Before you transition to agile, you are accustomed to functional roles, people who “owned the code,” and time to bake quality in. In agile we have cross-functional teams, collective code and quality ownership, and a collective notion of “done.” It sounds like we magically become a big happy family, doesn’t it? Teams don’t just become self-organized cross-functional happy teams. They have to work to get that way. In this talk, Johanna will help you understand some of the challenges teams face, and how agile practices help. She’ll also help you understand some of the practices that don’t help, such as multitasking and distributed teams. We’ll talk about some models for scaling agile, such as Scrum of Scrums, and a network model of scaling. No matter what problems you encounter on your agile team, retrospectives are the one way the team can help itself solve its own problems.

1. AgileTeams and Collaboration:
What’s New About Agile?
Johanna Rothman
New: Hiring GeeksThat Fit
@johannarothman
www.jrothman.com
jr@jrothman.com
781-641-4046

2. © 2013 Johanna Rothman
Johanna’s General Agile Picture
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3. © 2013 Johanna Rothman
AgileTeams
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Contain all the roles
required
5-7 people is the sweet
spot
Delivers value every
iteration

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Who AreTheseTeams?
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HowTeamsWork
Working agreements
“How we do things here”
What “done” means to us
What our values are
Social contract among
members of the team
Behaviors, not practices
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6. © 2013 Johanna Rothman
Areas for Discussion forTeam
Working Agreements
Values:
Sustainable pace
We have core hours and we respect them
Working agreements
What done means
Timebox everything
Respect the timebox
Ground rules:
One person talking
Group norms:
How we treat meeting times
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Team Chartering
Project charters for the
project
Vision: brief and
compelling:Where are we
headed?
Release criteria:
What does done mean
for the project?
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Teams Mature overTime
Two significant models of
teams to know about:
Tuckman
Hackman
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Tuckman’s Model
Forming
Storming
Norming
Performing
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KeepTeamsTogether Once the
Project is Complete
Agile team members learn
how to collaborate with
each other.That learning is
expensive. Don’t waste the
investment.
Flow work through the
teams
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11. © 2013 Johanna Rothman
The Journey to Self-Organizing
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Who is Responsible for
Manager led
teams
Self-directed
teams
Self-managing
teams
Self-governing
teams
Set overall direction Manager Manager Manager Team
Design the team and its
organizational context
Manager Manager Team Team
Monitor and manage
work process & progress
Manager
Team, with
the
exception of
hiring/firing
Team Team
Execute team task Team Team Team Team
Adapted from Hackman’s Leading Teams: Setting the Stage for Great Performances, Harvard Business Press

12. © 2013 Johanna Rothman
Hackman
Teams evolve from
manager-led to self-
organizing teams
Very few teams start as self-
managing teams
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13. © 2013 Johanna Rothman
No Multitasking in Agile
People work on one
project at a time
People work on one feature
at at time
People work on one task at
a time
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Approaches to Manage Interruptions
or High Priority Requests
Leave room in the
iteration; don’t fill up on
features
Urgent queue
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High Emphasis on Collaboration
Team works together
Swarming: everyone works
together to move one
feature forward to done
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High Emphasis on Facilitation
We facilitate each other’s
work with feedback and
coaching, meta-feedback
and meta-coaching
Not a manager’s job
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Feedback and Meta-Feedback
Not evaluation or praise; feedback
When you use a peer-to-peer feedback approach:
Create an opening
Describe behavior or results
State the impact
Make a request
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Coaching and Meta-Coaching
Coaching is much more
than teaching
Offering options with
support
Example: Rule of Three
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Many Ideas About How to Scale
Agile
Scrum-of-Scrums
SAFe
My ideas: Small world
networks
Choose what fits your
context
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Inspect & Adapt with Retrospectives
Periodically review the
team’s process
At the end of an iteration
At the end of a significant
deliverable
Often!
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Re-evaluate the Projects Periodically
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Distributed vs Co-located
Want co-located cross-
functional teams
Can manage with
distributed cross-
functional teams
Be wary of trying to do
agile with anything else
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23. © 2013 Johanna Rothman
Johanna’s General Agile Picture
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What Questions DoYou Have?
or,
What challenges do you see where
you work?
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25. © 2013 Johanna Rothman
Let’s Stay inTouch...
Pragmatic Manager:
www.jrothman.com/pragmaticmanager
Please link with me on LinkedIn
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