9

Interpersonal Skills

Soft skills are an essential part of Agile projects, since Agile is more people-oriented. Soft skills are necessary to handle people and they include skills like conflict management, negotiation, leadership skills and interpersonal skills. The role of the project manager, the team, and the sponsors in an Agile project is very much different from a traditional project and thus it is important that all the stakeholders understand it for the success of an Agile engagement. A changed approach in leadership along with the proper coaching and mentoring techniques can build a high performance team in Agile.

Emotional Intelligence Quotient (EQ)

Emotional intelligence is your ability to acquire and apply knowledge from your emotions and the emotions of others in order to be more successful and lead a more fulfilling life.

It indicates the ability to bring awareness to the emotions as they arise, notice them for what they are and decide how to best use them. Coaching abilities can be improved by improving EQ. We need to control our emotions while working with the team.

Emotional intelligence is the ability of an individual to deal successfully with other people, to manage one’s self, motivate other people, understand one’s own feelings and appropriately respond to the everyday environment.

In working with emotional intelligence, author Daniel Goleman defines EI in the workplace as the ability of employees to recognize:

  1. Their own feelings
  2. The feelings of others
  3. What motivates them?
  4. How to manage their emotions, both in themselves and in relationships with others

According to Fisher’s research, the most common negative emotions experienced in the workplace are as follows and this is applicable for Agile projects too:

  1. Frustration/irritation
  2. Worry/nervousness
  3. Anger/aggravation
  4. Dislike
  5. Disappointment/unhappiness

There are five parts to EI. First is to know what you are feeling. The second is managing your feelings, especially distressing feelings. The third is self-motivation, the fourth is empathy and the fifth is managing relationships. Figure 9.1 summarizes the components of EI.

COLLABORATION

Animated interaction, two way conversation, real understanding and progress are all hallmarks of cooperation. The sum of the individual parts is called cooperation. Collaboration means the whole is greater than the sum of the individual parts. The collaboration includes innovation and astonishing results.

Team Collaboration and Team Commitment

This includes providing feedback, resolving issues and coordinating changes to enhance project performance and involves a combination of skills with special emphasis on communication, conflict management, negotiation, leadership and recognition for high performance for better management (see Figure 9.2).

Task 1: Facilitate close communication within the team and with appropriate external stakeholders through co-location or the use of collaboration tools in order to reduce miscommunication and rework.

Task 2: Reduce distractions in order to establish a predictable outcome and optimize the value delivered.

Task 3: Participate in aligning the project and team goals by sharing project vision in order to ensure that the team understands how their objectives fit into the overall goals of the project.

Task 4: Encourage the team to measure its velocity by tracking and measuring actual performance in previous iterations or releases in order for members to gain a better understanding of their capacity and create more accurate forecasts.

Co-location and Distributed Team

Is there really a difference in working in a co-located team vs working in a distributed team? Can we assume that co-located teams are always more efficient than the distributed team? We may tend to think this way, because working in co-located team is easy because of the ease of communication as all the team members are sitting together. But it is not really hard to have an equally effective team with distributed team, if the care is taken to establish communication channels effectively.

The pure Agile framework asks for the co-located team. It even goes to an extent of asking all the team members to sit in the same room. In fact, Agile manifesto states that ‘The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation’. Daily stand-up meetings and daily status tracking planning for true Agile teams are designed accordingly. In the case of distributed Agile team, communication is the biggest challenge which needs to be planned effectively for success.

Adaptive Leadership

Organizations do not operate as machines; they operate as an adaptive system constantly changing with triggers like the market, workforce, economic situation, technology and several other factors. So, it matters a great deal how the leaders conceive their organizations as machines or living adaptive systems. This perception shapes the roles they and their people play. This in turn, has direct relationship on their effectiveness to tap human potential. Because of the complex nature of the projects that we carry out, mechanically-based leadership and organizational practices are not adequate to the adaptive challenges being faced.

The old paradigm focuses only the mechanical aspects of how organizations operate; those activities that must be repeated in a standardized way to produce a standard output. In the mechanical sphere of operations, change and creativity are viewed as a threat to efficiency.

In an organization which is led like a machine, people are treated as parts of machines—mindless extensions of impersonal processes. When that happens, commitment level is greatly reduced and the creativity and latent potential of the team remains greatly untapped.

The adaptive view of organizations and leadership presents a philosophy which is in sharp contrasts along a number of dimensions.

From the above discussion you can understand how the working atmospheres differ. In the mechanically managed and structured organization, people in one department know very little of the goals and contributions of the other departments because they do not realize how important it is for them to know that. Since work is highly specialized and interdepartmental communication is far from reality, things that need coordination slip through the cracks. Team motivation is likely to be poor.

