Forming an Agile team

Before you form an Agile Team

Asses the agile knowledge and mindset of your team, which is a way to check how well the team knows and follows the agile way of working. It helps to see how agile the team is and what they can do better. It also helps to make the team work better together and with others.

 Some of the things that can be checked for agile knowledge and mindset are:

• How the team’s goals, vision, and culture match the agile values and principles

• How the team talks, works and shares feedback with each other and with the people they work for

• How the team makes things that the customers want and need often and in small steps

• How the team works on its own and decides how to work together

• How the team changes, learns, and improves their work

By doing a simple knowledge and mindset assessment for any team, one can help the team to be more agile and do better work.

Form an Agile Team 

1. Learn & Help Team Learn about agile values and principles: All need to understand what agile means, how it helps you work better, and what your role is in an agile team, get into the depth of each value and principle.

2. Coach team to follow the vision: You need to look for a team that has a common goal, a clear vision, and a good culture, if not start from scratch and help them understand the purpose. Sometimes you may need to have the skills and experience that the team needs, but not always.

3. Talk and work with the team members. You need to be open, honest, and respectful with your teammates. You need to share your thoughts, feedback, and issues. You also need to listen to others and learn from them and likewise expect the same from them, but you mean to  

4. Change and improve your work. You need to be flexible and willing to change your work based on customer feedback and market trends. You also need to learn from your errors and make your work better.

Grow an Agile Team

To assess your team’s agile knowledge and mindset:

• Pick a way to measure it: Use an existing or a custom way.

• List the agile from Agile Manifesto to assess: Use a list, a form, or a survey.

• Find a way to measure it: Do it alone (1:1 interview), with others, or with an outsider. Use talking, activities, watching, or online tools.

• Plan to do it with the team or organization: Tell them why and how. Get and look at the information. Share and talk about the results. Make and do a plan for getting better.

• Do it and consistently follow up: Be private, friendly, and helpful. Check and see how things are going.

Tuckman Stages of Team Development:

You may also use Tuckman Stages of Team development are four phases that teams go through when they start working together: Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing (FSNP). These stages can help you understand and improve your team’s agile knowledge and mindset.

• Forming: The team is new and unsure of their goals and roles, and might need clear guidance and direction. You can help them by clarifying the agile values and principles, the product vision and goal, and the team expectations.

• Storming: The team is testing their boundaries and getting to know each other, team usually has conflicts and disagreements. They need support and feedback. You can help them by facilitating communication and collaboration, resolving issues, and building trust.

• Norming: The team is becoming more comfortable and familiar with each other and their processes, the team have more harmony and agreement. All they need is autonomy and empowerment. You can help them by encouraging self-organization and shared leadership, providing tools and resources, and celebrating successes.

• Performing: The team is working well together and delivering value to the customers, we need to infuse more creativity and innovation. Try to challenge and focus on improvement. You can help them by fostering a culture of learning and adaptation, seeking feedback from customers and stakeholders, and embracing change.

WATCH THE SIGNS, in different stages:

• Forming: Your team is like strangers in an elevator. They are nice, but not very close and may have many questions and need guidance. They are not sure what they are doing or why they are doing it.

• Storming: Your team is like kids in a playground. They are loud, emotional, and sometimes mean and might fight with each other and the leaders when they have different ideas and tastes. They don’t play well together or make much progress.

• Norming: Your team is like friends in a club. They are friendly, respectful, and helpful, and may have common interests and rules; mostly they would rust and understand each other. They play well together and make some progress.

• Performing: Your team is like stars in a band. They are talented, creative, and confident while they have a shared vision and passion, they may express freedom and flexibility. They rock together with greater purpose.

Agile Anti-patterns

Agile anti-patterns are bad ways of doing things that seem good at first but end up causing problems. They are different from just bad practices because:

• They are common ways of doing things that look like they work but they don’t.

• There are better ways of doing things that are known and proven.

Some examples of agile anti-patterns are :

• Budgeting as a leash: This makes the teams feel less trusted and free and creates more paperwork and waste.

• Report obsession: The manager wants to get reports all the time instead of joining the events, like the Sprint Reviews. This goes against the agile idea of talking to people more than using tools and reduces the chances of getting feedback and working together.

• Steering as micromanaging: The manager keeps having the same meetings every two weeks to make sure the team will do everything they planned. This ignores the agile idea of changing plans when needed and forces a top-down bossy approach.

• Team building as a dictatorship: The manager decides who joins or leaves the team without asking the team what they think. This hurts the team’s feelings, teamwork, and results and goes against the agile value of respect.

• Review as approval: Review is a kind of approval process where stakeholders say yes or no to features. This creates a waterfall mindset and makes the team and the product less flexible and adaptable.

• No manager in the trenches: Stakeholders don’t come to the Sprint Review. This shows a lack of interest, support, and responsibility from the management and takes away valuable feedback and alignment from the team.

You can avoid these agile anti-patterns by using a systems thinking approach, which means understanding how different parts of an organization work together and affect each other, and how they help achieve a common goal. A systems thinking approach can help you find the real causes of problems, not just the symptoms, and design solutions that are whole, effective, and lasting.

 Some ways to use a systems thinking approach are:

• Drawing the system: Using tools like value stream mapping, causal loop diagrams, or system dynamics models to show how things are right now, find where things get stuck, how things affect each other, how long things take, and where you can make changes.

• Trying out solutions: Using techniques like hypothesis-driven development, prototyping, or A/B testing to check if your ideas are right, measure what happens, and learn from mistakes.

• Working with stakeholders: Including everyone who matters in defining problems, designing solutions, making changes, and checking results. Creating ways to share information, insights, and learnings.

• Working with stakeholders: Including everyone who matters in defining problems, designing solutions, making changes, and checking results. Creating ways to share information, insights, and learnings.

• Always improving: Using practices like retrospectives, kaizen events, or gemba walks to review how things are going, find ways to improve them, make changes, and see what happens.

I hope this helps you understand what agile anti-patterns are, how they go against agile values, principles, and mindset, and how to avoid them using a systems thinking approach