How come some teams are more efficient than others? What needs to be in place for agile methods to work?

1. How to build and be a part of an efficient team
Kjell Ljøstad

2. Who am I?

3. The Agile Manifesto
Individuals and interactions
over processes and tools
Working software
over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration
over contract negotiation
Responding to change
over following a plan

4. The core values of agile
Scrum
• Focus
• Courage
• Openness
• Commitment
• Respect
Kanban
• Understanding
• Agreement
• Respect
• Leadership
• Flow
• Customer Focus
• Transparency
• Balance
• Collaboration

5. How
do you
build an
efficient team?

6. The findings of William Muir
-A study on productivity:
He selected just an
average flock, and he let
it alone for six
generations.
Then he created a flock
of the most productive
chickens, and each
generation, only the
most productive was
allowed to breed.

7. SIX GENERATIONS PASSED
WHAT DID HE FIND?

8. The first group were all
plump and fully
feathered and egg
production had
increased dramatically.
In the second group, all
but three were dead.
They'd pecked the rest
to death.
The individually productive chickens had only achieved their success by
suppressing the productivity of the rest.

9. What does science say?

10. Simulating
anti-terror group.
• Harvard
• 51 teams of 4 people each
• Mission:
• Search through available information and find
out who is planning to do what and where.
• In advance:
• Did tests to find out who had special talents at
recognising faces or remembering written
information.
• Some teams had two experts and two non-
experts.
• The rest had four non-experts.

11. What does science say?
The groups with two experts
that shared information, and
that let everybody actively
take part, did best.
The groups with two experts
that did not share
information, and did not
collaborate, did worst.
Even worse than the groups
with no experts!!

12. What does science say?
• University of Illinois
• 760 students
• Groups of 1-5 participants
• 10 tries to guess the right order of ten
encoded envelopes.
• There HAD TO be consensus within
the group before each guess.

13. What does science say?
• Result
• The worst group of at least three participants did better
than the best individual.

14. Why do some teams deliver high performance
while other teams struggle?
From a broad variety of
projects and industries
they collected data with
electronic sensors on
their social behavior.
The data showed that
the most important
predictor of a team’s
success was its
communication
patterns.
MIT’s Human Dynamics Laboratory

15. The Comunication Patterns

16. What impacts the performace?
The team’s energy
level
Can be measured
by the amount
and type of
exchanges;
The level of
engagement
Defined by the
energy
distribution
amongst
members;
The willingness to
explore new
possibilities,
solutions and ideas.
The
communications
between
members and
with other
individuals,
within and
outside the
organization.

17. Does size matter?
The effect per
added member
is not linear as
the size of a
group increases.
For software
development it
seems that 6 is
an optimal size
of a group.
Oh,
YES

18. Why isn´t bigger better?
A phenomenon that
occurs in a group as
its size increases.
• The individual effort
goes down.
• The need for
coordination goes up.
The
Ringelmann-
effect:

19. The Bystander Effect:
When more than one person can
take responsibility, the chance of
anyone taking responsibility
decreases dramatically.
It is not my job
Someone else must be
more qualified
I don´t want to make a
fool of myself
I don´t want to get in
trouble

20. Increased need for coordination

21. A study from Quantitative Software Management
(QSM)
A study from
2005:
More that 4000 projects
in their database.
Included 564 projects
from 2002 – 2005.
Looked at small teams
(less than five) and big
teams (more than twenty)
On average in a
project with
around 100.000
lines of code:
Big team: 8,92 calendar
months
Small team: 9,12 calendar
months
What about the
cost?
$1.800.000 and 178 man
months for the big teams.
$245.000 and 24,5 man
months for the small
teams.

22. It seems that the best way to
solve complex problems is
through a small and diverse
group of people where everybody
contributes actively.

