Agile Network India | Characteristics of an autonomous team by Yasashree

1. Characteristics of an autonomous team – Yashasree Barve

2. Characteristics of an autonomous team – Yashasree Barve
INTRODUCTION
Credit: Worker illustrations by Storyset

3. Characteristics of an autonomous team – Yashasree Barve
WHY AUTONOMY
CHARACTERISTICS
Characteristics of
autonomous teams
EXPERIENCES
Learn from the
experiences
Why team autonomy
matters in agile journey?
WHAT IS AUTONOMY
Common understanding
of autonomy
TABLE OF CONTENTS
02
04
01
03

4. Characteristics of an autonomous team – Yashasree Barve

5. Characteristics of an autonomous team – Yashasree Barve
Autonomy Mastery
Improving our skills and
selves
Purpose
Working towards
something worthwhile
In control of what we
do and how we do
it
What drives us?

6. Characteristics of an autonomous team – Yashasree Barve

7. Characteristics of an autonomous team – Yashasree Barve
COACHES AS A
FIREWALL TO TEAM
Autonomy in the team's context
includes establishing the team's
own culture. It also includes how
the team carries out work as a
self-managed team.
Source: scrumbook.org

8. Characteristics of an autonomous team – Yashasree Barve

9. Characteristics of an autonomous team – Yashasree Barve
The tasks they work
on
TIME
The time they work
for
TECHNIQUES
The techniques they
use while working
TASK
TEAM
The team they work
with

10. Characteristics of an autonomous team – Yashasree Barve
Source: Engineering culture at Spotify - part 1

11. Characteristics of an autonomous team – Yashasree Barve
DIMENSIONS OF AUTONOMY – DAN NORTH
PURPOSE
ACCOUNTABILITY
SKILLS AND
CAPABILITIES
AUTHORITY
CONSTRAINTS
RESOURCES
Source: "Agility at Scale: A meeting of mindsets“ – Daniel North
Credit: People illustrations by Storyset
Liquidity Strategy
Easy to obtain -> Go get some | Harder to obtain -> Borrow some | Impossible to obtain -> De-prioritize

12. Characteristics of an autonomous team – Yashasree Barve

13. Characteristics of an autonomous team – Yashasree Barve
WORKSHOP STRUCTURE - GROW
Take the
autonomy journey
WILL
Improvement
backlog and
review cadence
OPTIONS
Discuss options based
on liquidity strategy
REALITY
Baseline on given
dimensions
GOAL
1 2 3 4
Credit: Work illustrations by Storyset

14. Characteristics of an autonomous team – Yashasree Barve
SKILLS AND CAPABILITIES
DIMENSION DESCRIPTION ALIGNMENT CONSTRAINTS ACCOUNTABILITY
TECHNIQUES TO
IMPROVE
SELF-
RATING
Skills and
Capabilities
The team has all skills and
capabilities within so that the team
can independently deliver working
software.
For e.g. PM, SM, Developers, Testers,
Automation engineers, Coach,
For e.g. Back end, Front end,
Automation, DevOps, QA Automation
Capabilities
defined by
Organization
• Learning options availability
• Availability of people to be
staffed
• Organizational separate
groups for support,
infrastructure may put
constraints
Team should
identify skills and
capabilities needed
by the team, define
a roadmap to
fulfill it, and raise
impediments if any
• Skill Matrix
• Skill pizza
• Recruitment
• Upskilling
• Cross skilling
The team is able to identify a
blocker soon and work on it.
For e.g. raising impediments soon,
maintaining and tracking
impediment register
Support
available from
organization
to remove
the blocker
Organizational separate groups
for support, infrastructure may
put constraints
Team raises blockers
if beyond their
control if any at
appropriate forums
or connect with
stakeholders
• Impediment
backlog
• Retrospectiv
e
• DSM