Mechanical Approach Adaptive Approach
Attention is focused on activities performed. Attention is focused on the value-added outcomes.
Job descriptions are long, detailed and constraining defining clear boundaries. Job descriptions are intentionally broad based to allow for flexibility and collaboration.
Role expectations are kept narrow and rigid. Roles are fluid. Within limits, people are expected to play roles for one another.
Contacts are confined and communication is controlled by higher management. Contacts are open and inter-group network formation is encouraged.
Policies are mostly oriented towards drive and control. Policies encourage people to take a self-organizing approach to find solutions.
The organizational structure is bureaucratic and structured around many departments. The structures are more fluid and of shorter duration to enhance flexibility and responsiveness.
Rank-based authority is practiced, and it is expected that influence will equate formal authority. Value addition is given a preference over authority. A person who can nourish team’s capability is preferred in the rank.
Efficiency and predictability are prime focus and reinforced through processes. Achievement, innovation and change are primarily focused and rewarded keeping in mind the final goal.
Inter department communication and cooperation is reduced due to dependence on formalization and clearances. Cooperation is a highly regarded value in the organization and is made easy through simple organization structure.
Information is kept closely guarded and is distributed on higher management’s prerogative. Information is easily available to facilitate work accomplishment and to provide opportunities for more people to add value to operations.
Traditional values such as unit loyalty and obedience are fostered which stifle initiative and hamper teamwork across departments. Newer values such as collaboration, teamwork and responsiveness along with treating other units as internal ‘customers’ are encouraged.

Due to inundated reasons, the nature of the business is far from stable—mergers, acquisitions, new technology to absorb, changing demographics, de-regulation, global competition, competition from small, fluid, adaptive organizations all add to the chaos that any organization needs to handle. This calls for a more flexible and adaptive approach to the leadership.

Adaptive leaders demonstrate a set of values which are as follows:

  1. Proactive attitude: Foresee opportunities and put the resources in place to capitalize them.
  2. Employing a broad-based style of leadership which makes them personally more flexible and adaptive.
  3. Consider and discuss diverse and divergent views when possible before making major decisions.
  4. Ready to admit when they are wrong and alter or abandon a non-productive course of action.
  5. Strategizes their organization’s capacities to learn, transform structure, change the culture and adapt technology.
  6. Are willing to experiment, take risks which may produce high value for the team.
  7. Open to new ideas and stay abreast by being lifelong learners.
  8. Love and encourage innovation across all the levels in the organization.

Interpersonal skills include problem management, conflict management, negotiation, motivational skills, and leadership skills.

Interpersonal Skills

Interpersonal skills (Figure 9.3), otherwise called soft skills, are very important for team development. Skills such as showing empathy to stakeholders, knowing and using the technique of influencing others, always looking for creative ideas and preferring group facilitation are valuable skills required for a project manager when managing the team.

The project management team can greatly reduce problems and increase cooperation by understanding the sentiments of other members, anticipating their actions, acknowledging their concerns and following up on their issues.

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Figure 9.3 Interpersonal skills

Negotiations

Negotiation mostly happens with functional managers or other project management teams to ensure receiving appropriate resources within required timeframes.

 

Win-Win Negotiations

  1. Establish rapport and common goals
  2. Probe for understanding of beliefs, goals, win-win options
  3. Paraphrase for confirmation/affirmation
  4. Analyze outcomes and risks
  5. Summarize what was agreed on, and next steps (even if these are only “baby steps”

The customer can get engaged in negotiation with all the internal stakeholders and come up with the prioritization ranking list. But most of the customers tend to prioritize 80% of the requirement as high priority requirements. This is a kind of biasing. We may need to employ few other technique to avoid this kind of biasing issues.

 

Typical Negotiating Challenges of Agile Projects

  1. “Build or buy” decisions
  2. feature prioritization
  3. catch-up and Overtime needs
  4. contract overruns
  5. vendor Selection
  6. Bonuses and pay scales for Agile Team
  7. Risk Management strategies

Negotiation Mode

Following is the negotiation modes of which are used for conflict resolution also.

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  1. Accommodative: 100% co-operative, 0% assertive
  2. Competing: 0% co-operative, 100% assertive
  3. Compromise: Equal distance from co-operative and assertive
  4. Collaborative: Combination of co-operative and assertive

Steps for Negotiation

Juliet Erickson, an international communication coach, gives the following nine steps to be used for negotiation (Figure 9.4).

Step 1—Determine Your Negotiation Objective

Determined what do you want to achieve through this negotiation? This is a key step and lots of people get into a negotiation without knowing the objective, thereby it fails and goes in favor of the party at the other side.

Step 2—Identify the Issues for You and the Other Person/Party

Understand as early as possible what the other party cares about and what they are or are not willing to trade.

Step 3—Think About Strengths and Weaknesses for Issues on Both Sides

Be practical and acknowledge your strengths and weaknesses. Would you trust someone taking a strong position on an issue that is known by everyone to be a weakness?

Step 4—Agree the ‘Attitude’ You will Take into the Negotiation

We all bring an ‘attitude’ to negotiating. Your attitude can come from your experience, your personal style or comfort zone. The other person has an attitude as well and you need to take this into consideration to avoid problems later. Ask yourself: ‘What do I want my relationship with this person to be like after the negotiation?’ The world is a small place and no doubt you will be negotiating with them again. Everything you do needs to be consistent with this attitude. If you say you want to co-operate, do not behave like a bully.

