Re-envision Agile: #3 - A Real Team

This post is a follow-up to a prior post on Re-Envisioning Agile.

The idea: what we need to do to get much better success with Agile.

I think there are lots of things we can do. So, there will be many more posts in this series.

The third action

This third action is - Getting real success with Agile requires that we have a real Team.

OK, let me restate. I think if you are working with knowledge workers, and they are learning, it is my strong bias that you need a small team that is a real team. This "need" is not dependent on agile, or Agile, or "agile".

Check that you have a real Team. Or build a real Team.

In lots of different ways, the people and the organizations are not putting together a real Team.

Examples

Some examples of problems, that show we do not yet have a real team:

• Too many people (>8)
• Too few people (<5). (Yes, possible to be a real team, but harder.)
• Not full-time (or not near full-time)
• Not working on one main goal
• The Team is not inspired by the goal, mission, product.
• At least one person does not want to be on the Team
• The Team does not have close to the right skill sets
• The availability of skill sets vs the need for skill sets is not well matched
• The Team has not learned to collaborate. So the "level" of collaboration is low (how much, and how well it is done)
• The team members are not being nearly as honest as they should (many root causes for this)
• The Team has not achieved any significant synergistic effects; where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Many root causes for this; low collaboration is one

Further discussion

There is a related issue of not using the "chickens" well (the chickens are the helpers outside the Team). To make the Team stronger, more effective, to fill in the inevitable gaps. But that is an issue for a later post.

You can still have some success even if these conditions are not met. But real success will not happen if you do not have a "pretty good" Team (based on these and some other conditions).

Again, why is this a problem?

First, almost all agile methods are based on having a real team. So, agile is not likely to work well without a real team.

So, our hypothesis is that our level of success is significantly reduced if we do not address these problems. If we do not build a real team.

No problem is the problem?

Related problem: If they do not see the value of a real team, or are complacent about the problems we listed above, it is hard to have significant success. In Lean, one way they express this is: "No problem is the problem." We might re-phrase now as: It's hard to fix a problem if you don't even see it as a problem.

And these problems I think are very common. Very common. I think lots of people do not understand what we mean by "real team". A very simple phrase. Obvious one might think. But if you have not seen a great (real) team, you don't know what you are missing.

Summary

One of the key reasons for low success is not having a real Team.

Check if you have a real Team. Build a real Team. (Yes, "real team" aggregates a set of basic conditions about the Team.)