15. Characteristics of an autonomous team – Yashasree Barve
RESOURCES
DIMENSION DESCRIPTION ALIGNMENT CONSTRAINTS ACCOUNTABILITY
TECHNIQUES TO
IMPROVE
SELF-
RATING
Resources The team has all required resources
to achieve business outcomes.
For e.g. Access to environments,
required automation to reduce
dependency on other teams,
Budget and operating model
constraints
Raise impediments at
appropriate times
• Impediment
backlog
• Retrospective
• DSM

16. Characteristics of an autonomous team – Yashasree Barve
AUTHORITY
DIMENSION DESCRIPTION ALIGNMENT CONSTRAINTS ACCOUNTABILITY
TECHNIQUES TO
IMPROVE
SELF-
RATING
Authority Team can experiment with techniques
that help it achieve the business
outcomes and continuously improve.
For e.g. Kanban, Design Thinking,
Scrum, Empathy maps, user
interviews, tools, programming
languages
Alignment
required with
organization
Organization Values and
Principles
Team members are
accountable for making
it transparent to
organization and sharing
lessons learnt
• Retrospective
• Chapters to learn
new techniques
• Cross skilling / up-
skilling within
squad
Team has flexibility in terms of
working times to balance work and life.
For e.g. Time spent in office vs
from home
Team norms need to be adhered
to, especially for collaboration
meetings such as scrum events
and tribe events
Team members'
unavailability does not
impact achieving
outcomes
Team norms
Team can add stories to the backlog to
improve team and technical agility and
get it prioritized.
For e.g. Establish CI-CD platform,
deployment automation, cross-
Team aligns
with
organization
Team members are
accountable for making
progress and making it
transparent to
organization
• OKR Definition
• Roadmap
• Backlog
refinement
• SprinT planning

17. Characteristics of an autonomous team – Yashasree Barve
PURPOSE
DIMENSION DESCRIPTION ALIGNMENT CONSTRAINTS ACCOUNTABILITY
TECHNIQUES TO
IMPROVE
SELF-
RATING
Purpose
Team defines their own OKRs
For e.g. team comes together in
a workshop and brainstorms
OKRs together
Team gets inputs
from business
stakeholders and
organization
Only 3-5 Objectives with 3-
5 key results each
Team members are
accountable for making
progress and making it
transparent to
organization
OKR Definition
Team asks the WHY proactively and
is a thought partner in decision
making when it comes to
prioritization
For e.g. In backlog refinement
and sprint planning meetings,
team can ask questions to
clarify purpose and help
prioritize better
Team gets inputs
from business
stakeholders
Product owner is the final
authority on
prioritization
Team members are
accountable for making
progress and making it
transparent to
organization
• OKR Definition
• Roadmap
discussions
• Backlog
refinement
• Sprint planning

18. Characteristics of an autonomous team – Yashasree Barve

19. Characteristics of an autonomous team – Yashasree Barve
TEAM 1
TEAM 2
Team 2 at relatively
intermediate stage in maturity
journey, used the toolkit to
establish their autonomy
baseline
Team 1 at relatively early stage
in maturity journey, spent
considerable time to draw
common understanding on
autonomy

20. Characteristics of an autonomous team – Yashasree Barve

21. Characteristics of an autonomous team – Yashasree Barve
Team has the right skills, also
spends efforts in upskilling
themselves, for e.g. SnapLogic
TEAM 2
SKILLS AND
CAPABILITIES
70%
PURPOSE 80%
RESOURCES 50%
QA/Production access is an issue
due to compliance issues though
Jenkins has eased it
Team uses OKRs on a quarterly
basis aligned with organization
OKRs and business needs
Credit: Work illustrations by Storyset

22. Characteristics of an autonomous team – Yashasree Barve
Improved Better
handling of
impediments in team’s
autonomy journey
Sharing
With community led to
evolving this model
further
scores on autonomy
and team health in
surveys

23. Characteristics of an autonomous team – Yashasree Barve