Forming a highly functional Scrum team – Part One

There seems to be a lot of misconception in the agile community as to what ‘self-organizing’ means.  When we talk about teams self-organizing, we are not talking about a group of 50 people in a room deciding how to make up 6-8 scrum teams.  Yes, that can be done, and it can be effective, but the real gist of self-organizing means to allow the already formed team to determine how to get the work done.  Self-organizing means giving the team the autonomy to determine how to complete the work, but often times the teams need to be formed up first.  Although there are many successful case studies of ‘build a team on the fly’ approaches, there is also a lot to be said for forming these teams with a plan.

I spoke at a conference that Esther Derby was also speaking at, and was privileged to hear her talk on team formation.  She made a statement that took me awhile to process when she said that “60% of the success of an agile team lies in the initial formation of the team”, meaning there is a lot to be said for building the team right to start with.  This was at a time that I was really on the self-organizing bandwagon and so I had to really think through this one.  As I did, however, I realized how right she was.  Building the right team from the start, with the right personalities, drive and attitude, and the right mix of skill sets was absolutely critical to the successful teams I have worked with.  Many (most? all?) of the teams I have worked with that were struggling were seeing issues because of their initial formation.  A team of all extroverts with strong opinions will just clash and fight against the tide, while a team of all introverts will be too passive and just flow with the tide.   A team strong in development but weak in testing practices will struggle with quality, and so on.

So, how exactly do you form the A team for an agile environment?  This is more art form than science, but there are steps that can be taken to increase the chance of success.   These steps include skills analysis, personality assessment, and aligning common goals and interests (amongst the other soft skills needed). 

Personality Assessment

Paramount to building a successful team is to understand what type of team mentality you are looking for.  Do you need a hard charging, driven type of team that won’t accept failure (R&D, Skunkworks, etc) or do you need a team that has a high degree of compassion for the user and always keeps the users’ needs first (Support teams) ?  Understanding what type of team you want to end up with is critical; set up your own acceptance criteria for the team so that you have a clear definition of what ‘done’ looks for the team formation.  Compassion for the user, a drive to accomplish the ultra-cool, and a comfort level with a steady, rhythmic cadence are great team personalities to cultivate

The best scrum teams tend to form a personality all their own, based on the sum of the parts, and you can set the team on the path you want by mixing the right blend of personalities on the team.  Because very few team members will have each of the desired qualities, look for members that bring one or more of the desired qualities and show an open attitude towards the others.  Use scenario based questions that will help bring out the candidate’s personality traits you are looking for.  For example, if you are looking for the customer focused personality, ask a question similar to this.  “Imagine you are asked to staff the support desk for a few days, and a customer calls in that really doesn’t understand our product.  How would you help this customer?”.  Based on the answer, try to put the candidate in a difficult situation by stating “yes, but let’s say the option you just described is shot down by your supervisor, or is against company policy, now what?”  Gauging the depth to which the candidate will go towards helping the customer to a solution that works for them and the company is a great indicator as to how deeply they will care about the features being built by the team.

Skills

One of the tenants of the Scrum framework is to have all the needed skills to complete the work on the team so that there are no external dependencies (and other reasons).    But what’s a good mix, and how to identify these team members?  First, don’t go for all superstar team members, the ones that can do anything and everything.  They usually don’t exist and, even if they do, are usually not what you really need.  Look for candidates that have demonstrated a high level of aptitude in learning new technologies rather than the one that has remained an expert in the same technology for many years.  In today’s business world, skill sets need to not only improve, but adapt to the latest and greatest, as well as have a knack for understanding what new technologies are worth pursuing.

Just like with the Personality aspect, make sure you set out a goal for what type of skill sets you want on the team.  If you need to have a high level of quality (medical devices comes to mind) over technical aggressiveness, than purposely build that team skill with a high level of quality driven candidates.  If you are building a fast paced team to research and prototype new products you will obviously want to go towards the candidates that can work within a “good enough” quality approach.  Most teams will be in an environment where quality and speed are equally as important, in which case you are looking to blend candidates of both mindsets together.

If you are building more towards the quality side you can ask questions such as this.  “We are ready to push the Deploy button but have found a defect in our code that can affect the user.  What would you do?”  If the candidate comes back with a ‘”Stop the presses and fix the bug”

Intangibles

Team work is everything in agile environments, and mixing in the right intangibles is so critical to taking a collection of individuals and helping them turn into a team.  I just finished watching “The Internship” (for the second time, good movie), where the main cha racters are accepted into the summer internship program at Google.  The whole movie is based on interns joining a team and having to succeed or fail as a team, the winning team will be hired on full time.  Sure, it’s a movie, and may not be all that close to reality, but I really like how they portrayed looking for ‘that Googliness’ in each potential candidate. 

Looking for these intangibles is, in most cases, the most difficult and the most important part of building a successful team.  Determine what intangibles are important to you by wide scope categories (since most intangibles found in an individual are usually unique) and devise ways that help you see those qualities.  The most important thing to remember is that the search for these intangibles is just as important as any personality or skills assessment you may apply to each potential team member.

What’s Next?

Just like building successful Scrum teams is an ongoing process, this blog will be a series of entries, each dealing with the next step in this journey.  Look for the next post that discusses pulling the team together, aka, Day One of the new team.