Building Agile Teams

1. Building Agile Teams
By Sangeetha Siddhantam PMP, PMI-ACP

2. Building of Agile teams is “Real”. It is real because these teams are
independent, highly organized, self-directing, and with one vision of
continuously delivering a high value driven product to the customer. Agile
teams typically consist of a small group giving everyone concerned a high
visibility of what’s happening in the project. As and when the problems
arise it’s much easier to fix them or make changes even late in the
development stage.

3. Characteristics of a high performing team

4. • The main characteristics of a high performing team are that they are
consensus-driven and plan-driven.
• Due to the small size of the team, they work for realistic goals, where
changes can be done even at the last minute of the project.
• Agile teams are empowered because of their processes,
independence, self organization, and communication.

5. Lyssa Adkins has eight characteristics for high performance for
Agile teams.
 Self organizing
 Empowered
 As a team, they can solve any problems
 Team success
 Owns its decisions and commitments
 Trust
 Consensus driven
 Constructive disagreement
Constructive disagreement is the last characteristic of Lyssa
Adkins but is most important of all. It is clarification of goals,
listening, understanding, and disagreeing in unity. During
constructive agreement the team is always asking questions to
determine the missing underlying information.

6. There are five dysfunctions of a team that limits team
performance as explained by Patrick Lencioni.
1. Absence of trust
2. Fear of conflict
3. Lack of commitment
4. Avoidance of accountability
5. Inattention to results

7. Models of team development
The most popular team development models used in Agile are Shu-Ha-Ri,
Dreyfus, and Tuckman.

8. ShuHaRi(Shu-Ha-Ri)
• Originated in Japan and developed by Alistair Cockburns.
• The breakdown of word ShuHaRi
Shu- Is a beginner. Follows or obeys the leader or instructor without a second thought.
Ha- A journeyman and a skilled worker who starts asking questions to himself such as, Am I
doing this correct? Is there a way I can improvise this?
Ri- An expert. Who is ready to innovate, coach or mentor others with his own methods.
• The purpose of ShuHaRI model in Agile is that the teams should understand the basic “Why”
before moving forward.
• Quick glance at ShuHaRi model concerning quality is
Shu “focus on quality”
Ha “excel at quality”
Ri “excel at quality and get things done”

9. The 5 stages of Dreyfus team development model
1. Novice- According to the definition this person is a beginner, newcomer who will abide by the
rules. Essentially these rules familiarize the team members with what they are doing or learning.
2. Advanced beginner- Demonstrates acceptable performance in completing similar tasks. In other
words, this person has become familiar with the task but still following instructions.
3. Competent- Has acquired adequate skills and knowledge to make responsible decisions. This
person has real experience and no longer struggles with rules.
4. Proficient- An efficient and accomplished skill worker who can predict complex situations and can
solve them, even without coming across such situations before.
5. Expert- Becomes a pundit, whose opinions are given high priority. They become gurus where they
can make decisions intuitively.

10. Tuckman's team development model.
Ever since I started as a Project Manager, this is one model I experienced all along.
Tuckman's model has 5 stages:
1. Forming- Where people come together to know what project(s) they are working. During this
stage the group is learning about one another. This is more of a working group.
2. Storming- Where People are adjusting to the project. They have a lot of fights, and cannot agree
on things. This phase can be very frustrating as the team members are constantly challenging
each other.
3. Norming- Where team normalizes. Meaning they are trying to put their difference aside and start
working towards their goal. This stage is where a real team develops.
4. Performing- Where the team is working together to continuously deliver value driven products.
During this stage, we can see all the characteristics of a high performing team. The team is
working efficiently together.
5. Adjourning- The team is done with the current project and moving on to other projects.

11. Adaptive Leadership
In this topic, I would like to discuss situational leadership model developed by Ken
Blanchard and Paul Hersey. Lets quickly glance at Tuckman model of team
development in the previous slide. Blanchard and Heresy mapped their model using
Tuckman's different stages of team development.

12. During the “forming” stage where all the team members gather, to see what project they are
in and expect to get the details of the project activities, the leader in the phase is directing
the team, forming a working structure and providing details on what needs to be done.
During this stage the team efficiency is low. But they do have an urge to learn. They are
committed to learning thoroughly. In other words, the development team in directing
leadership style has very low competence and high commitment.
During the “storming” stage, leaders are “coaching” the team. Unlike directing, there is a
two-way communication. The leaders, team members all are having constructive
disagreements where they are trying to resolve and move forward. The leaders in this stage
not only are highly directive but are also highly supportive. During this stage team members
have some confidence to do things efficiently but their commitment is low as well. In other
words low competence and low commitment.

