What makes an "incredible agile team"? This presentation, given at agile on the beach 2016, explores team characteristics that we have found important over the last 4 years. It also includes feedback from the attendees as to what is important for their teams.

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Incredible Agile Teams
Ian Hawkins – Siemens Healthcare
September 2016

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A Question..
Which football team is your
agile team like?

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What team would you prefer to be like?
England / Portugal / Germany / Iceland?

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Top Teams..
How do you assess how good a team is?
From my experience “Metrics” provide insight, but it is
“Characteristics” that make a team great.

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What characterises an
incredible agile team?

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Pick..
One characteristic of the best agile
team you have ever worked with..
Discuss with person next to you..
2 mins

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Results (Thanks for the great input!)
Adaptability
Versatility
Flow/Buzz
Engaged
Collaboration
Conviction
Fearless
Empathy
Socialize Together
Collaborative
Passionate
Eager to learn
High level of communication
Being Nice
Honesty "I'm stuck"
Encourage each other
Communicative
Getting on personally
Able to iterate every 3 days to live
Self leadership of individuals
Solution orientation
Trust
Product Proud (less amounts of defects)
Working FOR the team, not only with the team
Striving for a common goal
Communication Skills
Fun
Every member confident to offer input
Working well together for the common goal
Open-ness and honesty
The ambition to continuously get better
Frequent and open feedback
Trust and Respect

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9 Characteristics - Siemens Healthcare
Based on last 4 years, UK team working with multiple
teams in Europe and India

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Team Balance
Do you have balanced authority, respect and availability across all functions?
Development
Architect
Test
Product Owner

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Connectivity with others
Who does your team work
closely with?
How do you invest in making
this work well?

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Team Exchanges

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Feature Sub Teams
Feature 1
Feature 2
Feature 3
X
Popular with management. Does not work, don’t do it!

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Pressure
Project
Start
Ideal
Actual
Pressure
Project
End
Team member
Re-allocated
Scope better
understood
Support needed
on existing version
Backlog
Feature
Help your team not to over-commit

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Be Brave
Are we building the right thing?
Are we taking on too much?
Are we reducing tech debt?
Are we sharing knowledge?

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Resilience
Flexible skills
Team rotation
Can do attitude
Willingness to ask for help
Pair Programming
TDD / Autotests
Team Stability
Most projects have
these conditions
X
Networking

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Respect
“A feeling of deep admiration for someone
or something elicited by their abilities,
qualities, or achievements”

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Working Together
Increases respect and
improves resilience
Mob testing

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Learning

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Morale
Eating together
Col-location
Avoid burnout
Creation of working software
Software craftsmanship
Sharing knowledge
Working environment
Empowerment
Having fun
No poisonous people

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Experience from Siemens Healthcare
Does not come up naturally during standard retrospectives..
Important Characteristics of an Incredible Agile Team

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A Standup..

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Resources

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The Team Journey..

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You can make a difference
as to how incredible your
team is..

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Thanks!