How to form agile teams

Forming agile teams
Where do fantastic agile teams come from?

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Dave Sharrock
15+ yrs experience`
regulatory international
B2B matchmaking MBA IPO

agile husband start-up
sometime Canadian
father
executive outsourcing
B2C data analysis
seismology scrum
English go canucks go

email: dave.sharrock@agile42.com
twitter: @davesharrock
skype: dave.sharrock

what do you look for in a team
forming agile teams as a manager, as an agile team
member and as a customer

forming agile team has different,
often conﬂicting objectives,
depending on your point of view


“A team effort is a lot of
people doing what I say.”

Michael Winner
British Writer and Film Director


"What we need to do is
learn to work in the
system, by which I mean
that everybody is there
not for individual
competitive proﬁt or
recognition, but for
contribution to the
system as a whole on a
win-win basis."

W. Edward Deming


steps to forming a
fantastic team
characteristics of an agile team


characteristics of a
scrum team
• cross-functional
• 7±2 people
• co-located


how many agile teams meet the
poll scrum characteristics?

the team includes all the skills
cross-functional teams necessary to deliver the end
product (from concept to cash)

every team will have its
specialists working together to
deliver an end product


sometimes you can’t because of:

scaling - too many people
or too big a product
Scrum of

Tea Tea Tea

Scrum of Scrum of

Tea Tea Tea Tea Tea Tea

Scrum of Scrum of

Tea Tea Tea Tea Tea Tea

Scrum of Scrum of Scrum of Scrum of

Tea Tea Tea Tea Tea Tea Tea Tea Tea Tea Tea Tea




different technologies,
products, backlogs




products, backlogs

limited availability of
specialists, e.g. architect




products, backlogs then you need to
1. manage
limited availability of dependencies
specialists, e.g. architect
2. create
knowledge


specialists exist on the team,
but every team member pitches in
to help when necessary


a result of self-organization,
not cross-functionality


The Ringelmann effect refers to
optimum (agile) team a combination of social loaﬁng
size is 7±2 people and coordination losses

the Ringelmann
effect
The more people Ringelmann
added to a group, the greater the
decline in personal effort.
Three people pulled at only 2.5x
the average individual effort, and
eight people pulled at a force
equal to the combined individual
effort of only four people.


social loaﬁng
(and coordination losses)
increase with team size


the perfect size is...


many aspects of distributed
co-located vs. virtual teams are still unclear


global market in labour
means distributed or virtual
teams are here to stay in
many businesses today


many agile practices work just
great with distributed teams


agile practices
support distributed
teams
“Teams in which leaders
periodically gathered information
about others and revealed
information about themselves
performed better than teams in
which members did not do this.”
Suzanne Weisband
Associate Professor


signiﬁcant risk factors
for virtual teams
• Insufﬁcient knowledge transfer
• Lack of project team cohesion
• Cultural or language differences
• Inadequate technical resources,
i.e. hardware, processing
availability
• Resource inexperience with
company and its processes
• Loss of key resource(s) that
impact the project
• Hidden agendas impact the
project

Project Risk Differences Between
Virtual and Co-Located Teams, Reed & Night


six common misperceptions about teamwork

•Misperception #1: Harmony helps
•Misperception #2: It's good to mix it up
•Misperception #3: Bigger is better
•Misperception #4: Face-to-face interaction is passé
•Misperception #5: It all depends on the leader
•Misperception #6: Teamwork is magical

Six Common Misperceptions about Teamwork
by J. Richard Hackman


common misperceptions: harmony helps

Harmony helps

disagreements can be
good for a team



Dear ScrumMaster,

Remember:
- don’t let it get personal
- or get out of hand

Yours
The Team


common misperceptions: its good to mix it up

Its good to mix it up

the longer a team stays
together, the better they do


again a fact of corporate life...


but get experience of excellence
before breaking teams


common misperceptions: it depends on the leader
It all depends
on the leader

the most powerful thing
a leader can do is to
create conditions for
self-organization, and
launch the team well

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 where one reason
or another was totally absent,
thus enabling the team to self-
organize.”

Steve Denning


common misperceptions: teamwork is magical

Teamwork is magical

It takes careful thought
and preparation to stack
the deck for success


how will we form the
team
• self-organized trumps allocated
• constrained trumps random
• loose ﬁt trumps tightly controlled


how have your agile teams been
your experience formed - and what worked well,
and what didn’t work well

agree constraints
beforehand


agree constraints
beforehand

allow random or
self-organized selection


agree constraints
beforehand

allow random or

immediately allow
team identity to form


agree constraints
beforehand

allow random or

immediately allow
team identity to form

celebrate team selection


“Coming together is a beginning.
Keeping together is progress.
Working together is success.”
Henry Ford

thank you

dave.sharrock@agile42.com
skype: dave.sharrock
follow us on: @agile42
follow me on: @davesharrock

How to form agile teams

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