How Agile Teams can Evolve Over Time
Jeff Anderson
Partnering with executives and organizations to build, motivate, and scale happy teams | Founder of Agile by Design Consulting Firm
When thinking about Agile Organizational Design it is useful to think about how far you can take your organization. Not all organizations are ready for the ultimate expression of agile teams. The good news is that there are a number of options you can try, that fall well short of the most extreme versions of agile teams. I have listed some of these options below from most familiar to a traditional organization to the most radical (and also most transformative).
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Level 1: Trial
A Trial team is literally a team for a trial period. The team is not persistent, but rather gets formed to achieve an outcome, like a project, and is then disbanded. The team is often a mix of part and full timers. The team will experiment with some agile methods and practices, but does not get a real chance to benefit from being given the chance to become a full team. This trial team exists within the structure of a more traditional org hierarchy. This type of team often has limited if any access to real users and real customers, and often only has responsibility for a very specific part of getting value to a customers.
Eg: Project Development Team
Level 2: Teaming
A Teaming team is a team where team members get a chance to team. (say that ten times fast) Members can form, storm, and norm as the team is given a longer lived outcome to deliver against over time. Team members are for the most part dedicated full time to the team. These teams become more and more cross functional, taking more responsibility for more and more of aspects delivering value. Teams often start hitting their stride when it comes to foundational agile practices, but there are rough patches. In most cases this type of team is still existing in a largely traditional organization. Uneven access to customers, mandated centralized support functions (which usually suck), waterfall governance, are all to often still a reality. It is unfortunate that many organization's agile journey stop here
Eg: IT Delivery Team
Level 3: Autonomy
The team concept starts to have real transformation value when teams are start to achieve real autonomy. Teams start taking responsibility for more and more of key functions we would typically see dispersed across organizational departments. This can take different forms, in some cases we see technical delivery of systems join up with systems support and operations. In other cases it is common to see product, marketing and engineering present in each team. As we reach autonomy, it becomes more common for team members to have a strong say in what teams they need to be a part of, and we start seeing the concept of self forming teams. We also see more and more of the organization being laid out as a value network, and support functions position themselves as enablers, not enforcement. Teams also gain direct access to real users and real customers. We still see evidence of a traditional hierarchical organization, but the influence of the hierarchy is somewhat muted in many cases. Teams do stop short of fully owning an organizational outcome
Level 4:Ownership
Ownership teams members are owners. Each team, or the ecosystem it belongs to, can be thought of as a mini-corporation. The customers of these teams may the external market. other teams within the organization, or a mixture of both. In either case an Ownership team is responsible for it's budget, for generating revenue and profit, and market success. The team has complete end to end responsibility. Dependencies across teams are managed by financial contracts and are chosen. No teams is forced to use the services of another team. The overall organization often acts as an investor, and influences individual teams willingness to fund based on risk and gain. The organization can also provide a common platform that makes it easier for teams to integrate with each other, get access to market, or other common services. While Ownership is extremely foreign to many organizations, it is the ultimate goal of one seeking to increase agility in such a way as to dramatically outpace it's competitors.