Step 5—Decide on a Strategy for Each Issue

Not all issues are created equal. This means you will need a different strategy for each issue. For example, on issues where you are strong or that are critically important to you, be a bit tougher. On issues that you do not care about very much or do not impact you, be more flexible.

Step 6—Plan Your Bargaining Position for Each Issue

Here is a fun tool called a ‘bargaining position model’. Get a flip chart or some blank sheets of paper. Take a sheet for each issue and draw a horizontal line across it. At the left side write your ideal position. At the right-hand side of the line write the worst possible outcome you could accept. Create two more positions in between. Repeat this for each issue and then think about what the other side might do in reverse. Now comes the time to test whether this step is in keeping with your overall attitude. I have seen many people say they can be flexible on a less important issue, then put a really tough opening position on the left-hand side of the bargaining model.

Step 7—What Tactics will be Used?

Tactics are the behaviors that bring your attitude to life. There is no point in saying you want a cooperative negotiation if your tactics are mean or rude. Hiding information, refusing to say what you think, stalling unnecessarily, raising new points at the last minute are all competitive tactics that annoy and frustrate people, and rarely add any value. Think of the tactics that may be used on you and how you will neutralize them.

Step 8—Plan Your Questions and Evidence

While planning, you will discover gaps in your knowledge of the other person’s needs and priorities. I encourage you to talk with them directly to fill these gaps. Think about the questions they will ask you and what you need to ask them.

Step 9—Decide on Your Plan B

It is always good to do some worst-case scenario planning. No matter how well you planned, things can still go wrong. You will have a lot more confidence if you go into the final stages of negotiation with a plan B. Tip: Care about the result, but not too much.

These simple but very effective planning steps will keep you focused on what is important and the actions that need to be in place to ensure you achieve your negotiation objective sooner with less stress.

Conflict Resolution

While working with a team of diversified people it is natural to have conflicts within the team. Though we think of conflicts as the manifestation of the discontented workforce, but in reality, constructive conflicts can make the team bonding stronger and can create a lot of innovative ideas inside the team. Before you approach to resolve any conflict among the team members you need to know the common reasons of the conflicts and how you can channelize the conflicts into a more constructive discussion among the team for attaining the bigger goal of the organization.

Conflict is inevitable. It should be addressed early and usually in private, using direct and collaborative approach. It is natural and forces for alternatives. Conflict should be considered as a team issue. Conflict resolution should focus on the present and not in the past and it should be issue based and not person based.

Conflict Resolution Techniques

  1. Problem-solving: Confronting.
  2. Compromise: Searching for a solution that brings some degree of satisfaction for all parties.
  3. Forcing: Pushing one viewpoint at the expense of others. Offers win-lose solution.
  4. Smoothing: Emphasizing the areas of agreement rather than disagreement.
  5. Collaborating: Incorporating multiple viewpoints and insights from differing perspectives leads to consensus and commitment
  6. Withdrawing: Avoiding

Cause of Conflict

The reasons for conflict among team members may be due to the following:

  1. Facts (information): This is often the biggest source of conflict when each person thinks that the information they have is the most authentic and manipulates their activity accordingly. A very clear communication on the organization policies and a frequent update on the organization’s progress can often bring down this type of fact mismatch.
  2. Goals (roles): This arises when the team members are not working towards the same goal resulting in the unclear roles definition. For example, between a developer and tester there may be a conflict regarding who should retest the bug identified during testing if the team’s goal of preventing the defect leakage as much as possible is not clear to them.
  3. Methods (needs): Different people approach their work differently, meaning the methods of achieving the same result may vary widely based on several factors. For example, one team member may like to work on a job until it is finished, without interruption, while another member will take scheduled breaks, no matter at what point they are in a task. So, disagreement surfaces between all people working on the job, about when to take breaks.
  4. Values (beliefs): Values are deep rooted inside people resulting from the way individual upbringing was done. But undermining other people’s values often becomes the major reason for conflict.

Additional causes of conflict can be as follows:

  1. Competition
  2. Boundaries
  3. Hidden agendas

Levels of Conflicts

Figure 9.5 illustrates the levels of conflicts in the negotiating process.

Approach to Conflict

Your approach to any conflict is very important as the team members need to buy into your ideas when you are trying to pitch in inside a conflict.

  1. Listen to understand the other person’s position (or perspective, etc.).
  2. Once understood, describe the other person’s position (or perspective, etc.) as best you can see it.
  3. Describe the problem as you understand it.
  4. Describe what other member(s) do that you believe contributes to the problem.
  5. Describe what you do, which could contribute to the problem.
  6. Clearly state what you want or need from others to resolve the problem.
  7. State the first steps you want to take to resolve the conflict.

This means before you take a dive to resolve any conflict make sure that all the members involved have clearly articulated statement of understanding of the problem. Make sure that the team has continual focus on the problem or issue rather than on the personalities or individuals. It is important that the team members understands that he/she is a part of the problem and must be part of the resolution. This will encourage openness and willingness to pursue a win-win solution.

Qualities of a Constructive Conflict in Agile Project

As was mentioned earlier, conflict can actually help in building team effectiveness. Useful qualities of conflict include the following:

  1. Members evaluate one another’s ideas and discuss the shared view.
  2. Members generate more ideas through constructive discussion.
  3. Participation among members is high and widely shared.
  4. Members show flexibility in their ideas and actions; they do not insist on one view or behavior but are open to consider all options.
  5. Members strive for successful outcomes.
  6. Members consciously work to find conclusions that others can accept.
  7. Members successfully influence others and are also influenced by them in turn.

Consent Check, Consensus Check

They help to avoid misunderstandings and increase positive energy within the team. Consent check hears all the voices that want to be heard are heard. Consensus check ensures consensus is reached and the team moves forward.

QUICK QUIZ on Conflict Management
Figure out what conflict resolution technique is being used in the below scenario and try to match it
I have decided to use the solution by the project leader and not going to listen from anybody. Withdrawal
I don’t have the time and you do whatever you want. Problem-solving
Let’s all sit together after 6pm and discuss how to solve this. Forcing
You guys agree on all the points and only 2 points are differing. I am sure it’s not a big issue. Compromising
I request you to give-up the third point and take the point of Kumar as its valid it will be great. Smoothening
Answer
I have decided to use the solution by the project leader and not going
to listen from anybody.		 Forcing
I don’t have the time and you do whatever you want. Withdrawal
Let’s all sit together after 6pm and discuss to solve this. Problem-solving
You guys agree on all the points and only 2 points are differing. I am sure it’s not a big issue. Smoothening
I request you to give-up the third point and take the point of Kumar as its valid it will be great. Compromising
Servant leadership

There are different leadership roles taken by Agile coach. They are as follows:

  1. Bulldozer for impediments
  2. Shepherd for Agile principles
  3. Servant leader
  4. Guardian for quality improvement

The approach of leadership that has been successful in Agile engagements is the servant leadership.

Servant leadership is a philosophy and practice of leadership. The concept of servant leadership is ancient. Chanakya wrote, in the fourth century B.C., in his book Arthashastra ‘the king [leader] shall consider as good, not what pleases himself but what pleases his subjects [followers]’ and ‘the king [leader] is a paid servant and enjoys the resources of the state together with the people’.

The terms of ‘modern servant leadership’ and ‘servant leader’ were coined by Robert K. Greenleaf in 1970. He coined this phrase in his essay ‘The Servant as Leader’ and supported by many leadership and management writers.

Servant leaders achieve results for their organizations by giving priority attention to the needs of their colleagues and those they serve. Servant leaders are often seen as humble stewards of their organization’s resources: human, financial and physical.

This is a management philosophy which implies a comprehensive view of the quality of people, work and community spirit. A servant leader concentrates on the needs of the team members and asks himself how he can help them to solve problems and promote personal development. His guiding principle is that only content and motivated people are able to reach their targets and to fulfill the set expectations, and thus he places his main focus on people.

In his essay The Servant as Leader, Greenleaf said:

‘It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. That person is sharply different from one who is a leader first, perhaps because of the need to assuage an unusual power drive or to acquire material possessions…The leader-first and the servant-first are two extreme types. Between them, there are shadings and blends that are part of the infinite variety of human nature’.

The most common difference in leadership styles is the distinction between autocratic and participative leadership styles. The authoritarian style of management gives stress on clearly defining tasks and monitoring their execution and results. The decision-making responsibility lies with the executive team. But in the practice of a participative leadership style, employees get involved in decision-making. More tasks are delegated. As a result of involving the employees in the decision-making, the employees’ influence and responsibility increases.

Servant leadership can be most likely mapped with the participative management style. The highest priority of a servant leader is to encourage, support and enable the team members to unfold their full potential and abilities. This leads to an obligation to delegate responsibility and engage in participative decision-making resulting in the greatest possible performance and employee satisfaction.

Characteristics of Being a Servant Leader

Larry C. Spears has extracted a set of 10 characteristics that are central to the development of a servant leader:

  1. Listening: A servant leader has the motivation to listen actively to team members and support them in decision identification. The servant leader particularly needs to pay attention to what remains unspoken in the management setting relying on his inner voice in order to find out what the body, mind and spirit are communicating.
  2. Empathy: A servant leader attempts to understand and empathize with the team. Team members are not considered as only employees, but also as people who need respect and appreciation for their personal development. As a result, leadership is seen as a special type of human work, which ultimately generates a competitive advantage.
  3. Healing: A servant leader tries to help people solve their problems and conflicts in relationships, because he wants to encourage and support the personal development of each individual team members. This leads to the formation of a business culture, in which the working environment is dynamic, fun and the team is free of the fear of failure. A great strength of a servant leader is the ability for healing one’s self and others by helping the team balance work and personal life.
  4. Awareness: A servant leader needs to gain general awareness, especially self-awareness so that they can view situations from a more integrated, holistic position. This also provides them a better understanding of ethics and values which are the building blocks for their leadership quality.
  5. Persuasion: A servant leader does not use their power and status for coercing compliance; they rather try to convince those they manage through effective discussion. This element distinguishes servant leadership most clearly from traditional, authoritarian models.
  6. Conceptualization: A servant leader expands her horizon beyond day-to-day realities. That means she has the ability to see beyond the limits of the current operating business and also focuses on long-term operating goals rather than short-term benefits. As a result, they derive specific goals and implementation strategies for the benefit of the organization as well as the teams working towards the goals.
  7. Foresight: Foresight is the ability to foresee the most likely outcome of a situation. This empowers the servant leader to learn about the past and to achieve a better understanding of the current reality to identify consequences about the future. This characteristic is closely related to conceptualization.
  8. Stewardship: All the stakeholders in an organization have the task to hold their institution in trust for the greater good of society. In conclusion, servant leadership is seen as a dedication to help and serve others. Openness and persuasion are more important than control of the servant leader.
  9. Commitment to the growth of people: Therefore, A servant leader nurtures the personal, professional and spiritual growth of employees, because she believes that people have an intrinsic value beyond their contributions as workers. A servant leader encourages the ideas of everyone and involves workers in decision-making for empowering the workforce to grow in their value chain.
  10. Building community: Servant leaders are committed to building a strong community feeling within their organization and develop a true community among businesses and institution.