23. Relational Skills

24. What are Relational Skills?
relations
between
people.
establish,
maintain
and
develop
A set of
skills that
helps you

25. What is a relation?
Dangerous
Exhausting
Respect
Friendly
Friendship
Love

26. What is the foundation?
A positive view on
humanity
A quest to find the
good in other
people
To get the best out
of every colleague
Cultivate the
positive
Tone down the bad
To actively seek
information about
the other persons
life and history

27. What builds a relation?
Relational
Initiative
The ability
to show
positive
emotions.
To
understand
the whole of
the other
person.
To
understand
what
motivates
the other
person

28. 24-hour human

29. The Pillars of a Great Team
Trust
Willingness
to show
weakness
Passion and
Honesty
Ability to
engage
whole team
in
dicussions
Commitment
Ability to
extecute
what is
agreed
Accountability
Holding
each other
accountable
Attention to
results
The teams
results
before ego

30. The Pillars of a Great Team
Trust
Willingness
to show
weakness
Passion and
Honesty
Ability to
engage
whole team
in
dicussions
Commitment
Ability to
extecute
what is
agreed
Accountability
Holding
each other
accountable
Attention to
results
The teams
results
before ego

31. What is trust?
5 dimensions
Integrity
• Consistently
demonstrating
honesty and
truthfulness
Competence
• Possessing
technical
expertise,
knowledge and
strong
interpersonal
skills
Consistency
• Having strong
credibility,
exercising good
judgement in
handling
situations and
operating with a
degree of
predictability
Loyalty
• Demonstrating a
willingness to
protect and
positively
represent teams
and individuals
Openness
• Showing a
genuine
willingness to
share ideas and
information
freely and
openly

32. How do you create trust?
Get everyone
in the team to
know each
other
Dare to be open
about your own
weaknesses, lack of
competence or
doubts.
Behave
according to
the five
dimensions

33. The Pillars of a Great Team
Trust
Willingness
to show
weakness
Passion and
Honesty
Ability to
engage
whole team
in
dicussions
Commitment
Ability to
extecute
what is
agreed
Accountability
Holding
each other
accountable
Attention to
results
The teams
results
before ego

34. The Alternative: Collective stupidity

35. How do you create an engaged
dialogue?
3 forms of conversation:
Dialog
• Equality, win-win, questions
Discussion
• Verbal fight, few questions.
Debate
• Verbal dog fight. Only claims.

36. How do we listen?
Intention listening
• Intention
• Message
• Wisdom
Correction
listening
• Details
• Formulations
• Imperfection

37. How about a structured dialogue?
Eduard
de Bono
Information known or
needed.
Feelings, hunches and
intuition.
Judgment -- the devil's
advocate, why something
may not work.
Brightness and
optimism
Possibilities,
alternatives and new
ideas.
Used to manage the
thinking process

38. The Pillars of a Great Team
Trust
Willingness
to show
weakness
Passion and
Honesty
Ability to
engage
whole team
in
dicussions
Commitment
Ability to
extecute
what is
agreed
Accountability
Holding
each other
accountable
Attention to
results
The teams
results
before ego

39. Are we too nice?
We tolerate
counterproductive
behavior
We let people make mistakes instead
of speaking up
It is OK with delays in the
project
Counterproductive
behavior creates
irritation and
discourages the whole
group
This may lead to the best people
changing jobs

40. Who is responsible?
It is everyone's
responsibility to
ensure that
work is carried
out
It is everyone's
responsibility
to fix things
that does not
work

41. “Great teams do not hold back with one another.
They are unafraid to air their dirty laundry. They
admit their mistakes, their weaknesses, and their
concerns without fear of reprisal.”
- Patrick Lencioni

42. For feedback to have
the right effect, you
need a positive
relation

43. Summary
Assemble a
group with
complementary
profiles.
Take time to
make the group
know each
other.
Work
consciously on
how the group
communicates,
listens and
motivates each
other.
Make decisions
based on
consensus and
commitment.
Build a culture
for direct and
honest
feedback

44. How to take things forward?
On your own:
Draw your own
relational map
Who are you depending
on to do your job?
Which relations do you
need to work on to
improve?
With your team
Sit down and spend some time telling each other about your 24-hour-human

45. QUESTIONS?

46. E-mail: kjell@webstep.no
Twitter: @kljostad
Blog: spedespirer.com