Agile Class Week 4: Self Organizing Teams

According to the book, Learning Agile by Andrew Stellman, Jennifer Greene, "People on an effective agile team — all pigs — genuinely feel that in order for them to succeed, their project needs to succeed." Scrum teams use the fable of the pig and the chicken. The fable was referenced to define two types of project members by the scrum agile management system: pigs, who are totally committed to the project and accountable for its outcome, and chickens, who consult on the project and are informed of its progress. This was our topic for this week, the meaning of self-organizing teams.

Self-organizing team is a group of motivated individuals, who work together toward a goal, have the ability and authority to take decisions and readily adapt to changing demands. But how can you motivate a team to be commited? From the same book, "That level of commitment can be achieved when the team has the authority to make decisions in order to meet those goals, and everyone has a say in how the project is planned and executed."

Another words that got stuck in my head, "Sunlight is the best disinfectant." A lot of people tend to avoid visibility as they know that this is commensurate with accountability. Openness is one of the Scrum Values which keeps everything about a project visible to everyone to make sure that the team is doing every step correctly.


Source(s):

Learning Agile: Understanding Scrum, XP, Lean, and Kanban