Best Ways to Organize Agile Teams
Agile organizations have increased exponentially in the market as most of the organizations have understood that they can achieve and create a reputation in the market by using Agile Methodology. By implementing the Agile Methodology, organizations have solved most of the issues that they used to face while using traditional software methodologies. As many companies have started implementing and continuing with Agile Methodology, one of the most important ways of managing Agile organizations is by creating a well-organized Agile team that is distributed efficiently and all the work is done on time. Agile teams are the backbone of the Agile Methodology. Organizing or maintaining Agile teams is always a tedious task. However, the companies have to organize these Agile teams efficiently if any improvements have to be seen in their product development and delivery.
Building and maintaining high performing Agile teams can go a long way for both the companies and the employees. When work is distributed efficiently among the members of the organizations, a clear division of labor can be seen which would make the business processes of the company hassle-free. High performing Agile teams are the reason why few companies perform exceptionally well and few do not even though both of them have implemented Agile in their organization. High performing Agile teams makes the process of the product development very clear to the customer and quality products are developed which ensures customer satisfaction. Building high-performing Agile teams may seem like a lot of work for the organization, but once organized the Agile teams can do wonders and the revenue of the company would boost significantly. Now that the importance of organizing the Agile teams is clear, here are few best ways to organize Agile teams such that the business value of the organization is maximized and most of the benefits of Agile can be reaped.
Before understanding how to organize Agile teams, we have to understand what an Agile Team is, their roles and key characteristics required to form a successful Agile team, and finally, learn how to organize Agile teams.
What is meant by an Agile team?
Agile teams are a well-bound group of cross-functional professionals who are closely involved with developing a product. Agile teams are structured such that they become a time and resource-efficient and hence can handle larger projects in less time than any other Developer. Agile teams break down the larger works and divide it among themselves such that most of the time is saved and the product could be delivered in the stipulated period.
What are the primary roles of an Agile team?
The key principle in forming Agile teams is self-organization. This helps the members to manage both their time and their tasks between various team roles and hence aids to cut out any bureaucratic bottlenecks in the leadership chain. A few of the primary roles are:
- Product Owner: They are professionals who represent the product and create a vision for it. They act as the communicator between the Stakeholders or end customers and the Developer. They bring out the features required for the product from the customer's end and aid the Developer in building high-quality products.
- Team Lead: They are professionals who directly oversee the team and make sure that the team's targets which are prioritized by the Product Owner are developed and delivered at the scheduled time. They are essential in maintaining the team's motivation and consistency of the team. Listening, communicating, and solving problems are a few of the essential traits of a team lead.
- Team members: They are the backbone of an Agile team who carry out the required goals formed by the Product Owner and broken down by the team lead. They identify obstacles as they proceed and provide feedback on the entire project delivery process by developing delivering the product.
- The Stakeholders are direct or indirect users of the product whose needs have to be met by the product. They give valuable feedback about the product and help the Agile team to form a product increment.
Best Ways to Organize Agile Teams
Now that the meaning and primary roles in the Agile teams is understood, we have to understand how a company can organize Agile teams in various manners such that maximum business value can be derived and the teams could function effectively and have high productivity. Here are a few best ways to organize Agile Teams.
1. Component-based teams:
Component teams are also called focused teams as these types of Agile teams only focus in specific component teams of the product. Here the Agile teams are formed based on specific components of the on-going project. Different Agile teams focus on developing different components by using exotic or very specific techniques that they are skilled at. Each Agile team specializes in a particular skill that has been learned by the team members over many years of experience. It becomes logical when these experts are put together to develop a particular component. Specific components on its own may not provide the required customer value in itself but when combined with other components function as a quality product that delivers high value to the customers.
2. Feature-based Teams:
Agile teams could be organized based on developing a particular feature or feature area within a product. These teams would focus on developing the specific customer feature or feature area that would add value to the product. Some examples could include payment and conversion, FAQ sections, search optimization in a webshop, etc. Whenever the product is too large to be developed, many confusions may arise among team members when the work is not distributed effectively. The feature team becomes necessary in such scenarios as the product is too large for a single team to optimize. The product is distributed into various market segments in retrospect for example, the same webshop product can be differentiated for selling TV sets or can be created to sell kitchen appliances.
3. Product-based teams:
Product-based teams have the responsibility of developing the entire product or product/market combination. These kinds of Agile teams require all the experts to stay on the team who are necessary for the product to be developed. These kinds of teams are more suited for smaller products which contain a smaller feature set. As building larger products for such a team may become challenging due to the chaos created during the development process, it is advisable that these kinds of teams should only be formed for smaller projects. Hence, product-based teams are often seen in start-ups where a limited feature set is present which is validated at first. Once the team grows and becomes more successful, the operations for the product also increases, and features based and components based teams may be formed based on the requirements of the product needed by the customer.
4. Customer Journey teams:
These kinds of Agile teams focus more on differentiating their product from the competitor's products and make features that are unique to the product of their company. As it is seen that in the present world, the core product is not the only thing driving the product's success, it is also the experience of the customers and the value given by the product to the customer that matters. The operations of these teams include recognition, orientation, acquiring, aftercare, discard, or switching to a new offering. The main goal of this team is to optimize the customer's journey and hence develop a product that is effective. When the complexity of the product increases, more Agile teams can specialize in various parts of the journey, channels, or specific actors.
Important Factors to consider during Organizing Agile teams
Forming Agile teams can be based on the above criteria may seem easy, but forming teams is always easier said than done. There are numerous factors that have to be taken into account while organizing an Agile team based on any given criteria. However, there are three factors that should always be considered while organizing an Agile team. They are responsibility, coordination, and sustainability.
Responsibility
The Responsibility of a team member remains pretty much constant given that they work in a component or a product based team. Each team member is responsible for the given task and should effectively work and collaborate with others to develop an end result. Each Agile team should be responsible for the specific component or feature which may be put together to form an end result. If the end result is good, it is due to everyone's hard work and effort. Similarly, any impediment also becomes a shared responsibility of the Agile Team.
Coordination
The key factor for the success of any company is the coordination of the members of the company. The need for coordination becomes equally essential in both product and component teams. In fact, in component-based teams, the need for coordination significantly increases as there is planning, hand-overs, dependencies, and many other operations to be fulfilled before a component-based team manages to deliver a final product.
Sustainability
This is the most important factor that has to be considered while forming any Agile team. If a component-based team only specializes in developing specific components, there may be times when the component may not be required. At this time the company cannot take away the jobs of all the members of the Agile team. Hence sustainability becomes an important factor in such cases, where teams should be formed based on features, products, and the customer journey teams. The goal is to stay as flexible as possible and to adapt as soon as any changes take place in the market.
Conclusion
Organizing Agile teams can be an essential contributing factor to the success of any Agile organization. Agile teams are the backbone of the organization and organizing them based on specific criteria that can maximize the business value and benefit the company in many ways. There would be clarity in the division of work and everyone would be responsible for the particular work given to them. Attending workshops and training play a crucial role in forming Agile teams where the importance of Agile teams could be understood in real-time. All the hurdles and impediments that one might face in the real world can be experienced in such training. An added advantage is that these workshops are organized by experts in their specific Agile framework who can help the participants to figure out the solution of the hurdles which become quite useful in handling real-world problems.
References
- https://kissflow.com/project/agile/agile-team/
- https://xebia.com/blog/5-ways-to-organize-agile-teams/
- https://techbeacon.com/app-dev-testing/organizing-your-agile-teams-think-autonomy-mastery-purpose
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