Unlike leadership approaches with a top-down hierarchical style, the emphasis of servant leadership is on collaboration, trust, empathy and the ethical use of power. At the core, the individual is a servant first, making a conscious decision to lead in order to serve others better, not to increase their own power. The ultimate objective is to enhance the growth of individuals in the organization and to increase teamwork and personal involvement for achieving a common goal. Through surveys it has been found that the organization attains several benefits by promoting servant leadership:

  1. Servant leadership through the exemplary treatment of employees leads to an excellent treatment of customers by employees of the company and a high loyalty of the customers.
  2. Through enhanced engagement process there is high employee identification within the organization.
  3. The corporate culture is significantly improved.
  4. Leaders of a company define themselves by showing their significance to the people.
  5. Servant leadership is an excellent way to improve the return on investment of staff, in all economic sectors. It has been found that the managers who empower and respect their staff get better performance in return.

In summary, servant leadership is all about developing people, building great teams, thinking strategically and identifying with the values of the organization. Employees are encouraged and motivated to participate in decision-making. They should be encouraged to solve problems themselves and to grow by achieving personal success. The leader’s purpose is also to create a very positive and familiar working environment. The other characteristics of a servant leader are active listening, empathy, healing and the formation of a community. A servant leader strives for continuous improvement, understands the context of current actions and implications for the future, strategizes goals into specific action plans and holds a future-oriented view of things. The courage to conceptualize and far-sighted visions are also the characteristics of a servant leadership approach. Through the personal identification with the goals of the company the employee motivation increases which leads to increase in performance and commitment.

Brainstorming Techniques
  1. In these groups, members meet face-to-face and rely on both verbal and nonverbal interactions to communicate with each other.
  2. Brainstorming is meant mainly to overcome pressures for conformity in the interacting group that retard the development of creative alternatives.
  3. It does this by utilizing an idea-generation process that specifically encourages any and all alternatives, while withholding any criticism of those alternatives.

In a typical brainstorming session, about six people sit around a table and the group leader states the problem in a clear and understandable manner so that it is understood by all the participants involved. Members then can suggest as many alternatives as they can in a given length of time. No criticism is allowed strictly, and all the alternatives are recorded for later discussion and analysis. Brainstorming, however, is merely a process to generate ideas. A brainstorming session requires a facilitator, a brainstorming space, a white board, a flip chart, or software tool. The facilitator should guide the entire session and encourage active participation from all involved. We need to involve participants from various departments across the organization who have different backgrounds so that they can bring fresh ideas that can inspire the experts.

Building Empowered Team

Definition of Team

An Agile team is a cross-functional group of people 100% allocated to the project and there is no partial allocation. The agile team works best when all the team members are co-located but we have tools to manage the distributed Agile team. Agile team is also self-organizing team and they do their work efficiently (Theory Y) and only facilitation is required. One-to-one communication is very critical and important for the growth of the team members and the team as a whole.

Types of Team

Some project teams deliver wonderful results and that also without facing much stress, but some teams actually struggle to deliver correct things even working in full stress level. Though from outside both of this type of workforce look like real teams but actually they can be categorized into a real team, pseudo team, potential team and workgroup based on the definition.

Real Team

This is what an ideal high performing team should look like:

  1. This is a small group of people with complementary skills
  2. All the members are equally committed to a common purpose, goals and working approach
  3. All the members hold themselves mutually accountable for the results

Real Team, Stage Four, Characteristics

  1. Customers are consistently receiving outstanding service and product
  2. Team standards are met continuously and seamlessly
  3. Members are comfortable with the consistency and shared leadership
  4. Team outperforms all reasonable expectations by working as a cohesive whole
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Figure 9.7 Real team

Potential Team

  1. There is a significant, incremental performance need for this group of people. It is trying to improve its performance impact by improving the collaboration.
  2. If it gets more clarity about the purpose, goals or work products then it has a high potential to become a real team.

