Teamwork

Applicability: Teamwork is not only applicable but essential to all agile methods.

Consequences: Teamwork removes skill silos. In its most efficient implementation all team members will be cross-trained. They will be able to “go to where the work is” and action it regardless of the skills required. The removal of these silos can be politically challenging, as some workers are constrained in terms of what they are allowed to do, or simply do not wish to be cross-trained.

Structure: A team member does not work in isolation, but as part of a team consisting of peers. Each member can therefore action work and monitor the progress of work actioned by others. Team members collaborate in iterative and incremental delivery. They are in a position to monitor their workstream and jointly inspect and adapt the process they jointly follow. They can also raise exceptions by consensus if the tolerance of appropriate variables is exceeded.

Intent: Get people to collaborate on work being actioned so that increments are developed as efficiently as possible

Proverbs:

  • Many hands make light work

  • None of us is as smart as all of us

Also Known As:

  • Collaboration

Motivation: There is value to be found in co-operation and self-organization. Quality improves through peer review and inspection and rework is consequently reduced. Efficiencies of scale can be leveraged as management overhead is less for a self-organizing team than it would be for individual workers.

Implementation: Scrum recognizes both a Development Team, without skill silos, and a larger Scrum Team that includes a Scrum Master and a Product Owner. XP values teamwork greatly and pair programming is a key feature of this. DSDM is more complex and there are around a dozen business, technical, and supporting roles that make up its collaborative model.

See Also: