Agile Teams: Not Your Typical Working Groups
Agile teams from the perspective of a small group theory
The Agile transformation of many businesses is ongoing, while many more queue up for the inevitable change of their culture and working practices.
The building block of an agile organization is the self-organized, empowered team of responsible and motivated individuals with diverse skill sets.
As with many other aspects of Agile, it is easy to state that teams must be independent, flexible, and accountable. It is much more complicated to explain what it takes to form or join such a team.
First, we will examine the Agile teams from a little group theory perspective.
Second, we will identify what makes Agile teams different from legacy working groups in which we participated.
Lastly, we will look at the motivation factors of Agile teamwork, not forgetting about its flipside.
Specific attributes of small groups
A small group unites three or more individuals focused on the same task completion.
Small groups have specific attributes, forms of communication, structures, and roles.
Forming a high-performing Agile team is possible by understanding all that.
Size of a small group
A small group requires at least three people, but the upper limit depends on the group's purpose.
The number of group members should be limited to those instrumental in serving that purpose.
Small groups with too many members are hard to manage. Each member dramatically increases the number of dyadic connections within the group. Eventually, scheduling and communications become increasingly difficult.
The group structure
The structure of small groups differs as much as the size does. However, the typical ones are "Circle" and "Wheel."
The "Circle" can be an excellent structure for completing a task. Each subsequent member will progressively build on the others' work, e.g., co-creating some research.
The "Wheel" is a valuable structure when an expert or a leader needs to review and approve work at each step before passing it along to other group members.
The hybrid realization of both these structures may work well in the Agile environment, where all members act relatively independently yet require a certain level of orchestration from the Scrum master.
Interdependence of small groups
Interdependence means group members share a common purpose, get evaluated jointly, and succeed or fail.
This is when the weakest link affects all the rest. Some people don't like teamwork for that very purpose, as they don't want to lose control and get judged for the failures of others.
Frequent meetings are another sign of interdependence since everyone needs to get aligned on the group's progress and jointly overcome individual deviations from the schedule.
Shared identity
Group identity is also formed around a shared goal that created the group.
It leads to a building of trust, which can also positively influence productivity and members' satisfaction.
Types of small groups
Groups can be task- or relation-centric.
Relational-centric groups are formed to promote interpersonal connections and focus on quality interactions that contribute to the well-being of group members.
Task-centric groups can be distinguished as working groups and teams.
Working groups
Working groups appeared well before the hype wave around Agile.
Most of us happened to get involved in those on multiple occasions and, therefore, should know their main attributes:
- Focused individual leadership.
- Individual work packages, accountability, and external task delegation are permitted.
- Teamwork mostly in regular status meetings.
- Extensive involvement of watchers and facilitators (e.g., PMO.)
- Subordination to the larger workstream.
- The group's purpose repeats the broader organizational goals.
- KPIs primarily assess the indirect influence on broader groups or functions, e.g., sales planning workgroup measuring stock turnover.
- Complex multi-level reporting and communication.
Teams
The team shares the work, leadership, performance, and decision-making.
Unlike the working group, the team must work together continuously (not just in the status meetings) to succeed.
The team must refrain from delegating their work to experts, consultants, or occasional colleagues dragged into the initiative to fulfill some of it.
Team attributes are:
- Shared leadership roles.
- Individual and mutual accountability with no external delegation and collective work products.
- The specific purpose is something that only the team can deliver.
- Continuous teamwork.
- High level of independence with a reporting line straight to the initiative's top management (e.g., Program Director).
- Direct KPIs assess the collective work products of the team.
- Light reporting is mainly related to the team itself.
The team must continuously beat deadlines, so it cannot afford work duplication, heavy reporting, or multi-level subordination. Therefore, team members must engage one another in open-ended discussions and active problem-solving.
After group discussions, team members should assign and take on responsibilities and deadlines, thus developing individual and collective accountability.
Team members may pass the leadership hat depending on the task and current priorities.
The above is called self-organization, which is the key to successful work in the Agile environment.
Motivation in Agile teams is not a given
Another exciting study explains the motivating and discouraging factors of working in an Agile team.
Researchers analyzed the following ceremonies regarding team members' motivation and discouragement factors: iteration planning, daily stand-up, and iteration retrospective.
Agile team members find encouragement in
- variety of work,
- empowerment and responsibility,
- sense of belonging and supportive relationships,
- participation and involvement,
- feedback,
- recognition,
- trust,
- clear goals,
- autonomy,
- visibility and transparency of task progression.
You may find clear connections between the team attributes explained earlier and the factors mentioned above regarding members' motivation.
At the same time, the flip side of these ceremonies was
- stress due to constant time pressure and responsibility for the overall team progress,
- frequency and length of meetings, which become more of a burden in lengthy projects,
- continued use of similar practices,
- complex or fragmented tasks.
Agile teamwork requires morale and motivation support.
Once again, this study proves that Agile is not a magic bullet or one-size-fits-all working practice.
On the other hand, working groups may be more suitable for simple tasks or projects where individual contributions can be easily combined without the need for frequent coordination and collaboration.
Agile practices may cause difficulties, so the team must control and change how the methods are implemented.
Agile methodology application creates a complex work environment where teams must acquire specific attributes that make them self-organized.
Working groups should not masquerade as Agile teams when some companies try to facelift their legacy settings.
Besides establishing functional Agile teams, it is vital to constantly monitor their members' morale. Agile by itself cannot guarantee personal motivation and total productivity.
Case studies on Agile team success
Spotify: Scaling Agile
Industry: Music Streaming
Challenge: Rapid growth required continuous innovation and scaling of teams.
Solution: Spotify implemented an Agile framework called the “Spotify Model,” which focuses on autonomous squads (small, cross-functional teams) aligned around a specific mission. To maintain alignment across teams, Spotify introduced concepts like guilds, chapters, and tribes.
Outcome: The model allowed for rapid innovation and scaling while maintaining a high level of autonomy and ownership among teams. This contributed to Spotify's ability to remain a leader in the competitive streaming industry.
Solution: Spotify implemented an Agile framework called the “Spotify Model,” which focuses on autonomous squads (small, cross-functional teams) aligned around a specific mission. To maintain alignment across teams, Spotify introduced concepts like guilds, chapters, and tribes.
Outcome: The model allowed for rapid innovation and scaling while maintaining a high level of autonomy and ownership among teams. This contributed to Spotify's ability to remain a leader in the competitive streaming industry.
ING Bank: Agile Transformation
Industry: Banking
Challenge: Needed to improve speed to market and customer focus amidst growing competition.Solution: ING adopted an Agile transformation at scale, reorganizing it into smaller, multidisciplinary squads similar to the Spotify model. Each squad was responsible for a particular customer journey or product.
Outcome: The transformation led to a 40% increase in the time spent on innovation and a significant reduction in the time required to bring new products to market. The increased focus on user needs also improved customer satisfaction.
Bosch: Implementing Agile in Manufacturing
Industry: Manufacturing
Challenge: Traditional project management approaches are needed to deliver products more quickly in an increasingly competitive market.Solution: Bosch transitioned from a traditional waterfall approach to Agile across their engineering teams. They adopted Scrum and Kanban, empowering teams to make decisions and collaborate more effectively.
Outcome: The shift to Agile reduced development time by 25%, leading to faster time-to-market and better alignment with customer needs.
More information on this and other exciting topics can be found in "The Technology Procurement Handbook." It represents 23 years of experience, billions of dollars worth of successful sourcing projects, and 1000s of hours spent on research, analysis, and content creation for the most demanding professional readers.
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