Potential Team, Stage Three, Characteristics

  1. Ownership of performance standards is increasing
  2. Customer focus has improved significantly
  3. There exist mutual accountability and members starting to like and feel comfortable
  4. More honesty and transparency among team members
  5. Learning and improving from trial and error—recovery is rapid

Pseudo Team

This is the classic type of team which we generally think of as the real team, but when we look deep into the team structure and performance then it will turn out to be a pseudo team

  1. For this group of people, there could be a significant, incremental performance needs or opportunity, but it has not focused on collective performance and not really trying to achieve it; rather they work individually without much collaboration
  2. A common purpose or set of performance goals is missing
  3. There may be individual brilliance within the group, but the sum of the whole is less than the potential of the individual parts due to lack of proper collaboration

Pseudo Team, Stage Two, Characteristics

  1. A unmotivated team with a feeling that this definitely is not fun
  2. Leadership and/or members are not in control of the situation
  3. Everyone can feel that ‘something is definitely wrong here’
  1. 4. Team members are feeling uncertain and incapable
  2. 5. Performance standards not being met and that leads to lots of finger-pointing, bringing down team’s morale
  3. 6. Customer focus is very low

Working Group

  1. This is a group of people which is not feeling the need to become a team as there is no significant incremental performance needs or opportunity
  2. The primary reason for interaction among the members of this group is to share information, best practices or perspectives

Working Group, Stage One, Characteristics

Figure 9.10 shows the characteristics of a working group.

  1. This group has questions about what the rules really are
  2. Standards are yet to be developed
  3. High dependence is on the leader
  4. Leader uses a directive approach to allocate and track tasks

We significantly rise up the value chain (Figure 9.11) when we move from working group to pseudo team to potential team and then to the real team.

If we identify a real team and find out what made them a real team, we will be able to identify several categories each with certain characteristics:

Approach of Real Team

  1. Members’ complementary skills comes to use as needed
  2. There is a shared leadership giving opportunity to people to grow
  3. Members are clear on their roles and responsibilities
  4. Various ideas are explored among the team before a decision arrives
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Figure 9.11 Value chain

Product Characteristics of Real Team

  1. Throughput is high
  2. Quality is excellent
  3. Decision-making is effective and apt
  4. Customer expectations have been exceeded consistently

Interpersonal Skills of a Real Team

  1. Members feel comfortable about the team
  2. Members are charged up and motivated
  3. There are prides and confidence in the team
  4. There are commitment and trust between team members

Customer Service of Real Team

  1. Customer kept informed on task progress and there is overall transparency maintained
  2. Customer service strategy is in place and is operating seamlessly
  3. Relationship with customer is being developed and they are working as partners
  4. Customer is overwhelmed with service and the product

Agile Team Stages (Shu-Ha-Ri, Dreyfus, Tuckman)

Figure 9.12 explains three different stages of the team (SHU-HA-RI) gaining knowledge and acquiring skills. First stage is to follow the rule to understand the entire gamut of the rule before breaking it. It also indicates a step-by-step approach. A team can be in one or all of these stages simultaneously.

SHU: At this first stage of learning the student follows the instruction of a single master and instead of trying to understand the underlying theory is concentrating mainly in following the rules.

HA: This is the second stage of learning when the student is learning from multiple masters and along with following the rules trying to understand the principles behind the rules.

RI: This is the matured level of learning as the student is now able to create his or her own approaches and is able to adapt to what he or she has learned according to the situations.

Agile coach stages in the similar lines are teaching–coaching–advising.

The SHU-HA-RI model is expanded in the Dreyfus model of skill acquisition. This model was proposed by the Dreyfus brothers in 1980 based on their teaching the pilots. This is based on a five-stage model with each stage increasing in skill.

Novice - Focus is on getting to know and following the rules.

Advanced beginner - Able to apply the rules according to the environment. All activities are treated separately with equal importance.

Competent - Able to perform multiple activities and handle multiple sources of information simultaneously.

Proficient - Able to get the holistic picture of the process and judge deviations from normal.

Expert - Able to use an analytical approach to apply the acquired knowledge to resolve new situations.

These principles are used in Agile coaching as group development tools.

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Figure 9.12 Agile team stages

War Room

The war room is a technique for team building. As part of this, the project team meets in this room daily at a specified time even if there are no issues to discuss. It actually helps to create a project identity. Agile recommends the team to work continuously in the war room itself and call that room as ‘information space’.

Tools and Techniques for Team Building

According to Bruce Tuckman team-building happens through the stages of forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning.

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Forming

Team members are introduced and it is the polite stage in which the team starts to form. Everyone is trying to figure out the team concept. The team is usually positive for the initial meetings. No one will offend anyone at this point.

Storming

The team starts to move from ‘as is’ to ‘to be’. The silent leaders may be clashing for control of the group and there will be a lot of storming and hence the name. People disagree and may even blame the team concept, saying it does not work and will not work. Management put efforts to overcome their differences, may even take separate one to one sessions with people, if required.

Norming

The team reaches consensus on the ‘to be’ process and they learned to work together, and has turned around from the storming phase. When issues crop up, the team will bounce back and forth between ‘storming’ and ‘norming’. When a new member is added they will move to the ‘forming’ stage.

Performing

The team is at high-performance level and very seldom they fall back into the ‘storming’ phase. At this level, the team automatically takes new work, and selling it to other teams as they are high performers.