13. During the stage of “norming”, leaders are supporting the team. The leader is giving
minimum advice that is “low directive” and still has high supportive behavior because
the team still needs reminders to enforce norms, and resolve conflicts. During this
phase, the team is moderately competent and variably committed.
During the stage of “performing”, leaders are just delegating the team as performing
teams are empowered and self organized requiring minimum direction. During this
stage, the leader is less directive and only monitors the progress and the team is highly
efficient in doing their tasks and are highly committed. In other words high competence
and high commitment.

14. Team motivation
As part of the creation of a high performing team, a leader needs to facilitate
training, coaching and mentoring to motivate the team.

15. Training- Train team members to strengthen their skills and improve their innovations in strategies resulting in
high productivity.
Mentoring- Mentors share their knowledge and experience. Mentee (a person who is advised or counseled by
mentor) owns the agenda and formats.
Coaching- Coaching the team helps maximize the potential for achieving project goals. In Agile, coaching is
done on two levels.
1. The team- When all members of team are gathered at events like iteration planning, reviews, and
retrospectives. Leaders ensure that all the members are practicing agile principles and roles.
2. The individual team member- During iteration process, coaching is done one-on-one to individual team
members to provide them with more assistance and a safe and secure environment.
Lyssa Adkins outlines guidelines for one-on-one coaching
• Meet them a half step ahead
• Guarantee safety
• Partner with managers
• Create positive regard.

16. Collaborative team space
Organizations recognize that to be successful, working in groups is very important. Agile
believes in transparency, building trust among one other, making sure each team member
understand their roles.
Agile practices encourage collaborative team space. Fostering a collaborative team space
supports different work styles. It could be distributive teams, remote teams, co-located teams or
offshore teams.

17. Different types of collaborative team space
Co-located teams- All members of the team are working in the same location. Communication is frequent and
easy where problems can be fixed right away. The team meets up regularly in office.
Team space- Team members are sitting within 10 meters distance. Team members can discuss collaboratively.
For example, a conference room where there is good lighting, whiteboards which can be used for post-it notes
or to write tasks.
Caves and commons- Mostly team members are working in common area called commons. If someone has to
make a confidential discussion, they can go to “caves” where they can have privacy.
Tacit Knowledge- Information acquired through association with other people. It is learned by either listening
or watching other people. Learning in a digital world is a classic example of tacit knowledge.

18. Distributed teams- In today’s workforce for organizations to be successful they tap the best talent
globally. In a distributed team, members are spread across geographically. Effective communication
is very crucial in distributed teams. By using right technology distributed teams can create a virtual
colocation where all the team members are working collaboratively.
Highsmith emphasized of distributed teams because of small iterations and a releasable product built
in each iteration. Team members are continuously collaborating and coordinating to achieve high
quality in each iteration.
Some examples of different technology used by distributed teams are skype, live chat, VOIP, IM,
google doc and hangouts, Trello for task tracking, etc..

19. Osmotic communication- When you are working, within 10 meters
distance, it’s natural to overhear other peoples conversation. Say for
example your co-worker is struggling with something and you overheard
she is having difficulty in solving that problem it’s just a human tendency
to help them so that it would save time.
Global Team- Diversity workforce in organizations is evolving rapidly.
Organizations are always looking to tap best knowledge worker. In other
words Jack of all trades, with so many cutting edge technologies,
organizations not only want to draw talent of highly skilled workers within
but also globally. Creation of collaborative teams is done keeping in mind
of different time zones, culture, language, communication style, etc..

20. Tracking Team performance
Burndown charts: These are effective planning and tracking tools with visual presentation depicting remaining
work (work to be completed) against the project work. Burndown charts are an important tool in Agile to check
the current status and progress of the project. Burndown chart is a downward trending chart.
Burnup charts: Another effective tracking tool to see completed work is burnup chart. While burndown charts
track the amount of work remaining, burnup chart tracks the amount of work completed. Burnup chart is an
upward trending chart.
Velocity: The number of story points completed by the team in each iteration is known as the velocity of team
performance. It’s a measure of team capacity for each iteration. Velocity is extremely simple and effective for
measuring the rate of Agile teams consistently delivering business value.

21. As a senior project manager, I’ve had several wonderful opportunities to coach, train, and
mentor agile teams. Applying Agile team development strategies, I’ve experienced
traditional average teams evolving into high performance teams. Agile teams are
independent, self organized and self motivated, with an urge to learn new things. I always
had a clear vision of my team performance from burndown, burnup and velocity charts.
If you have any questions on how to improve your team performance using Agile team
development strategies, feel free to contact me at san.sidd@yahoo.com.
You can also connect with me on LinkedIn https://linkedin.com/in/san-sidd