A big part of project management is working to grow a high performing team and then caring for that team so it stays healthy and productive. Agile concepts around empowered teams and team decision making support these goals and so there should be no surprise that agile project management aligns well with team development best practices.

However, it never hurts to better understand some of the things that can go wrong on teams so that we can quickly take action and hopefully resolve issues before they become full blown team problems. Patrick Lencioni’s book “The 5 Dysfunction of a Team” lists the following 5 common problems that build on from each other to undermine trust and eventually performance.

1) An absence of trust – an unwillingness to be vulnerable and honest within the group.

2) Fear of Conflict – Teams that lack trust cannot engage in unfiltered debate. Instead they resort to veiled discussions and guarded comments

3) Lack of commitment – without passionate debate, team members rarely if ever, buy in and commit to decisions, though they may feign agreement during meetings

4) Avoidance of Accountability – Due to the lack of commitment and buy-in most people will hesitate to call their peers on actions and behaviours that seem counterproductive to the good of the team.

5) Inattention to results – Failure to hold one another accountable leads to putting individual goals (or department goals) ahead of the project.

Fortunately agile methods and some common sense offer many tools and values to address these issues...

Agile methods encourage partnering more closely with the business customer to benefit from shorter customer feedback cycles. When this works, it is great; we get quick confirmation of deliverables and engage in collaborative evolution towards the true business requirements as opposed to the originally stated requirements that may have been flawed or incomplete.

Yet poor customer feedback can really undermine progress. Effectively the customer has become a more central member of our project team and just like a poor BA, developer, or QA, the impact of a weak customer link is significant.

Often customer engagement issues stem from confusion over roles and levels of involvement. Perhaps the customer has not been invited into development teams before and may feel uncomfortable speaking out about potential gaps in functionality early in the project when work is still underway. This is why it is important to clearly outline benefits of good feedback and the issues with poor feedback.

For project managers some warning signs of poor customer engagement can be:

1)    Little or no customer feedback – If following a demo or promotion of functionality to a test environment for customer review we get very little feedback, then the optimist in us may think “Great, we must have nailed it, there have been no complaints or requests for changes”. Yet, it is more likely that no one has thought about it much or used it in anger. In this instance “No news, is rarely good news” and is instead should be viewed as a warning sign that effective evaluation may not have occurred.

2)    Late reporting of errors – If as a release date approaches we see the reporting of errors or requests for change relating to functionality that has been in previous demos, but never commented upon, then it is a sign that this functionality was not seriously reviewed previously. Instead only now, as the release date is approaching does it appear the customer representatives are reviewing seriously. This is a problem since functionality may have been built on top of the early code, and opportunities for change and improvement have now been lost.

LeadingAnswers recently placed 8th in the Top 50 Leadership blogs list, rated by The Entrepreneur Blog. This was a great surprise and I did not even know it was nominated for reader voting. First and second spots went to Seth Godin and Daniel Pink so I am honoured to be listed in this kind of company.

Many of the other sites were new to me and I am guessing new to you also, check out the full list and maybe discover some other sources of leadership information.

 
So you think you know agile? Well then why not take the Agile Star Quiz and find out if you are really an agile star or more of an information black hole. The questions in each category start out easy, but get harder. Score yourself either manually with the answers shown below or use the attached Excel Agile Star Quiz and scoring model spreadsheet to generate your agile star graph scores.

History
1)    The Agile Manifesto was created at a meeting at:
     A) A rugby match, Auckland, New Zealand, February 2001
     B) A ski resort in Vail, Colorado, February 2001
     C) A ski resort in Snowbird, Utah, February 2001
     D) The OOPSLA software conference, 1999

2)    The last three “Agile 20xx” North American agile conferences have been held at:
     A)  2010 Orlando, 2009 Chicago, 2008 Toronto
     B)  2010 Nashville, 2009 Salt Lake City, 2008 Toronto
     C)  2010 Salt Lake City, 2009 Orlando, 2008 Washington D.C
     D)  2010 Orlando, 2009 Chicago, 2008 Washington D.C

3)    Who published the statement “Software development should be done incrementally, in stages with continuous user participation and replanning”?
     A)  Kent Beck, 1997
     B)  Harlan Mills, 1976
     C)  Ken Schwaber, 2001
     D)  Jeff Sutherland, 1995