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Agile teams: roles and responsibilities

schaueho
February 07, 2014

Agile teams: roles and responsibilities

Some coaching material on how agile teams collaborate.

schaueho

February 07, 2014
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  1. AGILE TEAMS
    ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES
    Holger Schauer
    2014-01-22

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  2. Persons vs. roles
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  3. Responsible etc.
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  4. Why roles and
    responsibilities?
    I want to be
    an expert!
    Look, I’m worth
    something!
    Let me focus on
    my work!
    I know what
    others want
    from me!
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  5. Why roles and
    responsibilities?
    We know who to
    talk to!
    We know who is
    to blame!
    Everyone is the
    specialist for
    something!
    Maybe someone
    would like this job!
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    H.Schauer “Agile teams: roles and responsibilities”

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  6. Culture eats process for breakfast
    team individual
    contribution expertise
    improvement analysis
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  7. Somebody needs to …
    …have a vision of what is needed
    …say what needs to be build and when
    …clarify what needs to be build and why
    …design how to use this thing
    …have an idea on how to make it work and do it
    …verify that it is working and fits the needs
    …run it (sell it etc.)
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  8. Teams vs. groups
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  9. Tuckman’s model
    Forming
    Storming
    Norming
    Performing
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  10. Groups are not teams
     Roles and responsibilities don’t matter in
    performing teams.
     Corollary: When you don’t know what is
    expected of you, you are not working as a
    team.
    2014-02-10
    H.Schauer “Agile teams: roles and responsibilities” 10

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  11. Individuals&interactions over
    processes & tools
     Business people and developers must
    work together daily throughout the project.
     Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the
    environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job
    done.
     The most efficient and effective method of
    conveying information to and within a development
    team is face-to-face conversation.
     The best architectures, requirements, and designs
    emerge from self-organizing teams.
    from agilemanifesto.org
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  12. Agile teams
     Contain all the roles required
     5-7 people is the sweet spot
     Deliver value every iteration
     Scrum Teams are self-organizing
    and cross-functional.
     Agile teams are cross-functional
    teams […] The team is responsible for self-
    management. (Scaled Agile Framework)
     … similar in other agile and lean methods …
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  13. Members of cross-functional teams
     Cross-functional teams have all competencies
    needed to accomplish the work without depending
    on others not part of the team.
     A generalizing specialist is someone who:
     Has one or more technical specialties
    (e.g. Project Management, UX/design, Java) […]
     Actively seeks to gain new skills
    in both their existing specialties as well as in other areas, including both
    technical and domain areas.
    Cf. Scott Ambler, “Generalizing specialists”
    The Scrum Guide, scrum.org
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  14. Self-organization
     … is a process where some form of global
    order or coordination arises out of the local
    interactions between the components of an
    initially disordered system.
     This process is spontaneous: it is not directed
    or controlled by any agent or subsystem
    inside or outside of the system;
     however, the laws followed by the process
    and its initial conditions may have been
    chosen or caused by an agent.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-organization
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  15. Three levels of self-organization
     Self-organized
     E.g. software development team
     Self-selected (= self-designed)
     Self-organized and system selects its own members
     E.g. founders of a start-up business
     Self-directed (= self-governed)
     Self-selected and no direction outside the system
     E.g. criminal organization
    cf. Jurgen Appelo’s “Dolt’s guide to self-organization”
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  16. Self-organize to what?
    cf. Jurgen Appelo’s “Dolt’s guide to self-organization”
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  17. Boundaries and guidance
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  18. … by managers and leaders
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    H.Schauer “Agile teams: roles and responsibilities” 18

