Maximising teamwork has a big impact on effectiveness but it isn’t easy. It requires everyone to challenge themselves, come out of their silos, build trust and be disciplined about improvement. Some challenges are different for different roles. We’ll see routes to improvement for the team by looking at each role through the lens of its main biases and how to correct for them.

1. Abstract
Maximising teamwork has a big impact on effectiveness but it isn’t easy. It requires
everyone to challenge themselves, come out of their silos, build trust and be
disciplined about improvement. Some challenges are different for different roles.
We’ll see routes to improvement for the team by looking at each role through the
lens of its main biases and how to correct for them.

2. Maximising Teamwork in
Delivering Software
Products
Laura EdwardsRyan Dawson

3. “Not finance. Not strategy. Not technology. It is teamwork that
remains the ultimate competitive advantage, both because it
is so powerful and so rare.”
― Patrick Lencioni, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A
Leadership Fable

4. 1. What is teamwork?
2. The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team
3. Agile and Teamwork
4. How can Product Managers bring most to the team?
5. How can Developers bring most to the team?
6. How can Scrum Masters bring most to the team?
7. Being a high performance team

5. 1.What is Teamwork?

6. Taskwork
Taskwork is what a team is doing.
Taskwork is the team’s individual interactions with tasks, tools, machines and
systems.
Task execution tends to be individual but may not be so.
Schmutz JB, Meier LL, Manser T, BMJ Open 2019

7. Teamwork
Teamwork is a process of interaction among team members who combine
collective resources to resolve task demands.
One such collective resource could be individual time.
The sum of taskwork and teamwork is team performance i.e. what the team
actually does.
Schmutz JB, Meier LL, Manser T, BMJ Open 2019

8. Teamwork in Action
Roles working together to common goal. Individuals shifting roles.
Could be more autonomous and self-directed!

9. 2.The 5 Dysfunctions of a
Team

11. Five Dysfunctions of a Team (Lencioni)
“It's as simple as this. When people don't unload their opinions and feel like they've been listened to, they
won't really get on board.”
“Great teams do not hold back with one another. They are unafraid to air their dirty laundry. They admit
their mistakes, their weaknesses, and their concerns without fear of reprisal.”

12. Trust
“Trust is knowing that when a team member does push you, they're doing it because they care about the
team.”
It can be hard to criticise peers or even seniors constructively.
And constructively does not have to mean understated.
Make it safe to suggest colleagues do something differently. It should be actions
being criticised, not people.

13. Constructive Criticism
Do call out behaviours.
But don’t personalise.
Move forward. Don’t use as a stick to beat people with.
Time and phrase it carefully.
Situation. Behaviour. Impact.

14. Goal-setting
● Important that goals be observable and near-term.
● Don’t leave too much room for everyone to define their own goals. That can
lead to ego.
● Have to make trade-offs. It should be hard.
“If everything is important, then nothing is.”
― Patrick M. Lencioni

15. Tackling the Dysfunctions
1. Build a culture of openness.
2. Make decisions collectively.
3. It’s ok to disagree on some things. So long as everyone still buys in.
4. Set clear, measurable, collective and individual goals.
5. Challenge one another to reach the goals.

16. 3. Agile Teamwork

17. Agile alone is not enough
Sprints = clear goal-setting.
Velocity is a measure against goals.
Ceremonies help with voicing issues
and encouraging buy-in.
Simply following agile practices in itself does not guarantee good teamwork.

19. Specialization allows us to handle ever-growing complexity, but the benefits of
specialization can only be fully realized if the silos that it creates can be connected
effectively.
— Mik Kersten

20. Specialisation & Teamwork
Separation of roles brings clarity of responsibilities and specialisation.
Each role is prone to its own biases.
Everyone has to challenge themselves and be challenged to see the best way for
the team to achieve its goals.

21. 4. Product Managers

22. Product Manager is a Bridge

23. Not a lopsided bridge
Product Managers are the owners and evangelists of the product vision
Common bias: ‘I choose the features, you deliver them.’

24. Get the team to feel the customer’s
perspective.
Listen and incorporate.
The Customer’s Problems are the Team’s Problems

25. Teamwork and Vision
It’s not all on the product manager to communicate the context and vision.
Everyone should be trying to see it.
The product manager should be the guide.

26. Tech Problems are the Team’s Problems
● Product doesn’t need to understand all the tech.
● But should push to understand about what tech is for.
● Try to get developers to explain about tech debt.

27. It’s about balance and trust
● Vision is good. Deliverable vision is better.
● Need a feeling for how deliverable things are.
● Not signing the team up without agreement.
● Also give space.
● Don’t solutionize or mistake features for user benefits.

28. Bring people together
● If developers don’t see value, then they only see the cost.
● That’s everyone’s problem.
● Talk about context and vision.
● Talk about backlog.
● Encourage others to contribute to it.

29. 4. Developers

30. Success is not delivering a feature; success is learning how to solve the customer’s problem
— Eric Ries

31. Feel the customer’s perspective
Ask why.
Raise problems. But not excessively.
Demo.

32. Perfect is the enemy of done
Most common bias: over-attention to software internals to the exclusion of software purpose.

33. It always takes longer than you expect, even if you take Hofstadter's Law into
account.
Douglas Hofstadter

34. Estimation and Trust
Estimation is hard because the work is creative and complex. Accept that.
Explain it.
Hero behaviour and defensive behaviour undermine team unity.

35. Empowerment
● Seeing big picture
● What you can best do to get the team to its goals
● Feeling safe raising concerns
● Taking criticism constructively
The point is not that devs tend to do things right/wrong.
The point is there are certain patterns we have to watch for and guard against.

36. 6. Scrum Masters

37. Conflicted Loyalties
● Scrum Master often holds accountability for delivery in the eyes of
stakeholders
● Is your first team the scrum team? The management team? Or agile
coaches? Does it matter?
● Promote the Scrum team’s role in the goals of the organisation

38. Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

39. Teamwork and Trust
Defensive behaviour undermines trust.
Being too strict with process can be defensive behaviour
Have to make commitments to stakeholders. That is part of the goal. Their trust
matters. Help the team see that.
But overcommit and you undermine scrum team trust.

40. 7. Being a High
Performance Team

41. Teamwork Red Flags
Everyone sticks rigidly to their roles.
People not willing to chip in to tasks seen to fall under a different role.
Contributions to work falling under a different role not welcomed.
Timelines and goals set from above, not agreed (or explained)
Posturing and empire building.
Nobody voices ideas/concerns beyond their rigidly-defined role.

42. Teamwork Nirvana
Everyone contributes to discussions.
Team adapts to and even drives change.
Mistakes are called out but individuals not criticised.
‘We’ used more than ‘I’.
Successes collectively appreciated.

43. It’s a Never-ending Process
● There will always be tensions.
● Perhaps high performance teams hit more.
● They get comfortable with it.

44. Conclusions
Success requires committing to a vision. People can’t buy in without
empowerment and teamwork.
Foundation of teamwork is trust.
Specialisation is good but also creates barriers that we hide behind.
We have to be comfortable challenging each other in order to overcome barriers.