marick
Brian Marick
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![[*]](./images/grass/default_icon.gif) posted on 21 May 07 at 12:03 AM |
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Proposal: particular definition of team success
At http://www.exampler.com/blog/2007/05/20/help-me-stir-things-up/, I proposed the following:
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The Agile Alliance should explicitly focus on helping members of Agile teams succeed, leaving concern with the larger organization to others.
... See previous topic.
Succeed” means that (a) team members love their work, (b) the business both considers its money well spent and also sees the current version of
the software as a readily-tapped reservoir of potential value, and (c) the software is so good that team members bore people at parties describing how
easy it is to change, to push builds to production, to debug, and so on.
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Comments on this proposal?
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mfeathers
Michael Feathers
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| posted on 23 May 07 at 07:40 PM |
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If this is an admission that agile teams are sensitively dependent on their surrounding organization, I agree. I think that there has been an
undercurrent of utopianism in the agile community: "If only we get software development right, our businesses will succeed and the the death march
will be relegated to the scrapheap of history." As much as I'd like to believe that emotionally, I recognize that there is enough flux in an
economy to make those sorts of states intermittent and somewhat unpredictable. There will be times when a team will be perfectly aligned with the
surrounding organization, when the code will fly out of the finger tips and everyone will be happy. But, in general, organizations often act badly
under stress. Projects can fail for reasons totally unrelated to a team's performance. At times, teams end up having to react to situations that
really could've been handled better in other areas of an organization, failing only because several layers of marketing and competitive decision
making failed before. Even if mistakes are not made, organizations are subject to pressure. It's capitalism. It will hurt at times.
We can transform locally. We can also, at times, transform larger scale structures, but I think we have to be happy with our successes and recognize
that we will always confront fixable and unfixable situations. And, the unfixable ones aren't necessarily because the surrounding organization is
unenlightened or bad.
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JamesShore
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| posted on 24 May 07 at 02:38 AM |
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I think it's a great definition. My thoughts have been going in this direction, too--Shane and I independently came up with a similar definition of
success recently for our book. I like your wording a lot better than ours, though--it captures the essence of each of the three legs perfectly.
Suggestions: "readily tapped reservoir of potential value" is a great statement but I think it's likely to confuse. "Bore people at parties" is
also nice and evocative but may set the bar too high, especially if this used to judge whether or not the AA continues to exist.
You might want to consider having "minimum success" and "stretch goal"/"outstanding success". What your describing sounds more like a
outstanding success, but I think the AA would also be successful if people merely enjoyed their work, business merely considered their money well
spent, and team members merely (something).
Overall, excellent.
Regards,
Jim
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debhart
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| posted on 25 May 07 at 07:21 PM |
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| Quote: | Originally posted by marick
... focus on helping members of Agile teams succeed, leaving concern with the larger organization to others.
... Succeed” means that ... (b) the business ... considers its money well spent ...
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Brian, I think these two things are in conflict. In my experience, where we do not educate and engage the larger organization, perception of Agile
teams can be skewed and mistaken.
FUD is a powerful anti-agile force. I've seen teams who consider themselves successful get squashed.
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PaulOldfield1
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| posted on 26 May 07 at 12:22 PM |
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| Quote: | Originally posted by debhart
| Quote: | Originally posted by marick
... focus on helping members of Agile teams succeed, leaving concern with the larger organization to others.
... Succeed” means that ... (b) the business ... considers its money well spent ...
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Brian, I think these two things are in conflict. In my experience, where we do not educate and engage the larger organization, perception of Agile
teams can be skewed and mistaken.
FUD is a powerful anti-agile force. I've seen teams who consider themselves successful get squashed. |
Deb+1
Perhaps we need two streams - one for the team and one for the business. I don't think we can take our eye off that ball yet.
Paul Oldfield
Capgemini, Telford UK
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janebush08
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| posted on 07 Aug 08 at 05:42 AM |
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Team success depends upon project tasks accomplishment with timeline boundaries...
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