Your Team Being In The Zone

I remember playing basketball with my kids some time ago and I was trying to coach them a bit. I discovered a method that worked really well in terms of getting more essence out the given task. I introduced a rule of “no talking” while they were trying to run their plays. It helped them concentrate more on court vision instead of relying on their teammate calling their name that they are open.

In a matter of minutes I saw improvements, and their attempt in trying to tap into other senses helped them concentrate better.

This makes me think about our software engineering industry and how teammates operate within the team. I think the equivalent would be when teammates work so well together that they?sense the following:

• When their teammate needs help.
• When they need to pair-program.
• When they need to jump in and help with testing.
• When they need to drop what they doing in order to help a less experienced teammate who is working on a high priority item that is part the primary goal of the sprint.
• When they jump in to get somebody else’s user story through environments across the finish line into the production environment.
• When sprint disruptions take place and they fight them off before they make a dent with sprint commitments.
• When they raise a flag and openly ask for help while others recognize it and help.
• When they need to call out the dependencies with other teams and don’t assume that somebody else is taking care of it.

This is the nirvana of a self-organizing team.

You know it when you see it and it is beautiful to watch. No teams do it continuously. I call it “being in the zone”. The only question is?how often as a team do you get into the zone and how long you stay in it. I know that very good teams get in the zone in the 11th hour of a project or during the troubleshooting of a complicated production issue. What turns a team from a very good team into an awesome team is repeating this “In The Zone” performance during the regular sprints and establishing the rhythm.

Let’s all strive towards establishing a work environment, software engineering methodologies, tools and passion that gets our teams operating “in the zone”.

Thank you for reading this article. Keep geeking out.

Almir Mustafic