Five Responsibilities of Team Members When Transitioning to Agile

David Hawks
Agile, Article, Leadership, Team

Transitioning processes and cultures simultaneously is very difficult. A Successful Agile transition requires team ownership and engagement in developing the best process to fit your unique culture and environment. Five areas where team members are integral to push the process forward and become successful are outlined below.

Seek Constant Improvement

To achieve improvement, the team should define and align to the same goals. As a team, conduct an exercise to define the qualities of a successful team to focus them in the same direction and give them something to drive towards. Once the initial goals are met, set the bar higher, and always strive to be better. Celebrate success internally and market your success externally. Share what is working and what the team is learning with management and other teams.

Get Curious

It is important a team push themselves to be better. In this industry, it is no longer acceptable to just be a tech expert; you also need to work more productively in a team environment. Take advantage of numerous sources of information by reading books and blogs and sharing interesting tidbits with your peers. Learn how others work since someone else has probably encountered similar problems.

Challenge Everything

Just because someone else thinks it is the “right” way to do things, doesn’t mean it is. In early adoption, everyone is learning and no one is an expert. Always keep in mind there is no one right answer. Examine multiple points of view and try the approach the team thinks will succeed in your environment. It is natural to be skeptical, but try to be fair and open-minded.

Be Solution Oriented

It is imperative to maintain the right mental attitude. Change is stressful, but it is not constructive if you are not doing anything to fix it. Don’t just point out problems, but help devise solutions. Don’t blame outside the team, first determine how the team can solve the problem. If the struggle continues, then escalate.

Experiment

And the most important thing to keep in mind is in the beginning, you are not going to get it right. One advantage of short cycles is you can try something, gather some data, inspect the results, and adapt from there. Try different options and tweak a little bit at a time.