3 steps towards better team work

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Pinterest
WhatsApp

Working with teams I sometimes feel that teamwork is similar to the weather: everybody talks about it but not much is done. When I talk about teamwork I mean doing the work together, as a team. Advising with each other is good, planning together is necessary, going to lunch as a group is fun and like the other activities, is probably a good way to get nearer to team work. However , as said above, I’m talking about doing the work together. And here are 3 steps that will help you get nearer to that worthy cause.

First step: no personal assignments. Most electronic boards (e.g. Jira, TFS, Gitlab etc.) have an “assigned” field on stories. Don’t use it. As simply as that. Let it be empty. During planning meetings don’t talk about who’s going to do a story, leave it to later. When is later? Later is when we need to start working on the story, when it is next in priority. And then also don’t assign a person. Talk about who will start working on it today. Who in plural, I mean. Then tomorrow, in your daily meeting or during the day, agree who should work on it then. This is a team thing. There is no specific one developer responsible for the story, it is the team.

Some people will say: but how will we know who is working on what? The answer is simple: if you are working on many stories in parallel it might indeed be difficult to know that. So work on less stories in parallel and then everyone knows who’s working on what.

Second step: Weekly mob programming sessions. Mob programming is the activity where the entire team is developing together. Set a meeting room with a big screen, one computer and one keyboard. The keyboard moves every 5 minutes from one person to the next. The team decides what the driver (the person on the keyboard) does. Now work on your ongoing tasks. People who hear about this for the first time find it hard to understand this but you need to try it out. It works like magic. This is an activity that brings the team together. Spend every week 1.5-2 hours on this, going on some of the ongoing tasks and good things will start to happen. Llewellyn Falco wrote a book about this.

Third step: Pairing. Pairing is when two developers develop on the same workstation. Remember that most of what you do during development is thinking, not writing, so one keyboard is not a problem. In workshops, I’ve led people who always say it’s more fun to work together and they think of more creative solutions. Alistair Cockburn and Laurie Williams show pairing is 15% more effort (e.g. while one person will do the job in 2 days, two will do it together in 1.15 days) but other benefits make it a thing you must do.  Arlo Belshee wrote an essay about promiscuous pairing, a must-read.

The daily meeting is a good place to think about who will pair with whom today.

To summarize, the main problem with teamwork is that it doesn’t look good on a spreadsheet: you see plainly more people on the same job and you don’t see that magic that it does. Don’t let this stop you. Start by not assigning specific people to tasks, move on to mob programming and then find opportunities to pair. You will see results quite quickly.

Subscribe for Email Updates:

Categories:

Tags:

Agile Delivery
Coaching Agile Teams
Principles of Lean-Agile Leadership
Reading List
Achieve Business Agility
SPC
Lean-Agile Budgeting
Engineering Practices
EOS®
Slides
Enterprise DevOps
Risk-aware Product Development
Iterative Incremental Development
Agile Project Management
Amdocs
chatgpt
Scrum Master
POPM
Webinar
Software Development Estimation
System Team
Systems Thinking
Agile Release Planning
Lean Startup
Agile Assembly Architecture
speed at scale
DevOps
Scaled Agile Framework
Daily Scrum
Kaizen
Artificial Intelligence
Agile Contracts Best Practices
IT Operations
Applying Agile Methodology
Agile Program
Introduction to Test Driven Development
Agile for Embedded Systems
Agile Release Management
Agile Outsourcing
Jira Plans
Legacy Code
Pomodoro Technique
LAB
Rovo
Sprint Iteration
Scrum Values
An Appreciative Retrospective
Kanban Basics
Agile Development
Continuous Improvement
Certified SAFe
Code
Large Scale Scrum
Manage Budget Creation
RSA
Continuous Delivery
Agility
ATDD vs. BDD
Kanban Kickstart Example
Managing Risk on Agile Projects
Risk Management in Kanban
Hybrid Work
Implementation of Lean and Agile
Agile Techniques
The Kanban Method
Agile Games and Exercises
User stories
Agile India
Presentation
Agile Testing Practices
Jira
Agile Risk Management
Kanban Game
Releases Using Lean
SAFe Release Planning
Software Development
Limiting Work in Progress
Perfection Game
Frameworks
Scrum With Kanban
Agile in the Enterprise
Legacy Enterprise
Video
NIT
Agile Games
Nexus and Kanban
Professional Scrum with Kanban
Atlaassian
Lean and Agile Techniques
Agile Israel
Scrum Guide
Agile Basics
Atlassian
ARTs
Scrum and XP
LPM
transformation
Agile Marketing
Implementing SAFe
Lean Risk Management
Lean Agile Management
The Agile Coach
Lean and Agile Principles and Practices
Agile Project
Change Management
Lean Budgeting
Jira Cloud
Continuous Deployment
Product Ownership
RTE
AgileSparks
Accelerate Value Delivery At Scale
SA
Agile Product Ownership
Elastic Leadership
Keith Sawyer
Release Train Engineer
AI Artificial Intelligence
Acceptance Test-Driven Development
TDD
Lean Agile Basics
GanttBan
speed @ scale
Advanced Roadmaps
Retrospectives
SAFe DevOps
PI Planning
Agile Israel Events
Lean Software Development
Team Flow
predictability
ALM Tools
Continuous Planning
Jira admin
Agile and DevOps Journey
Planning
QA
Confluence
Introduction to ATDD
Continuous Integration
Kanban 101
Agile Mindset
Quality Assurance
SAFe
Sprint Planning
System Archetypes
ScrumMaster Tales
RTE Role
Agile Product Development
Product Management
Kaizen Workshop
Scrum Master Role
Agile
WIP
PI Objectives
Lean Agile Leadership
Games and Exercises
Lean Agile
Scrum.org
Process Improvement
Scrum Primer
Operational Value Stream
System Integration Environments
Development Value Streams
Professional Scrum Product Owner
Nexus vs SAFe
BDD
Spotify
Rapid RTC
Portfolio for Jira
Tips
Nexus and SAFe
Kanban
Nexus
A Kanban System for Software Engineering
Self-organization
Agile Exercises
Story Slicing
Test Driven Development
Agile Community
lean agile change management
ROI
Professional Scrum Master
What Is Kanban
Sprint Retrospectives
Effective Agile Retrospectives
ART Success
Tools
Scrum
Certification
Program Increment
agileisrael
Risk Management on Agile Projects
AI
Nexus Integration Team
Managing Projects
Lean Agile Organization
Value Streams
Business Agility
ATDD
LeSS
Built-In Quality
Entrepreneurial Operating System®
Lean-Agile Software Development
AgileSparks
Logo
Enable registration in settings - general

Contact Us

Request for additional information and prices

AgileSparks Newsletter

Subscribe to our newsletter, and stay updated on the latest Agile news and events

This website uses Cookies to provide a better experience
Shopping cart