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  19. 3 pillars of team work
    Team member
    • engagement,
    motivation
    • ability to make
    contacts
    • ability to take
    criticism
    • ability to learn
    • reliability
    • tolerance
    Inner structure
    • internal goals
    • rules
    • transparent
    communication
    • clear leadership
    • cooperative
    decision making
    • feeling of “we”
    context
    • goals
    • communication
    • infos
    • support
    • degree of
    freedom
    • supporting tools
    • praise
    • clear boundaries
    Cf. Dieter Rösner
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  20. Collaboration
     Everyone works together to move one task
    forward to done
    cf. Johanna Rothman “Agile teams and collaboration”
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  21. Enable collaboration
     Shared understanding of …
     … how we do things here
     … what our values are
     Visibility
     Which tasks need to move forward?
     Which tasks are moving forward?
     Who is working on it?
     Who needs help?
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  22. Lather, rinse, repeat
    Figure out
    what to do
    next
    Start
    working
    on it
    together
    Help each
    other out
    as needed
    Finish it
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  23. Facilitation
     We facilitate each other’s work with feedback
    and coaching, meta-feedback and meta-
    coaching
     Not evaluation or praise, feedback:
     Create an opening
     Describe behavior
    or results
     State the impact
     Make a request
    Observable
    behavior
    Feedback
    cf. Johanna Rothman “Agile teams and collaboration”
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  24. But …
     “I don’t know how to do this”
     Could you get help from the team?
     “I don’t know what needs to be done”
     How can you find out?
     “I don’t have time to do this”
     Does this have priority or not?
     “I don’t know if I should do this”
     Can the team help you?
     “Somebody else told me I should do this”
     Is the team self-organized?
     “Somebody else told me I have no time to do this”
     Does this have priority or not?
     “this”: some task / activity to be done
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  25. Transition to self-organization
     Roles don’t matter as long as the team members
    know what they need to do
     Roles can help during transition to self-
    organization
     Avoid the obstacles of sticking to roles and
    responsibility definitions
     e.g. blame-free post mortems: move from “what / who
    caused this” to “how can we avoid this next time”?
     e.g. help each other out in case of lack of knowledge /
    time
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  26. Roles and tasks in agile teams
     Many tasks are the same as in non-agile teams
     e.g. designing, testing, developing, …
     Some are: planning, requirements management, …
     Role names might differ
     e.g. Scrum: Product owner, Scrum master, …
     e.g. XP: Customer on-site, developer, tracker, …
     e.g. DAD: Primary roles such as Stakeholder, Team
    member, Team lead, Product owner, Architecture owner
    and Secondary roles such as Specialist, Domain expert,
    Technical expert, Independent tester, Integrator
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  27. Team organization complexities
     Co-located vs. distributed teams
     Component vs. feature teams
     Scaling the product owner
     Decision making
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  28. Co-location makes it easier
     Co-location allows for easy and quick exchanges
    in a team
     Just ask or talk with the guy needed
     You know when the guy is available
     Simple tools can be used (boards, etc.)
     Working together comes naturally
     Benefits of face-to-face communication
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  29. What is distribution anyway?
     Distribution can come in various forms
     Geographical distribution
     Organizational distribution
     A simple definition:
     Distributed teams are teams that have something
    preventing them from collaborating in person and
    face to face. (by Tom Wise, leadingagile.com)
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  30. Distributed teams complexities
     Increased organizational effort
     determine time slots for communication
     determine who needs to be communicated with
     “natural” boundaries occur
     language barriers
     cultural differences
     “them” over there vs. “us” here
     groups vs. teams (of teams)
     Too much indirect communication
     Fact: Projects done by small, co-located teams are
    way more successful
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  31. Higher bandwidth is better
    Email
    Phone
    Face-2-face
     Face to face (plus whiteboards etc.)
     High resolution video on large screen plus great sound
    that is always on
     Bad video and bad sound that’s sparely used due to
    extra costs
     Messengers, chats, electronic whiteboards
     E-Mail, ticketing systems
     Wikis, documents
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  32. Minimizing impact
     Bring everybody together physically in a single
