Working Together, Working Alone


Individuals on the agile team must be able to thrive in environments of both collaboration and solitude. They are self-starters who can assess the situation and determine for themselves which work mode they should be in, and then get themselves (and perhaps other team members) into it. As the project progresses through its lifecycle, the need for individuals to be working together or working alone will flip-flop many times. In some cases, team members may be working on parallel tasks and have to work in both modes simultaneously. The uncertain nature of the agile project creates this flip-flop between the optimized work mode (collaboration or solitude) and places a higher emphasis on the team's ability to efficiently switch between modes. This concept is similar to trying to determine how many different projects one person can effectively contribute to simultaneously. There are inherent "switching" inefficiencies as a person transitions from one project to another. If you give him too many projects, the inefficiencies become greater than his effective contribution. In the agile paradigm, you may be working on a single project, but whether you work alone or with others is changing frequently. If you cannot effectively change work modalities, your switching inefficiencies will negate your contributions, essentially making you an ineffective team member.

Agile projects are more iterative than classic ones. At a high level, this means that instead of first developing a complete plan and then executing it, we may do a less detailed plan, execute, analyze, and then repeat. This cycle may recur many times during the course of the project. For example, planning is generally a collaborative effort since the agile project is made up of a network of related activities. Execution may or may not require collaboration, and the same is true for analysis. Furthermore, each collaborative step may require a different group of people getting involved. Adding this "work modality" dimension to the already numerous "task or functional" dimensions makes the agile project that much more interesting.

Agile Strategy

Find individuals who have successfully worked remotely on projects in the past. They are likely to thrive in the agile environment because they can efficiently shift between work modes.

Identifying people who can efficiently switch work modes may not be the easiest thing to do, however. When trying to determine whether potential team members have this capability, an indirect approach may be best. I believe a place to start is to look at your organization's remote workers or telecommuters, because their work characteristics are similar. Human resources professionals have spent a lot of time trying to figure out which employees they will allow to telecommute or work remotely. I argue that team members who can effectively telecommute also have the ability to effectively switch work modalities as necessary in the agile project environment. They are able to work with minimal guidance in an unstructured environment, they know how to use technology to their advantage, and they can deliver the results necessary to keep the project moving.




Agile Project Management(c) How to Succeed in the Face of Changing Project Requirements
Agile Project Management: How to Succeed in the Face of Changing Project Requirements
ISBN: 0814471765
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 96
Authors: Gary Chin

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