VOICES In the Trenches
Agile Must-Haves
Three requirements for a great agile team.
By Gerald O’Connor, PMP
ALTHOUGH AGILE APPROACHES do not
prioritize processes, tools and documentation, agile
isn’t anarchy. In fact, three factors are required for
a great experience with agile.
A GREAT COACH
The agile project manager’s role is to facilitate and
direct a team to achieve a common vision. To do
this well, the project manager must ensure team
members have everything they need to best fulfill
their role and complete the project’s tasks. The
project manager should remove anything that may
get in the team’s way of realizing the project’s vision.
A great agile project manager can get the best
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out of every team member and point the team
in the right direction—as well as redirect people
when they get off track.
While agile projects do need strong leadership
to succeed, the project manager is not necessarily
the leader of the team. In fact, the best term to
describe an agile project manager is a coach.
For example, in soccer, the coach selects his
team, analyzes the opposition, prepares tactics
for his team and trains them before a game. He
guarantees they have everything they need to be
at peak performance and that nothing interferes
with them. However, the coach does not try to
guess every move of the opposing team or plan the
team’s response. Such a plan would be
out of date as soon as it was conceived.
creative thinking—and get out of the way when
it happens.
LEADERSHIP
TRUST
Once the soccer team steps onto the
pitch, the coach can only do so much.
As the game unfolds, team members
take leadership roles at different times.
Similarly, leaders may emerge at
different stages of a project. In an iteration
focused heavily on design, a team
member with strong design capabilities
may step up and help the team make the
best decisions. For a user story that has a
strong database component, a different
team member with strength in this area
may take the lead.
I once worked as a technical project
manager on a project to improve the
workflow of producing images for
a digital collections website. One
user story in the project involved
automating the process of aggregating terabytes
of images to other websites. We had a tool that
could do part of the processing. The problem
was the tool would require an end user to spend
a huge amount of time creating images. We
were trying to modify the tool when a team
member pointed out that although completely
re-engineering the tool would take more
time than modifying it, the amount of time it
would save the end user in the long run was
exponential. We decided to re-engineer the tool.
This examples illustrates both the role of the
agile project manager and the team members.
The team member had to step forward to a
leadership role and use her expertise to guide
the team toward the best solution. The project
manager had to step back from the details
of a problem, hear a completely different
approach and judge it on its merits. It is the
role of the agile project manager to create
an environment that encourages this type of
A collection of great individuals doesn’t
automatically make a great team. Great agile teams
are built on trust, empowerment and ability. Trust
is the most important factor. Team members must
trust each other, the project manager and the
organization. After trust is built, empowerment is
allowing the team to complete its commitments.
The least important factor in great agile teams
is ability, because a good environment can be an
incubator of ability.
When a team is in the formation stages, the
strengths and weaknesses of team members will be
exposed, creating vulnerabilities. As members learn
each other’s talents and gaps, they begin to understand
and trust each other. That allows each individual’s
strengths to shine through, and team members will
learn to compensate for weaknesses in a teammate.
Teams I have worked on that trust each other
didn’t have to experience the frustration or
negativity that comes from one’s ideas not being
listened to and encouraged. If a team member
points out a way to do things better and the team
agrees it is worth pursuing, that team member
will be empowered to run with it. Trusting and
empowering people to implement changes that will
help the group should be encouraged. Having this
approach also means members of the team will
only suggest ideas if they are willing to follow them
through, thus ensuring the suggestions made are
practical and well thought-out.
All of this trust is necessary because when agile
teams commit to certain iteration goals, the team as
a whole will be judged as having met its targets or
missed them—in the same way that the entire soccer
team is judged on its wins and losses. PM
The least
important
factor in
great agile
teams is
ability,
because
a good
environment
can be an
incubator of
ability.
Gerald O’Connor, PMP, is a project manager
and analyst for digital collections, Trinity
College Library, Dublin, Ireland.
JANUARY 2016 PM NETWORK
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