What does a high-performing team look, sound and feel like?
One of the traps people fall into is taking a copy and paste approach to team development. They see that google has bean bags, foozeball machines, and pastries at everyone’s fingertips so they assume that replicating those features will deliver the outcomes they are looking for.
It doesn’t work that way. So, what does a great team environment feel like?
Buzz
Typically, the first thing you hear and feel is a lot of buzz.
People are talking to one another, they are interacting and communicating well, and there is a high level of engagement.
That is the first indication that the team are motivated, inspired, and collaborating well.
Continuous Delivery
You can have all the energy in the world but if there is no delivery, it doesn’t matter. It’s just a great place to be rather than a strong team environment.
The team need to be creating products, features, and services and they need to be delivering a working element of that product in every sprint or program increment.
Continuous delivery also contributes to buzz. Because the team have professional pride in the work they are producing, people are energized and inspired. If they aren’t delivering, you will find that people have their heads down, their energy is low, and their body language isn’t great.
You won’t have buzz without effective delivery.
Structure and transparency.
You find that great teams have a structured approach to the work they do, a really effective system that enables the team to produce great work.
They also, typically, have a scorecard of sorts that is transparent and visible.
People know what they are aiming for, they know how they are performing, and they are aware of what lies immediately ahead. They walk into work knowing what needs doing for the day, they know why it matters, and they are able to track that work from start to end.
They know where they are winning, and they are aware of where they can improve.
A strong sense of purpose.
A great team have a shared, inspired vision and goal.
They know how their work impacts the customer and they understand how their contribution benefits both the team and the organization they serve. They wake up with a strong reason to come to work and they derive a great deal of satisfaction and fulfilment from the work they do.
On each user story, it is clear what problem they are solving for a customer or end-user, and they are clear on how their work will enable the customer to perform a valuable task or achieve a valuable outcome. They understand how their work is interconnected with other people’s lives.
Strong teams know that their efforts contribute to competitive advantage and profitability for the organization, and understand that this directly influences how well they are rewarded for their contribution and the degree of job security that they enjoy.
It’s a win-win mindset and a culture of excellence reinforced by agile values and principles.
About Value Glide
Value Glide are a SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework) consultancy, coaching practice, and training specialist who work with organizations to align business objectives with customer needs and wants.
As deeply experienced agile coaches and practitioners, our team are invested in continuous learning through each client engagement and use the data and evidence we gather from each implementation to inform our training, coaching, and consulting services.
In a nutshell, empirical process control or empiricism.
If you are thinking of adopting agile within your organization and have identified SAFe as a great agile framework to adopt, implement and improve your business agility, visit our SAFe Quickstart ART Launch program page or view our SAFe Consulting Services page.
If you have identified a need for an agile coach and SAFe coach to help your organization adopt and implement SAFe, visit our SAFe Coaching Services page.
If you want to know more about SAFe and how to lead SAFe, visit our SAFE Training page for a host of options, from Leading SAFe to a SAFe Release Train Engineer course.
#SAFe #scaledagileframework #scalingagile #agile #agileframework #agilecoach
