Introduction
Back in the '90s, self-managed teams were gaining popularity, but they had a high rate of failure mainly because team members lacked people skills. These ideas of self-managed teams were borrowed by the Agile movement when, in 2001, they formulated a ‘new’ way of working, based on Agile principles. These principles value individuals and interactions over processes and tools, working software over comprehensive documentation, customer collaboration over contract negotiation, and responding to change over following a plan.
For these ideas to work in practice, Agile team members must know something about teamwork, and this means understanding a lot about human behavior and why people do the things they do!
Agile team members are usually composed of highly skilled and knowledgeable workers who strongly value their independence. Some are worth more to an organization than the people who manage them! Many software developers are quite introverted, preferring to interact with their computers rather than people. In my experience, organizations hardly spend any time on people skills and spend no time on the even more difficult concept of what people need to do to ‘self-manage’ into a high-performing team. I’ve had to learn this in the world of experience. I wonder how many readers find themselves in a similar position.
If you look at the Agile website, you’ll find that the emphasis is on ‘engineering best practice’ and tasks rather than team processes. Similarly, many project managers are used to old-school leadership where they are more comfortable with control and the power that goes with it. For Agile IT teams to become high-performing they should immediately spend time helping the team to initiate the process of adaptive learning. This requires a focus on behavioral skills.
The Nature of Work
A starting point for all teams is to understand the nature of their work. One of the best models describing this is the Types of Work Wheel developed by Team Management Systems. Through their research they were able to identify eight distinct ‘Types of Work’ that need to be undertaken by all teams, regardless of their industry. There are important lessons here for our industry of Agile Project Management. The eight work functions are listed below, with the approval of Team Management Systems.
Types of Work Wheel
The Advising function is associated with the gathering of information from all stakeholders and responding quickly to changing requirements. It involves keeping up-to-date with developments inside and outside the organization and sharing advice with others to help them in their work. It requires a transparent flow of knowledge of 'what' is going on and 'where,' and a focus on 'consulting skills' so information can be gathered quickly, accurately and effectively.
