Dr. Rashina Hoda presented this at the Agile NZ Conference 2013 in Wellington, New Zealand

1. Nurturing Self-Organizing Teams
Dr Rashina Hoda
Leader, SEPTA Research
The University of Auckland
New Zealand

2. Who Is Rashina Hoda
Researcher, Lecturer, Consultant,
Author, and Wannabe-Supermom
twitter: @agileRashina
website: www.rashina.com
email: rashina@gmail.com

3. On the Topic…
Hot off the Press
IEEE Software article “Power to the People”,
March 2013
Not so long ago
XP2011, “Supporting Self-organizing Agile
Teams”, Madrid, 2011
Ah, and that too
PhD Thesis, “Self-Organizing Agile Software
Development Teams: A Grounded Theory”, 2011

4. Power to the People

5. What’s Going On?
Inability of managers to adapt their style to the new age
Desire of people to take matter in their own hands
Fundamentally,
A widening gap between the two.
People no longer live – or want to live – under command and control.
New age ‘management’ style
Adaptive, supportive, and collaborative leadership
Empowerment and Self-organization are here to stay

6. Agile Teams and …
THE SELF-ORGANIZING CONNECTION

7. SELF-ORGANIZING TEAMS
Brand new from ages ago
Humble beginnings
Study of English coal miners, 1950s
Self-Managing groups: 10-15 cross-trained people,
autonomous, learning systems, assuming responsibilities
of former supervisors
Complex adaptations
Complex Adaptive Systems,1990s
Characteristics of Self-Organizing Teams: informal
structure, strong sense of shared purpose, decide own
affairs

8. The Research
• Industry-based, original PhD research, 2006-2011
• 58 Agile Practitioners from 23 Organizations
• New Zealand, India, North America
• Rounded perspective
• Agile practices: Scrum + XP
• Team size: 4 to 15 members
• Project duration: 1 to 48 months
• Organizational sizes: 10 to 300,000 employees
• Semi-structured interviews and observations
• Iterative rounds of data collection and analysis
• Finding common concepts, patterns in data
• Becoming self-organizing the biggest concern

9. Participants
Geographic
Distribution
4%
North
Org. Sizes
America 9%
17% XS (<50)
New 31%
Zealand S (<500)
44%
26% M (<5000)
India L (<50,000)
39% 30% XL (>100,000)

10. Participants
4%
5%
5%
Organizational Titles
5% 31% Developer
Agile Coach
Senior Management
14% Customer
Tester
BA
Others
36%

11. Implications for Software Engineering
The Theory of Self-Organizing Agile Teams *
“explains how Agile teams take on informal, implicit, transient, and
spontaneous roles and perform balanced practices while facing
critical environmental factors.”
Main Findings
• Self-Organizing Roles
• Self-Organizing Practices
• Critical Factors influencing self-organizing teams
– Senior Management Support
– Customer Involvement
*Rashina Hoda, Self-Organizing Agile Teams: A Grounded Theory, PhD Thesis, 2011

12. No, but really…
WHAT’S SENIOR MANAGEMENT
GOT TO DO WITH IT?

13. Management Influence on SO Teams
Organizational Culture
“Resource” Management
Self-
Management Organizing
Contracts Teams
Customer Involvement

14. Organizational Culture
“a standard set of basic suppositions
invented, discovered or developed by the group
when learning to face problems of external
adaptation and internal integration*”
OR
“The way we do things around here.”
What organization cultural traits are desired?
*Schein, E. H. Organizational Culture and Leadership, 1st edition ed.
Jossey-Bass Publishers, San Franciso, 1985.

15. Building a Culture of Trust
Calling all CTOs : Chief-Trusting-Officer
Informal Structure
Openness
Free flow of
communication
Environment
of Trust

16. Building a Culture of Trust
“don't expect that you're going to be in any other
traditional hierarchical company...no matter if
its 4 years or three years [of experience], they
[team] can walk up to [CEO's name] and say
`this what you did, is [rubbish]' (laughs) and
[CEO] will say
`Oh, okay fine, let's discuss what happened'. So
people have that freedom to voice their opinion
very clearly. At the same time people will [give]
feedback to you.”

17. “Resource” Management
Human-Resource [HR] : an oxymoron
What are the benefits of a dedicated team?
Why split people across projects?

18. People Dedicated to Projects
“What I think affected our project...[the
developer] was working on another project, he
didn't have enough time…space to chat with
anybody, to discuss ideas…to work with
anybody…that really impacted a lot of the work
he did in the last few months ... When you're
working in a team like this [Agile team] and
you've got to work quite closely, the individuals
in the team matter.”
- Product Owner, New

19. Contracts
Fixed contracts do not help embrace change
Who sets fixed contracts?
Who needs to absorb change?

20. Agile Contracts
Encouraging flexible contracts
Offering options
buy per iteration, swap features, exit
Adding a buffer to absorb change

21. Encouraging Participation
Software teams usually find it
“demotivating to be given ridiculous
deadlines”
by managers who
“don’t actually have a clue about the
technical challenges associated with
them” (Developer, NZ)
Invite teams to provide estimates…
when negotiating contracts.

22. Customer Involvement
On-board, off-guard
Who sells Agile to customers?
Do customers realize their role?
Who suffers the consequences?

23. Customer Involvement
“The client reads [Scrum books] and what they see is
client can make changes all the time and they think
wow that sounds great! … They don't understand the
counter-balancing discipline [customer involvement] ...
Customer involvement is poor."
- Scrum Trainer, India
“Two of the [internal customers] responded lots and were
very...complaining, and at the end of the project their
business units loved it and the business unit that didn't
give much feedback - when it went to a user - started
complaining. And it's like well, if we didn't get any
critique
it's not really our fault!”
- Developer, New

24. Customer Involvement
Selling the Full Story
“In the sales room, even the way we work is
Agile. We have two groups, one for
marketing, one for sales. We have stages for each
teams - we use kind of post-its and put them up.
So even our sales is Agile.”
- Sales
Manager, India
Offer Product Owner Training

25. Back to conflicts…
IN THE SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
WORLD

26. The New Global Village
• Unprecedented access to information
• Unprecedented access to influence
• Anyone. Anywhere. Anytime.

27. The Same Old Office

28. Time for an IT
Revolution? WOAH!

29. Lessons for Bosses
Employ the hands-free, watchful-eyes
management approach
Expect your teamsteams to perform best. best.
Trust your to perform their their
Teams are resources humans. Treat them so.
Sell customers Agile the full story.

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