For the past three years Redgate has run a self-selection reteaming process to shape how teams are assigned to reflect the company’s strategy for the year ahead.
Our approach allows people to strongly influence which team they’re part of, encouraging them to move towards the work they find most engaging.
We’ve found reteaming in this way to be good for our people, our teams and our products.
Be inspired to try a self-selection process that works for you, building on the take-aways below:
* The principles of self-determination and the value of providing staff with autonomy, master & purpose
* What holds us back from self-selection both as leaders and participants
* What happened when Redgate Software ran their self-selection process (Spoiler: Good things)
* How to plan and run a considerate self-selection process - physically and remotely
Learn the Fundamentals of XCUITest Framework_ A Beginner's Guide.pdf
Three years of self-selection reteaming at Redgate Software
1. Chris Smith
OR HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE TEAM SELF-SELECTION
@cj_smithy
2. • When you change your team composition.
• It's something that has always happened; we just may
not have named it.
• Teams will always change:
• People leave and join teams
• People leave and join organizations
• Organizations create new teams, split teams, disband teams
3.
4.
5. • “Teams with stable membership perform better”
• “Keep your teams the same for predictability”
• “We don’t want to repeat the ‘forming, storming,
norming & performing’ pattern for each project”
9. From Dynamic Reteaming, by Heidi Helfand. An ecocycle based on the adaptive cycle by Lance H. Gunderson and C.S. Holling, Panarchy; and Keith
McCandless, Henri Lipmanowicz, and Fisher Qua, Liberating Structures
10.
11.
12. • To invest more in some areas, less in others and change
focus for some teams
• To break down silos and encourage wider connectedness
• To spread knowledge, best practice and innovation
throughout our teams
• To enable personal growth and development
13. Team members have
full freedom to move,
form or disband teams
when they choose
Someone “at the top”
has full control on
team membership
and lifecycle
14. HOW I LEARNED TO STOP
WORRYING AND LOVE
TEAM SELF-SELECTION
19. WE CAN FIND A BALANCE
• Respecting the principles of self-determination
• While ensuring that the needs of the teams,
business and your customers are met
And
• Reducing the anxiety and pressure that may be
felt by individuals in the process
20. Team members have
full freedom to move,
form or disband teams
when they choose
Someone “at the top”
has full control on
team membership
and lifecycle
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27. Explore Exploit Sustain Retire
Increase
Serviceable
Addressable
Market
Maximise Return
on Investment
Maximise Profit
Find Product
Market fit
28.
29. • Aligns with our principle that people will be most
engaged and motivated if they have autonomy, mastery
and purpose
• To match people’s skills, preference and motivation to
the available work
• To build a repeatable process to make these kinds of
changes with our people not to them
• It was recommended!
32. 1. Communicate openly and regularly throughout the process
2. Share the range of things we need to achieve and the teams we
need to create to achieve those things
3. Coach everyone through the process of figuring out where they
would prefer to work and why
4. Collaboratively create the new team structure, basing team
membership as much as possible on people's preferences
5. Support new & changing teams to form quickly
38. • Percentage of engineers that were in a team that was their 1st preference:
77% in 2019
83% in 2020
83% in 2021
• Percentage of engineers that were in a team that was their 1st/2nd/3rd preference:
97% in 2019
97% in 2020
98% in 2021
• Percentage of people moving to join a new team:
33% in 2019
34% in 2020
37% in 2021
46. • Reteaming is an established, annual event
• Changing your team has become normal
• We’re better at forming teams and onboarding new team members
• Software delivery performance is unaffected by reteaming
• Good practices and behaviours spread naturally between teams
• The wider development organisation feels more connected and
collaborative
• Our people support the process and we’ve seen benefits to our
employer brand and hiring