Team does fit in.

Identify

Within the context of its product (well, most Agile Teams are working on one product at a time, and in some sense "own" that product) -- within that context, it is the Team's responsibility to identify changes that are about to happen, or are happening, that are somehow relevant.

Evaluate

Again, the same within the product area. Yes, others outside the Team might also get in the evaluation. Evaluation includes (i) the likelihood of occurrence, (ii) the impact if it occurs (positive or negative), and (iii) the cost to mitigate (and if not fully fixed, some discussion on how much fixed).

The get a real idea about ROI on this work, understanding the cost to fix (mitigate) is essential.

Select / Implement

If the adaptation is small, I see the Team doing everything.

If it is a bigger change (I really mean bigger risk or bigger investment), then I imagine more senior people outside the Team will be involved some. Still, it could be something that the Team could implement by itself. That would depend on the adaptation and the Team's related skill sets, and what other alternatives there might be.

Feedback

Again, the Team might well do this. That might depend on how related the change is to their own product, and if the Team has channels already for collecting feedback on the change and its mitigation.

Complex Adaptive System

So, you see my bias to see the Team as a complex adaptive system, adjusting to a complex changing environment. (Or enabling or helping the bigger organization to adjust.)

But we must also be realistic. Some changes will be outside the scope of one team in one sense or another. Or one Team might be part of an answer, but only a part. And possibly a fairly small part.

Conclusion for Today

Yes, in all four steps, the Team can have a significant role in Business Agility for adapting to some changes. And if they become skilled at all four steps (Identify, Evaluate, Select/Implement, Feedback), the Team could become quite a force regarding some things.

So, we urge that most agile teams be taught how to handle themselves in the context of Business Agility (I hope that even with the little we have described so far, you can start to see a practical reality to this).

AND: I think almost any organization I can think of needs more than just an Agile Team to respond to significant changes or challenges.

More on this soon.