The Team Swarm

Towards the end of a project or product deliverable, you sometimes need a final push to close the deal, and this agile pattern allows for a team to come together and rally around the work until it's all over the line.

This can be different from a team's normal operating mode as this is a short tactical period of high intensity to achieve some short term objective, whereas normally we tend to focus on long term sustainability in teams and encourage long term thinking.

Ingredients

• The Mission - This approach really works well when there is a clear cut mission as to why this tactical approach is needed. This indicates the urgency and the purpose of why the team are here. Be clear, concise and to the point and the team will respond in kind.
• Boundaries - The approach is to allow the team to deliver a short term tactical objective, so an indication of the time boundary will help the teams focus and make critical decisions. Durations of less than 3 weeks tends to work well, any longer and the high intensity cannot be sustained by the team.
• Visible Backlog of Work - Having the work to be done for the short term objective highly visible so that all of the team can see it allows them to make conscious decisions about what to do. Using simple [Kanban] boards tend to help that are easy to understand and use by the team. The emphasis is on providing clarity of the work to be done rather than on having a complex process to complete it, so keep it really simple.
• Prioritised Work - If the work is clearly prioritised with a brutalist approach to define what is actually needed, what we can live without and what is optional will help the teams to focus on the real needs and provide some flexibility to get the high priority work completed. The aim here is to get done what is really needed, not to get everything done, so be brutal with your prioritisation.
• Let The Team Figure It Out - Describe the need and the urgency, show them where the work is, show them how it is prioritised, and then stand back and let the team figure out how they want to respond to get the work done. Don't get too involved here, you've set up the boundaries, the mission and made the work visible, now it is time for the team to do their thing without any meddling from yourself.
• Support Critical Decision Making - Once the team are off and running then support the team in their critical decision making with how the work is done