Early draft for Agile India 2016

1. Deciphering the elusive
language of teams?
Sean Dunn

2. Before We Begin:
Two Important Questions
• Question #1:
Are we really a team?
• Question #2:
Are we ready for
heavy lifting?
Patrick Lencioni, “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team”

3. What do I mean by “Team”?
Team != Cooperating Individuals

4. What do I mean by “Team”?
Team != Shares a Manager

5. What do I mean by “Team”?
Team != A Group of People doing Scrum,
Kanban, etc…

6. Becoming a team takes heavy lifting.

7. Why teamwork matters.
Individuals and interactions.

8. organizations which design systems ... are
constrained to produce designs which are
copies of the communication structures
of these organizations
“
”Conway’s Law
Why teamwork matters: higher quality,
more maintainable software

9. Team members tackling complex
environments must all grasp the team’s
situation and overarching purpose.
Only if each of them understands the goal ..
and the context in which it fits can the team
members evaluate risks on the fly and know
how to behave in relation to their
teammates.
Gen Stan McChrystal, “Team of Teams”
“
”
Why teamwork matters: more agility

10. 1. You need to deliver
frequently and often:
your team has three hits to
get the ball over the net
2. Each member has a specialty
– but each must play all
positions
3. You have shared ownership
over the results
4. Your job is to set your
teammates up for success
5. There is plenty of flexibility in
what exactly you deliver
(something >> nothing)
6. You can’t wait for the coach
to tell you what to do.
7. Communicate. A lot.
Agile is like Volleyball…

11. The value of responsiveness over individual efficiency.

12. Efficiency, once the sole icon on the hill,
must make room for adaptability in
structures, processes and mind-sets that
is often uncomfortable.
“
”Gen (Ret’d) Stan McChrystal, Team of Teams
[The] goal must shift from efficiency to
sustained organizational adaptability. This
requires dramatic shifts in mental and
organizational models, as well as
sustained efforts on the part of
leadership to create the environment for
such a change.

13. …we need leadership, not just facilitation
Are we reading for heavy lifting?

14. What do I mean by “team”?
Common Purpose
[Vulnerability-Based] Trust
Shared Consciousness
Empowered Execution
Gen Stan McChrystal, “Team of Teams”

15. Team Litmus Test
Halfway into the iteration, in the team
standup, Jim’s story – the highest priority
story – looks like significantly more work
than first thought.
What happens next?
ScrumMaster
intervenes
ScrumMaster re-assigns
other team members
to the story.
Nothing
The potential delay
is noted, and
everyone goes back
to their own work.
Team Members Self-
Organize
Team members ask
“What can I do to help?”
and drop their “own”
work to rally behind the
top priority

16. This exhibited team behaviour
• Trust: Jim feels safe amongst his team; the
team helps out without judgement of Jim’s
competency
• Common Purpose: Getting the highest-
priority user-story delivered
• Shared Consciousness: All have same
understanding of priorities, and knowledge
enabling them to contribute
• Empowered execution: All team members
able to independently change their efforts
without permission.

17. Consider… how often…?
• do team members say “I need help…”
• do team members say “what can I do to
help?”
• do team members drop what they are
working on to rally behind the most
important story?
• do team members do this of their own
accord without having to “ask
permission”?

18. Flickr.com
looking for fences

19. Start with
structures :
structures are processes, systems, policies
and any visible, or invisible thing that
influences behaviour
“
”Jason Little

20. Smell: Belonging to
“Multiple Teams”
Indicators:
• Cannot identify with a
single team
• Capacity allocation
(80% here, 20% there…)
• Attending
multiple ceremonies
• Work comes from
multiple backlogs

21. Why One-Person-One-Team
• Leverage the psychological
power of tribal identity
• Truly shared objectives
• Mutual accountability
• Enables delegation
• Ability to self-organize
• Equal and vested ownership over how the
team works
• No organizational barriers on the team
• No hidden context switching

22. Build flexible, long-lived teams,
and bring work to the teams
Esther Derby
A team is the atomic organizational
element that can be assigned work.

23. Indicator: Multiple Backlogs
Team
Person
3‐9
Backlog 1 Backlog 2 Backlog 3
Why is this a problem?
Ambiguous shared purpose – what should we rally behind?

24. Indicator: Private Backlogs
Greg and
Roneel
Greg and
Roneel’s stuff
In Practice:
Jim
Jim’s Stuff
Team
Person
1
3‐9
Backlog
Ostensibly:
1
Indicators:
• In planning meeting, hunting through backlog to find work
earmarked for a specific person
• Conversations outside of team refer to individual team members,
“Jim has been working on”, “Greg is almost complete”

25. Indicator: “My Story…Your Story”

26. Indicator: “My Code…Your Code”

27. Indicator: “The story is with….”

28. Indicator: WIP:Team Member Ratio
Work in Progress (WIP) = # started, but not
accepted, US + defects
WIP > # Team Members WIP =
# Team Members
WIP <
# Team Members
WIP = 1

29. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team
Inattention
to Results
Avoidance of
Accountability
Lack of Commitment
Fear of Conflict
Absence of Trust

30. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team
Inattention
to Results
Avoidance of
Accountability
Lack of Commitment
Fear of Conflict
Absence of Trust
Vulnerability‐Based Trust
• Fear of team members judging competence
• Quality of Code
• Design decisions
• Development practices
• Indicators:
• Conceal their weaknesses and mistakes
from one another
• Hesitate to ask for help
• Fail to recognize and tap into one
another’s skills and aptitudes

31. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team
Inattention
to Results
Avoidance of
Accountability
Lack of Commitment
Fear of Conflict
Absence of Trust
Fear of Conflict
• Indicators:
• Boring meetings
• Back‐channel politics
• Ignore controversial topics
• Fail to tap into all the opinions and
perspectives of the team members
• Posturing and interpersonal risk
management

32. Mutual Accountability
do team members hold each other to
account for behaviours?

33. The Leader’s Challenge
“Let’s act our way to new thinking”
Influencing the language

34. we created a new rule: there was only ‘we’,
no longer could we say ‘they’“
”CDR (Ret’d) David Marquet, USN

35. Lead by Example
Model the behaviours you want others to
emulate:
Make yourself vulnerable
Personally admit mistakes
Ask for help

36. Things to try…
• Stop using names. There is only “we”.
• Experiment with the standup format
– Instead of “Did you finish your task?”, focus
“How can we work together to deliver this
highest priority story today?”
• Stop assigning stories and tasks

37. Being worried about dropping balls

38. Heavy lifting:
It is your choice.