The document discusses key aspects of agile teams and collaboration. It describes that agile teams should contain all required roles and work best with 5-7 people. Teams establish working agreements that define how they work together and what "done" means. Teams also create a project vision and release criteria. Over time, teams evolve from being manager-led to becoming more self-organizing. The document emphasizes collaboration through practices like swarming and providing feedback to one another.

1. Agile Teams and Collaboration:
What’s New About Agile?
Johanna Rothman
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@johannarothman
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2. Johanna’s General Agile Picture
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© 2013 Johanna Rothman

3. Agile Teams
Contain all the roles
required
5-7 people is the sweet
spot
Delivers value every
iteration
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© 2013 Johanna Rothman

4. Who Are These Teams?
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5. How Teams Work
Working agreements
“How we do things here”
What “done” means to us
What our values are
Social contract among
members of the team
Behaviors, not practices
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© 2013 Johanna Rothman

6. Areas for Discussion for Team
Working Agreements
Values:
Sustainable pace
We have core hours and we respect them
Working agreements
What done means
Timebox everything
Respect the timebox
Ground rules:
One person talking
Group norms:
How we treat meeting times
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© 2013 Johanna Rothman

7. Team Chartering
Project charters for the
project
Vision: brief and
compelling: Where are we
headed?
Release criteria:
What does done mean
for the project?
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© 2013 Johanna Rothman

8. How Many Of You Have a Project
Vision?
Vision:
Who is the project for?
What is the result of the
project work?
2-4 sentences
We’ll work together and
debrief
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© 2013 Johanna Rothman

9. Who Here Has Release Criteria?
The vital few criteria by
which we will judge the
done-ness of the project
Balance scorecard
We’ll work together and
debrief
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10. Teams Mature over Time
Two significant models of
teams to know about:
Tuckman
Hackman
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© 2013 Johanna Rothman

11. Tuckman’s Model
Forming
Storming
Norming
Performing
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12. Keep Teams Together Once the
Project is Complete
Agile team members learn
how to collaborate with
each other. That learning is
expensive. Don’t waste the
investment.
Flow work through the
teams
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© 2013 Johanna Rothman

13. The Journey to Self-Organizing
Who is Responsible for
Manager led
teams
Self-directed Self-managing
teams
teams
Self-governing
teams
Set overall direction
Manager
Manager
Manager
Team
Design the team and its
organizational context
Manager
Manager
Team
Team
Monitor and manage
work process & progress
Manager
Team, with
the
exception of
hiring/firing
Team
Team
Execute team task
Team
Team
Team
Team
Adapted from Hackman’s Leading Teams: Setting the Stage for Great Performances, Harvard Business Press
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© 2013 Johanna Rothman

14. Hackman
Teams evolve from
manager-led to selforganizing teams
Very few teams start as selfmanaging teams
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© 2013 Johanna Rothman

15. No Multitasking in Agile
People work on one
project at a time
People work on one feature
at at time
People work on one task at
a time
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© 2013 Johanna Rothman

16. Approaches to Manage Interruptions
or High Priority Requests
Leave room in the
iteration; don’t fill up on
features
Urgent queue
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© 2013 Johanna Rothman

17. High Emphasis on Collaboration
Team works together
Swarming: everyone works
together to move one
feature forward to done
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18. High Emphasis on Facilitation
We facilitate each other’s
work with feedback and
coaching, meta-feedback
and meta-coaching
Not a manager’s job
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19. Feedback and Meta-Feedback
Not evaluation or praise; feedback
When you use a peer-to-peer feedback approach:
Create an opening
Describe behavior or results
State the impact
Make a request
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© 2013 Johanna Rothman

20. Coaching and Meta-Coaching
Coaching is much more
than teaching
Offering options with
support
Example: Rule of Three
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© 2013 Johanna Rothman

21. Many Ideas About How to Scale
Agile
Scrum-of-Scrums
SAFe
My ideas: Small world
networks
Choose what fits your
context
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© 2013 Johanna Rothman

22. Inspect & Adapt with Retrospectives
Periodically review the
team’s process
At the end of an iteration
At the end of a significant
deliverable
Often!
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23. Re-evaluate the Projects Periodically
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24. Distributed vs Co-located
Want co-located crossfunctional teams
Can manage with
distributed crossfunctional teams
Be wary of trying to do
agile with anything else
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© 2013 Johanna Rothman

25. Johanna’s General Agile Picture
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© 2013 Johanna Rothman

26. What questions do you have?
or,
What challenges do you see where
you work?
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27. Let’s Stay in Touch...
Pragmatic Manager:
www.jrothman.com/pragmaticmanager
Please link with me on LinkedIn
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© 2013 Johanna Rothman