    location as early as possible
     Meet physically with everybody every so often
     Celebrate major achievements together
     Invest in good video conferencing and
    first-class audio systems / phones
     Use electronic tools mainly to record / track
    decisions, not as main communication tools
     Enable non-work communication
    (chat, social media …)
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  33. Collaborate: delegate
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  34. Collaborate: network
    cf. Johanna Rothman
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  35. Component vs. feature teams
     Components are typically technical systems
     Features often cut across components/systems
     Components are communication boundaries
     „not my concern“ / „not invented here“
     Same concept might be handled / implemented /
    named differently in the various systems.
     A feature might have varying impact on the different
    systems, i.e. more or less work.
     Integration needs require alignment of teams, progress
    and solutions.
     Please note: this is Organizational distribution!
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  36. The agile product owner
    adapted from Roman Pichler’s “Product owner on one page”
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  37. Scrum: Product Owner
     … is responsible for maximizing the value of the product.
     … is responsible for managing the Backlog.
     clearly expressing Product Backlog items
     ordering the items in the Product Backlog to best achieve goals and missions
     optimizing the value of the work the Development Team performs
     ensuring that the Product Backlog is visible, transparent, and clear to all, and shows
    what the Scrum Team will work on next
     ensuring the Development Team understands items in the Product Backlog to the
    level needed.
     The PO may do the above work, or have the development Team do it.
    The PO remains accountable.
     The Product Owner is one person, not a committee.
     For the Product Owner to succeed, the entire organization must respect
    his or her decisions.
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  38. Scaling the PO: problem space
     the “single wrenchable neck”
     It’s not only about working with multiple teams
     Too many requirements for one person
     Too many stakeholders need to be handled
     No single person can be a domain expert in all areas in a
    large project
     Solution space is too large
     “if you haven’t come up with at least 3 options to solve a
    problem, you don’t really understand it”
     Multiply by number of requirements
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  39. Scaling the PO
     Use the team
     Have the team work with the customer
     The team should build up domain expertise
    ( team stability over time)
     Hear the team’s opinion on planned features
     Delegate (some) decisions to the team ( solutions)
     Work with other teams / POs
     e.g. Scrum of Scrums
     build a community / tribe of Product Owners for
    getting feedback / help
     easier with fewer dependencies
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  40. Scaling the PO: e.g. SAFe
     Product Owner per Team (“lower-case” p)
     Product Manager per product (“upper-case” P)
     works with Portfolio Management
     determines business objectives
     owns the program vision
     participates in release planning
     maintains the product roadmap […]
     Program Portfolio Management
     Epic owners for business and architectural Epics
     decides about investment themes […]
     Collaborate via “Delegate” (not entirely, ART)
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  41. Decision making: what is needed
     Requirement decisions
     What should we build?
     When should we build what?
     depend on business objectives
     require understanding of problem domain
     require understanding of value
     Solution decisions
     require understanding of outcome
     require understanding of risk
     require understanding of dependencies
     require understanding of effort
     depend on budget
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  42. Requirement decisions: problems
     Lack of knowledge (“I don’t understand”)
     Ask or bring in the domain experts / customer
     Ask the team
     Gather data, light-weight analysis
     Lack of empowerment (“Too many powerful
    stakeholders have too many opinions”)
     Defend your clear-cut opinion, provide evaluation
     Organize a decision among stakeholders
     Use a non-agile approach
     FUD: Fear, uncertainty and doubt
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  43. Breaking the vicious circle
     Get feedback as early as possible
     Ask people to give feedback (stakeholders,
    customers, team …)
     Get data (from existing statistics, use A/B tests …)
     Decide in the presence of uncertainty
     Learn along the way (see above)
     Remember that we intend to …
     Correct mistakes as early as possible
     Don’t miss the “Last responsible moment“
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  44. 2014-02-10 44
    H.Schauer “Agile teams: roles and responsibilities”
     Contact me:
     Email: Holger Schauer
     www.find-method.de
     plus.google.com/+HolgerSchauer

