Starting a New Team - Intro

This post is for those people starting a new Team.

I am starting a series of short articles that address specific related topics.

Please: give me feedback and suggestions. What do you think needs to be covered?

Setting the Stage

First, my bias is that starting a Team is very important. The locus of success is in the Team.

Yes, there can be important impediments in the larger firm. But often a Team can "suck less" all by itself. And setting that example of success is very useful. Often by proving an idea at the Team level, you can convince the wider company to have more common sense.

Second, my view is that we are trying to build a great Team. Or, at least help these people become the best Team they can be.

Third, man does not live by bread alone. That is, we live and breathe and work for a reason. A purpose. A mission. In business, this is usually conceived of as "satisfying the customer." Sometimes as "wowing the customer." Or helping the customer. Or delivering business value.

There are two parts to that. One is that the Team has a purpose. Next, the purpose is outside themselves, but intrinsic in the sense that each member of the Team must care about the customers (or should) and must at least respect the product. This is an internal emotion or decision. Perhaps simple enough to say as: must feel the product (or service) really helps the customers, and they (each and all of the people on the Team) want to deliver that new product to the customers.

So, purpose and motivation (of the Team) are essential ideas, or things essential to a successful Team.

Next: We must recognize the otherness of the Customers. We do not build this Team or do this work fundamentally for ourselves. We do it first for others. It is more blessed to give than to receive.

So, ultimately, success is dependent on the customers' future reaction to the product we build. ("Difficult to see. Always in motion is the future.")

Let us not lose sight of that. Some think or feel that the Team is only for itself. And, indeed, the work is hard and life is hard, and the Team should feed and comfort its members. (Yes, feed is metaphorical.) But the Team does not live primarily for itself.

What's the very beginning?

If you read A Scrum Book the answer is the Mist. (Note: The link sends you to the ScrumPLOP.org version of that pattern.) I recommend A Scrum Book! It is by Jeff Sutherland, James Coplien et al.

So, out of the Mist, it might be said that we see, or eventually see, a Problem. Some would say we identify one or more root causes (seems at least a useful idea in many cases). And at least a concept of a solution. We at least think it is possible we could DO something, build something useful.

Also in the Mist idea is also the idea that we have formed a Team. And the Team has chosen the work, perhaps has even done some brainstorming to conceive the solution together.

While things in real life can happen MANY different ways, I will assume that many of you (most of you?) have a situation where something like the following happens:

1. Someone (or small group) conceives an idea of the problem, identifies root cause(s), and imagines the solution. The product idea, the product goal, the Mission, the Vision. Many names.
2. There is a Steering Committee. The Committee vets the idea. (The Committee is generally composed of managers.) And prioritizes all of them. And this one (the Idea or Initiative or Product we are about to be given) gets to the top of the list.
3. A Manager comes to us (one or two or three people or perhaps an already identified Team) and asks us to do it.
4. We accept the work and form a Team.
5. In the simple version, soon we start the Work. We start building the Product.

So, for now I will start at Step 3 (in the next post).

At some point I may discuss earlier steps, but for this "starting the Team" series, to me it starts when a Manager comes to us.

Yes, it does not always happen that way, but that example gets us close enough, and we can start to deal with some of the issues.

Again, it happens many ways, especially in the details. I will assume that it is one, or two or three of us. (Maybe we are a manager outside the Team rather than a person who will take a role inside that Team.) And we must gather a Team (or find an existing Team) and then "get started."

Conclusion

Let me conclude with questions (to be answered soon).

Here are our top 4 issues at the moment, I think. Or, at least, commonly:

• What is the Mission really?
• How do we form and build a great Team?
• How do we build and deliver a great Product quickly?
• And - based on my assumptions - how do we get these knowledge workers to learn faster, so that in the future, the customers will love this product and it will be, for some time, the best product in its niche?

Now we can start the first post in this series.