In agile teams, people with different roles and skills work together to achieve significant value gains for the customer in a short time. Continuous learning and the search for opportunities for ongoing improvement are central. Traditional project teams also want to increase customer value and continuously improve collaboration. So what is new? The key question is how often, and under what circumstances, this actually succeeds under traditional conditions. Does the agile approach create conditions that make project success more likely? Well, it depends.
The differences at a glance
Let us first look at the differences between traditional project teams and agile teams.
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Traditional project team
- Used for phase-oriented, planned projects in which requirements, resources, and effort are defined over a longer period of time
- Many partial team members who report to project managers and the steering committee
- Various experts who take on specialist tasks
- Team members may be assigned to multiple projects
- More of a top-down coordination approach
- Long-term work with occasional exchange with customers
- Principle of prudent foresight
- Targeted value increase upon completion of the project
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Agile team
- Used for projects that cannot be planned long term, where adaptation and flexibility are the focus
- 5–8 team members with a stable composition in one location
- Experts and hybrids who take on cross-functional tasks
- Ideally, team members are assigned to only one project
- Self-organization
- Iterative work with continuous exchange with customers
- Principle of trial and error
- Targeted value increase after each iteration, for example a sprint
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Responsibility, appreciation, and trust
Like all teams, an agile team must first grow together in order to become truly high-performing. Even more than in traditionally working teams, agile teams are responsible for the path to a project’s success themselves. This is based on the by no means new assumption that colleagues are, by default, willing to perform and do not need additional control and pressure. In an agile team of five to eight people, generalists specialized in different areas come together and agree on a goal to be achieved within a manageable period of two to four weeks. Ideally, everyone works in a self-organized manner toward the shared goal, feels equally responsible, and supports one another in completing tasks. In regular feedback loops, the team thinks in an employee- and customer-oriented way, maintaining an appreciative and open communication style as well as a trusting culture of learning from mistakes.
The ideal agile team does not emerge overnight. Self-organization requires a great deal of communication—more than in traditional projects. This has to be learned. It is no coincidence that teams working according to SCRUM have the role of the SCRUM Master. This person facilitates self-organization, mediates conflicts, and advocates new methods of collaboration.
Challenges in practice (selection)
Product Owner: “We cannot use it like this!”
Agile teams aim to develop a feature or product that can be used productively in a short time. If this does not succeed, it is difficult to assess the team’s progress, as agile teams always want to measure themselves against customer feedback. A usable product at the end of a short development cycle (Scrum: “sprints”) increases the ability to decide on the next steps. Instead of dealing with speculation, early delivery of an innovation allows the team to rely on a shared factual basis, which motivates and ultimately makes the team more productive.
Ensure that all team members can stay focused by prioritizing all tasks and prohibiting multitasking.
Team member: “We have always done it this way!”
When introducing Scrum or other agile ways of working, it is important that all team members remain willing to learn. Old habits as well as positive and negative experiences can be useful; however, they are also often an expression of the famous comfort zone. To keep the shared product and its development up to date, it is necessary to always be ready to move into the learning phase. What should not happen is that team members end up in the so-called stress zone, meaning they are completely overwhelmed.
The ways to break out of the comfort zone and immerse yourself in the learning zone are individual and diverse. It is helpful to proceed in small steps and emphasize the purpose of the change.
Team member: “I still have to do something for Team Y.”
Commitment and focus are core values of agile work. Team members who try to juggle multiple commitments at once are often exposed to enormous pressure. This is because the workload of the entire team can no longer be distributed evenly across all shoulders. The part-time team member often has to justify not having set priorities in the interest of the one team.
Avoid assigning employees to multiple teams at the same time. Instead of creating a half-committed team player, use temporary experts who advise the team at specific times.
At a glance
- Together, an agile team has all the necessary skills to develop value gains in a self-organized way within two to four weeks.
- Agile teams are not only for engineers. In larger companies, agile teams form in many departments and areas.
- Agile teams are motivated by a shared vision and their commitment to delivering added value to customers in short product development cycles.
- Reaching the performing stage is only possible if a team’s composition remains stable.
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