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  45. Picture references
     Miners, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-13287-0001,_Bergarbeiter,_Arbeitsbesprechung.jpg, CC-BY-SA 3.0,
    Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-13287-0001 / CC-BY-SA
     Trial, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-31316-
    003,_Berlin,_Proze%C3%9F_gegen_Agenten_vor_dem_Obersten_Gericht.jpg, CC-BY-SA 3.0, German Federal Archives
     Sasha Lobo, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sascha_Lobo_in_Berlin.jpg, CC-BY-SA 3.0, Ronniegrob
     Bored, http://www.hackcollege.com/blog/2010/07/14/three-tips-to-making-the-best-of-your-boring-internship.html, CC-BY-SA 2.0, sunshinecity on
    flickr.com
     Team, http://www.flickr.com/photos/28990363@N05/3385718581/, CC-BY-SA 2.0, paddynapper on flickr.com
     Group, http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/2013/11/11/facilitating-a-wikipedia-editing-session-the-solo13-experience/, CC-BY-SA , Toni Sant
     Cells, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bone_marrow_WBC.JPG , CC-BY-SA 3.0, Bob J. Galindo
     Heart, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wiki_Heart_Antomy_Ties_van_Brussel.jpg, CC-BY-SA 3.0, Tvanbr
     Maze, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Longleat_maze.jpg, Public domain, Rurik
     Fence, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Westtown.jpg, Public domain, MyWikiBiz
     Compass wind rose, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Brosen_windrose.svg, CC-BY-SA 3.0, Brosen
     Gold bars, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gold_Bars.jpg, CCO 1.0, Agnico-Eagle
     Coach (O. Hitzfeld), https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Otmar_hitzfeld_in_bulgaria.jpg, CC 3.0, Biso
     Swarm, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fish_in_the_Ningaloo_reef_%28368690753%29.jpg, CC 2.0, Angelo DeSantis,
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/angeloangelo/368690753/
     Kanban board, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Simple-kanban-board-.jpg, CC-BY-SA 3.0, Jeff.lasovski
     Money, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Billets_de_5000.jpg, Public domain, Wazouille
     Market, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ul_merc%C3%B2_dal_lunedi.JPG, CC-BY-SA 3.0, Brianza2008
     Choking, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:North%E2%80%93south_choke_blue.JPG, CC-BY-SA 3.0, Jdcollins13
     Thumb, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Thumb_up2.png, CC-BY-SA 2.5, AzaThoth
     Teams, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Patriots-Steelers_2005.jpg, CC-BY-SA 3.0, Bgag
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  46. Further reading
     Johanna Rothman, “Agile teams and collaboration: what’s new about agile”,
    http://www.slideshare.net/johannarothman/agile-teams-and-collaboration-whats-new-about-agile
     Jurgen Appelo, “The dolt’s guide to self-organization”, http://de.slideshare.net/jurgenappelo/the-dolts-guide-
    to-self-organization
     Tim Wise, “Enabling distributed agile teams”, http://www.leadingagile.com/2013/10/enabling-distributed-
    agile-teams/
     Johanna Rothman, “Networks for managing agile programs”,
    http://www.jrothman.com/blog/mpd/2013/03/organizing-an-agile-program-part-2-networks-for-managing-
    agile-programs.html
     Scott Ambler, “Roles in disciplined agile delivery”,
    http://disciplinedagiledelivery.wordpress.com/2012/12/18/roles-in-disciplined-agile-delivery/
     Scott Ambler, “Generalizing specialists”, http://www.agilemodeling.com/essays/generalizingSpecialists.htm
     Roman Pichler, “Scaling the Product Owner”, http://www.romanpichler.com/blog/roles/scaling-the-product-
    owner/
     Roman Pichler, “The Product Owner on one page”, http://www.romanpichler.com/blog/roles/one-page-
    product-owner
     Dean Leffingwell, “Scaled agile framework”, http://scaledagileframework.com/
     Ken Schwaber, Jeff Sutherland, “The Scrum guide”,
    https://www.scrum.org/Scrum-Guide
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