giving teams the roots to grow and wings to fly

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Giving Teams the Roots to Grow and Wings to Fly

Guiding new agile teams to become great agile teams


Building Blocks of Success


Tuckman (1965)

Focu

s on

task

(pro

duct

ivity

)

Relationship

forming

storming

norming

performing


of course, all our teams learn like this


well... not quite


Tuckman (1965)

Focu

s on

task

(pro

duct

ivity

)

Relationship

forming

storming

norming

performing

sustaining


Tuckman (1965)

Focu

s on

task

(pro

duct

ivity

)

Relationship

forming

storming

norming

performing

sustaining

regressing


Leadership Challenge

“However most of the high-performance teams were not manager-led teams.

They were teams where the management had deliberately stepped back, or was inattentive or for one reason or another was totally absent, thus enabling the team to self-organize.”

Steve Denning


Balance Directive and Supportive Actions

• There are priorities to learning so focus on what to learn

• Let the team experience the need, not just talk about it

• Plan situations, don’t wait for a need to emerge


+15TEAM Assessment starting the conversation


Where Do You Stand?

I ticked less than 5 boxes

I ticked 11 or more boxesI ticked 5-10

boxes


Form a Team

•Form groups of 5-6 with similar scores

•Discuss your +15TEAM with rest of your group•What similarities do

you see?•How are your teams

different?•Describe how your

team works


Dimensioning Change

•Rank each dimension 1-5 for your team

•Plot your results on your team’s chart

•Aggregate the results and plot spider chart

•Prioritize where your ‘team’ takes action


Laying Foundations

•Identify and group practices that your ‘team’ already has

•Group remaining practices into required and nice-to-have

•Add any additional ‘practices’ your team might need


Planning Action

•Label required practices against dimensions of change

•Each practice may impact multiple dimensions


Visualize the Plan

•Prioritize practices in order of importance to the team

•Split practices into groups of 3-5

•Create phases of team development•With 3-5 practices in

each phase•Limit to 2-3 phases


New Agile Teams

• 1-3 sprints

• Shared team commitment

• Emerging XP practices

• Transparent impediments

• Balance between feature development & technical debt


The Team Crashes?

• Change is painful, requiring sacrifice before the reward

• Pain avoidance, often a result of no strong direction

• Inside the team: • New incremental changes

that violate core principles• Outside the team:

• Management intervention or misdirection


signs of regression


Core Concepts Underpinning Self-organization

shippableproduct

teamcommitment

feedbackcycles


Core Concepts Underpinning Self-organization

shippableproduct

teamcommitment

feedbackcycles

personal backlog items, parallel and individual work, us & them vocabulary

partial or locally-optimized delivery avoiding organizational pain-points

anything that lengthens feedback loops, or eliminates them altogether


e.g. No Daily Standup

...because• I need time to develop• we already know what everyone

is doing• its just a status reporting meeting• tasks take too long - nothing

changes within only one day

Potential indicators of something more fundamental:• Lack of information• Misunderstanding• Pain avoidance


Sustaining Progress

• Stable progress dependent on learning new skills - focus on process/practices, not principles

• Become very good at what they do, but miss the continual practice of change

• Still inertia to change - tend to be dogmatic about rules, not agile

• Typically teams replace one institutional process with another


Sustaining Teams Quickly Regress to the Mean

replace one defined process with anotherdogmatic and selective application of new ruleschange practices for comfort rather than results

learn little in way of new skills



replace one defined process with anotherdogmatic and selective application of new rules

change practices for comfort rather than resultslearn little in way of new skills



replace one defined process with anotherdogmatic and selective application of new ruleschange practices for comfort rather than results

learn little in way of new skills


Growing Learning Teams

• Strong product and quality ownership

• Builds mental muscle for adapting to change

• Continually practices small change, challenging status quo

• Focus on accelerated learning practices

• Hungry for responsibility


Great Agile Teams are Continually Changing

build out good practices without compromiseincorporates holistic view / guidance

leadership creates environment for success


The development team has 7±2

people and is cross-functional,

with all the skills necessary to

deliver a PBI inside a sprint

There is a product vision,

expressed as an elevator pitch,

and a list of requirements

prioritized by business value

There is a product backlog

with enough PBIs to fill 1-2

sprints, that all meet the

Definition of Ready

The team and PO meet

regularly to groom PBIs.

