Transitional States of Long Running Agile Teams

Teams that start to use agile approaches and techniques for the first time seem to experience several transition states as their approaches mature and they begin to evolve from reactionary teams into proactive teams.

Below are some of the transitional states observed in over 10 teams over a 2 year period, typically in the finance sector.

Reactionary State

When teams first start using agile for the first time it is not uncommon for them to be a little overwhelmed with learning new agile techniques, responding to customer feature requests and matching the organisation expectations with regards performance, especially if there is a belief that the teams will be higher performing now that they are using agile.

This initial state can induce sensory overload on teams who naturally fall into a reactionary mode of working as they jump from one issue to the next to meet the demands. This reactionary thinking may manifest as short term thinking of 1-2 Sprints ahead at best, practices are quite mechanical as the muscle memory builds, and tension points are experienced when things are not quite right.

In this state the Tuckman's model of forming and storming seem to rage in the team as they work through the "known knowns" and the organisation focusses on speed of delivery as the main driver for getting things done.

Attentive State

In this state the reactionary storm has passed and teams now begin to enter a period of calm and norming in the team with a consistency to their agile rhythms and their work. The backlog feels like it is under control and the known knowns have been largely delivered.

Issues are dealt with objectively and efficiently and the team work cohesively together to get things done.

The wrinkle is that most if not all of the backlog items have pretty much being done by this stage and the team are beginning to touch on an unexplored category of known unknowns. To handle this the team may have to learn new skills that augment and complement their now efficient agile skills in order to understand more about their customers and these new feature requests.

New skills and techniques such as Story Mapping, Empathy Mapping and Impact Mapping for example may begin to be used as the team try to interact more with their customers first hand and learn more about their needs and what features will resonate with them.

There may also be a marked change in the motivations of the wider organisation where previously their "why" of agile was to deliver faster, however, in this transition state the organisation may well begin to think about "value to market" as a more appropriate driver for agile.

Proactive Authoring State

In this state the team and the organisation have evolved to a performing operating level that supports each other and efficiently actively collects customer feedback to inform decisions and that "value to market" is the key differentiator.

The team now enter a state where the outcomes and next features may not be known and are categorised as unknown unknowns. To solve for this the team may learn more new skills and approaches such as Design Sprints and rapid prototyping for example to help them work with customers to find out which features resonate with them on a joint journey of discovery.

Unlike the previous states, the team now actively take the initiative and confidently put forward ideas that are then confirmed, refined or discounted in continual short experimentation loops. The organisation complements this by providing a safe environment in which the team can try new ideas in order to home in on the best possible value to the market.

The organisation may well have a cohesive strategic direction that is tuned, adapted and evolved with customer and technical feedback. This sense of flexibility, space and safety to explore also lay the foundation for disruption in the market, and provides an opportunity to positively influence customer behaviours with new innovations.

References

1. Development Sequence In Small Groups, Tuckman B. W., Psychological Bulletin, Vol 63, No. 6, 384-399, 1965