Adjourning

The team shares the improved processes with others and many relationships formed within these teams continue long after the team disbands as they are high performance team.

Team empowerment (Figure 9.13) is a largely misunderstood concept in the corporate world. The real essence of empowering the team is to allow people at all levels to broaden their scope of decision-making to fully utilize their talents, skills and inherent creativity. Research suggested that empowering workers widen the boundary of individual and team contribution.

The agile framework provides special stress on the empowered team as only empowered teams can work towards self-direction which is the core of Agile values. Encourage emergent leadership within the team by establishing a safe and respectful environment in which new approaches can be tried in order to make improvements and foster self-organization and empowerment. The project manager has a vital role in creating the empowered team. The concept of the role of project manager in Agile is quite different from the traditional models. So let us make our understanding clear about it.

It is the process of improving competencies, team interaction and the overall team environment to improve project performance, empowering the team to self-organizing around the work. Team work is a critical factor for project success and is achieved by open and effective communication, developing trust, encouraging collaborative problem-solving. Continuously discover the team and individual motivators and de-motivators in order to ensure that the team is continuously motivated throughout the project. Practice servant leadership by supporting and encouraging others in their endeavors so that they can perform at their highest level and continue to improve.

Coaching and Mentoring

Every team needs some coaching and mentoring, no matter how long the team members are working together. Mentoring transfers the Agile knowledge and experience to the team and it may also come from outside the team. The context of Agile makes it a mentor, whereas the focus on the team makes it a coach. Figure 9.14 shows the difference between managing and coaching. Coaching happens simultaneously at two levels: individual level and the team level.

In the beginning of the sprint team level, coaching will be at high and individual coaching takes a back seat. In the middle individual coaching takes a front seat.

Agile coaching is 40% doing and 60% being. Coaching tones consist of loving, compassionate and uncompromising.

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Figure 9.15

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Figure 9.16 One-on-one coaching

Coaching and Mentoring Style

The coaching or mentoring style varies widely depending on the willingness of the team to learn new skills and the existing skill level of the team. Figure 9.15 shows the coaching style that is preferred based on the above two parameters.

Figure 9.16 describes the step to coach one to one. A coach needs to meet them half step ahead, meaning understanding the level of the person and guarantee safety to them, otherwise, they may not come and talk to them the next time. A coach also needs to create a positive regard so that things move out smoothly. The coach also needs to partner with managers to promise and take the correct decision.

Common characteristics or qualities of Agile coach are termed as Native Wiring. Figure 9.17 depicts the various native wirings that can depict the success of an Agile coach.

The following table (Table 9.1) presents the different situations when coaching and mentoring is initiated for a team along with the approach that is best suited for such type of mentoring:

 

Table 9.1 Reason to coach and mentor

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We will see later in this chapter how the project manager is perceived as a ‘guru’ for Mentor or Agile projects whose one of the primary responsibilities is to coach and mentor the team members.

Failure Modes and Alternatives

Agile projects fail due to various reasons. The most common of those are as follows:

  1. Developers not collaborating on stories
  2. Emphasizing iterations over stories
  3. Accepting incomplete work at the end of the iteration
  4. Lack of discipline
  5. Not continually keeping design and code optimally clean
  6. Not reflecting and adopting every iteration
  7. Treating Agile as a checklist
  8. Blaming the process
  9. Not making available a clear, single-voice customer

Failure Modes

Mode Remarks
The spy Observe without notice
The seagull Well intentioned observation but flies away again
The butterfly Impart wisdom team to team
The admin Middleman for logistics
The hub Center for communication
The nag Reminds the team about commitment
The opinionator Express their opinions
The expert Too much involvement

The above table describes various failure modes of an Agile coach and its nature. Following is a more detailed explanation for each mode.

  1. The spy mode: In some of the projects, the Agile coach tends to play the role of a spy rather than coaching and helping the team. They try to act as the representative of some higher management who want them to do the watchdog role. This kind of Agile coach mode may not work well and the team may not gel with these kinds of people; thus understanding the pulse of the team over a period of time will become difficult. The team may not trust this kind of people and will not share sensitive information as these people are perceived as a spy rather than a coach.
  2. The seagull: This is the role of the traditional project manager. They will manage by exceptions and will only come into the picture whenever there are high escalations. They will not meet them daily and will not even know the exact status and feelings of the team. Like a seagull, they will fly back to their place (room) once the problem gets solved.
  3. The butterfly: They impart wisdom to the team but will not help the team during difficult times. The butterfly role will fly inside the team only when the role needs it and not the other way around. In such cases, the wisdom may not be all that helpful in solving the existing problem within the team.
  4. The administrator: They actually start doing the role of the operation manager and start doing all the operational jobs rather than doing the team coach job.
  5. The hub: They actually start playing the role of the post office and act as the center for communication.
  6. The opinionator: They will give only their opinion rather than trying to help the team solve their problems. Their opinion may be limited to their knowledge and may not be related to the problem at hand.
  7. The expert: Too much of involvement is the problem here, which may not give space for the team to learn, and the team productivity and commitment may not improve over a period of time because of this. The coach may be an expert, but they should create an environment for the team to solve their problem themselves.

