It is now common to hear about IT organizations kicking off big Agile transformations. While there is a lot of training offered on how to improve the delivery process, culture change and mindset shifting, people are not prepared on how to shift their roles. In traditional environments, everyone has a clear job description that explains their function and what they should/shouldn’t do. In a functional role, it is clear from whom to receive the work and where to send it after a certain expertise/skill is applied. In Agile, all these roles change to “Agile Team member”. What does a Team member do? What is the job description for this role? How can someone use the previous skills and expertise under this new role? What University Degree do I need to be "Product Owner", one of the "3 Amigos", "On-Site Customer"? And why does everyone talk about collaboration?
3. Roles in Agile Teams
Scrum Roles:
Product Owner, Scrum Master, The Team
XP Roles:
On-Site Customer, The Whole Team, Coach, Tracker
Other Agile job descriptions:
Knowledge Worker, 3 Amigos, Generalizing specialist, Product Champion, Squad,
Tribe, Guild, Servant Leader, Pizza Team
4. Prefer better to bigger
James Shore
Teams can be as small
as two and as big as
you need to accomplish
a common Goal
5. Agile Teams Are
Self
Organized
An Agile team uses the
strength of individuals
and provides room for them to
grow expertise and experience
6. The strength of an individual
Deep Knowledge and understanding of
one or two specific areas, systems,
disciplines and/or cultures
I
7. Why
I
Pro
Researchers / Specialists
Evangelists
Teachers
Con
Create delays/dependencies
Knowledge bottlenecks
Hide messy solutions and code
Image by Erik Johansson
8. Grow on expertise and experience
Broad knowledge on multiple areas, systems,
disciplines, cultures and connections between them but
without any depth on any
“Hyphen”
9. Why Hyphen
Pro
Large Program Managers
Networkers
Generalists
Learners
Con
No expertise on any area
Hard to find pure hyphen types
10. What is a T shaped person?
Really awesome at one or two areas,
fairly good on some other areas.
Breadth of understanding the
connection between different
areas, systems and disciplines
Broad
Depth of understanding and
experience on one or more
areas, systems and disciplines
Deep
T
13. What helps to create
T
Team Collaboration
Self-organized teams
Osmotic communication
Pairing
MobProgramming
Code reviews
Team ownership of code
Tight WIP limits
Try something new
Remain curious
Ask
for help
Mentoring
Pave the cow paths
15. Is there one switch to switch
From Functional roles
To Partnership relationship
Be proud of your specialty and understand/respect the strength of
the others on your team
16. Me 4 Years Ago
Me Now
UX
Design
Release
management
Software
Development
Business
Analysis
Team
Leadership
Agile
Project
Management
Process and
Agile
methodologies
Coaching
/
Training
Change
management
Me
Speaker
Guitar
17. Goal of the bridge:
Enable cars to move from one side of
the bridge to the other
How?
By having just enough T shaped sections
Goal of Agile teams:
Deliver changes fast to customer
for feedback
How?
By having just enough T shaped
people
18. Exercise
1
You are given a Goal.
Create an Online Catalogue for a Pet store
You have a pool of I shaped people with different skills.
Build your Team and Process!
19. Changes in people allocation
Exercise
2
• 25% Richard: Marketing
• 25% Ben: Customer Care
• 50% Kat: Project Management
• 25% Vlad: DB Admin
• 25% Phil: IT/Infra
• 50% Martin: Release Engineering
Debbie (Ops) collaborate with Steve (tech writer) and Kat (PM)
Lorna (BA), Kat (PM) and Lee (Tester) shared tasks
Lee (Tester) collaborate with Lorna (BA) and Debbie(Ops)
James(Java) pair up with Phil (IT) and Jonathan(PHP)
Vince(QA) and James(Java) pair programming and code reviews with Jonathan(PHP)
Jason(Bus), Matt(UI) and Steve(writer) sitting close to Richard (Marketing) and Ben (Customer care)
Jonathan(PHP) pair up and sitting close with Vlad(DBA) and Martin(Rel.Eng)
20. Discuss
How was your team and process with I shaped people?
What changed from the T shaped people?
22. Build your
T
Share it with me
Email : Ardita.Karaj@gmail.com
Twitter : @Ardita_K
Stay hungry, Stay foolish ~ Steve Jobs
Editor's Notes
5 minutes intro to roles as defined by Scrum framework, touching how these roles are on other practices like XP, Kanban, etc
5 minutes explaining the concept of the Team as all these roles working together and not as entities with a defined job description. In Agile, there are no functional roles, but more of a partnership of people with different skills and one goal. There is no University Degree for any of the roles in Agile. People come from different backgrounds and have different career paths. A Business Analyst can become a UI designer or Product Owner. A Project Manager can become a Scrum Master. A Tester can become Business Analyst and a developer can become an automation tester. A team uses the strength of individuals and provides room for them to grow expertise and experience.
5 minutes explaining the shift from I shaped specialists to T shaped ones. The goal is to point out that at the beginning, people will start with their Functional role, as specialists with very deep knowledge on one area (I shaped) but working together in a collaborative way, they will learn new skills and will move across to other skills becoming a T-shaped generalized specialist.
When moving to an agile team, you are given the possibility to expand your knowledge, to learn more and to grow professionally
It’s a process, but if you are looking for one thing to do, switch your thinking from a functional role to Partnership
20 minutes play "Build your own Scrum" team/process
10 minutes Questions (probably combined naturally with the discussions)