Everyone in the team estimates

PBIs before committing to them

The Definition of Done has

been agreed between the PO

and the team, and consists of a

checklist of up to 10 points

Preparing a Backlog

The team takes from the top of

the backlog at least 6-10 PBIs

of about the same size into

every 1-2 week sprint

During the sprint, the team

works on at most 2-3 PBIs at

any one time until the PBI is

done

PBIs are broken down into

tasks that are small enough to

be completed in 1-2 days,

tracked on the team's taskboard

The team meets every day

around the task board, for a

short (max 15 min) standup to

plan the day's activities

There is an impediment

backlog owned by the SM.

Impediments are quickly

resolved by the team or the SM

Sprint Behaviors

There is a sprint burndown

that uses estimation points and

is updated daily. Points only

burn down when PBIs are done

The team is continuously

improving quality and the

process with the Active Learning

Cycle during the retrospective

The team delivers on its

commitment with at least 90%

predictability (ratio of accepted

to committed estimation points)

At the end of every sprint the

team delivers a potentially

shippable product, that can be

released or used internally

Shared code ownership is

actively pursued by the team,

for example, by pairing or

trending the bug count to zero

Delivering a Shippable Product

+15TEAM framework

• The +15TEAM questionnaire starts a discussion on agility• What does the core Scrum

framework look like• Allows change in team

behaviors to be tracked• Brings clarity to what is

expected of team


Growing Agile Teams

copyright 2011 agil

e42 consulting ltd

team name:

more

directive

more

guiding

each stage act

s as a sc

affold, offering gu

idance and

support, for different phases of a t

eam’s agile journey

agile teams first

focus on

smoothing flow and

enhancing quality, leading to

maximizing of value delivery

enhancing quality

maximizing value

smoothing flow

� Everyone experiences SM

� Team owns environment

� Velocity guides release

� Reduces technical debt

� Grow engineering practices

� Automated Story testing

� Business value drives work

� Visible measure of value

� Swarms on committed Story

� Owns external dependencies

STEP 3. Maximize Value

organize to deliver maxim

um value

� Cross-functional Teams

� Backlog groomed often

� Stories broken into tasks

� Team capacity is visible

� Daily stand-ups

� Sprint burndown

� Only 2-3 open Stories

� Working Agreement

� Stories for 1-2 sprints

� Impediment backlog

� Active Learning Cycle

� Definition of Done

� Definition of Ready

� Potentially shippable

� Vision and requirements

STEP 1. Organize

preparing the structures, work a

nd

people

� Team takes 6-10 Stories

� Predictability over 90%

� Stories reviewed as done

� Shared code ownership

� Technical debt identified

� Bugs actively fixed

� 1-3 improvement actions

� Release Definition of Done

� Business value understood

� Stories done in priority

order

STEP 2. Gain

Experience

people, process and work all settlin

g

in, focus on learning

� Specialist knowledge shared

� Acceptance test-driven dev

� Limited manual testing

� Automated testing of NFRs

� Communities of Practice

� Shared Definition of Done

� Stable and verifiable builds

� Cross-cutting concerns

� Entire team works on release

STEP 4. Scale

grow knowledge, share learning,

expand capabilities

the accompanying G

rowing Agile Teams worksheets provide more details

behind the checklist for each ste

p

+15FLIGHTPLAN

• The +15FLIGHTPLAN guides team development

• Framework is created and owned by the team

• Captures aspirational goals of newly formed agile teams

• Allows progress to be tracked• e.g. every release cycle

• Reassess current state of team (spider chart) before reviewing


Further Reading

• Slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/davesharrock

• Materials for Giving Teams Roots to Grow...

http://www.slideshare.net/davesharrock/growing-agile-teams-poster

http://www.slideshare.net/davesharrock/growing-agile-team-behaviors

• How to Form Agile Teams:

http://www.slideshare.net/davesharrock/how-to-form-agile-teams

• Lasting Agile Change:

http://www.slideshare.net/davesharrock/creating-lasting-agile-change

• Leading at a Higher Level: Blanchard on Leadership and Creating High Performing Organizations by Ken Blanchard


compliance international B2B MBA English IPO

agile husband start-up technology

newly-minted Canadian

executive leanstartup outsourcing father enterprise transitions

B2C data analysis kanban seismology PhD

scrum organizational excellence

[email protected]: @davesharrockskype: dave.sharrock

Dave Sharrock


thank you

[email protected]: dave.sharrockfollow us on: @agile42

follow me on: @davesharrock

giving teams the roots to grow and wings to fly

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