Success Modes

Mode Remarks
The ear Hears everything from team
The magician Revealing what team is not able
The child Curious about everything
The heckler Keep it fun
The wise fool Ask dump questions
The creeping vine Make small moves
The dreamer Think and voice the future
The megaphone Make sure all voices are heard

The table above gives various success modes of Agile, which helps the team to perform their job.

  1. The ear: Hears everything from the team before giving any opinion and solutions.
  2. The magician: Try to help the team by doing something which is not usually possible with the team.
  3. The child: The Agile coach needs to be curious about everything. The curiosity needs to be reflected in the voice, body language, and action.
  4. The heckler: Even though they have a serious job of developing products in hand, the Agile coach maintains an element of fun so that things can be achieved quickly and effortlessly. That will help the team to stay focused.
  5. The dreamer: The Agile coach always should think and dream about the future asking a lot of questions and plan and actions towards it. This also helps along the principle of continuous improvement.
  6. The creeping vine: Always make small moves for continuous improvement rather than a big bang approach.
  7. The megaphone: The Agile coach needs to ensure that all the voices are heard properly. The difference between the ear and megaphone modes is that in the former the coach hears everything from the team, whereas in the latter the coach hears from everybody to gain a wholesome perspective.

Alternative Success Modes

The below table compares the failure and success modes and points out the most suitable alternative success modes for each failure mode.

Failure Mode Alternate Success Mode
The spy The ear, the child
The seagull The heckler, the creeping vine
Failure Mode Alternate Success Mode
The butterfly The megaphone
The admin The dreamer
The hub The dreamer
The nag The wise fool
The opinionator The megaphone
The expert The creeping vine
Team Motivation and Knowledge Sharing

A true team shares knowledge and becomes motivated while expanding their knowledge. If you take away the sharing of knowledge, the team will no longer be a team, members will no longer be knowledgeable and constructive motivation will be gone.

True teams evolve into a knowledgeable workforce, which is highly effective for leaders who allow team members to be stronger than themselves. For an organization, the employees are an investment and thus additional training increases their value. By using the investment concept, many opportunities become available for increasing the efficiency of the team. But if employees are considered as an investment, that is, ‘training is not cost effective’, then the opportunity for increasing efficiency becomes limited.

The philosophy of empowering the team with knowledge is a direct manifestation of the leadership approach followed in an Agile framework. In the traditional model, many leaders limit team’s learning opportunity because they want undisputed control. They want employees to follow orders and not explore options for easy control. Control policies make it difficult for talented employees to be recognized because they want to show the independent thinking power in their work. Providing the team with responsibility makes early recognition possible because coworkers are first to recognize talent. This is why companies with true empowerment programs nourish the talent much better.

The teams which share knowledge will increase their knowledge while motivating others. The teams that only take orders learn nothing and over a period of time become de-motivated. Leaders, who only give orders, inspire no one. Today’s technology is a world of the vast pool of information. Inside the Agile framework, all the time team information radiators are encouraged. Team collaboration through knowledge sharing is the heart of Agile. The ability to acquire new skills, as new technology moves into the marketplace, is the secret to being a leader. To take advantage of emerging trends, team education in the workplace can supply the needed knowledge rather than a classroom training.

Team Empowerment

Task 1: Encourage team members to become generalizing specialists in order to reduce team size and bottlenecks, and to create a high-performing cross-functional team.

Task 2: Contribute to self-organizing the work by empowering others and encouraging emerging leadership in order to produce effective solutions and manage complexity.

Task 3: Continuously discover team and personal motivators and demotivators in order to ensure that team morale is high and team members are motivated and productive throughout the project.

Team Motivation

There are lots of motivational factors for the team to work on an Agile project. An Agile coach (facilitator) needs to ensure that the following factors are taken care of.

  1. Variety of work
  2. Build trust
  3. Be realistic
  4. Create good environment
  5. Team focused reward
  6. Employee participation in planning
  7. Immediate feedback
  8. Team visibility
  9. Immediate recognition
  10. Career progression
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Figure 9.18 Team performance factors

Figure 9.18 illustrates the team performance factors which will motivate the entire team.

Team commitment can be improved by aligning the team goal with the project goal and protecting the team from distractions. Team capacity can be measured and can be improved thereby slowly improving the team commitment (Figure 9.19).

Leadership STYLES
  1. Directing: Telling others what they need to do
  2. Facilitating: Coordinating only with the input of others
  3. Coaching: Instructing others clearly
  4. Supporting: Providing assistance along the way to do work
  5. Autocratic: Making decisions on own without input
  6. Consultative/Participative: Inviting ideas from others before taking decision
  7. Consensus: Problem-solving in a group with decision-making based only on group
    agreement
Problem-solving Steps

Approach for Problem Resolution in Agile

Technical investigation to find an answer to a problem is called spike.

In Agile particular stress is given on empowering the team to resolve their issues themselves. The first point is to provide visibility to the team on the issues and risks arising in the project and then providing them the necessary guidance to resolve those. In particular, the managers should understand two things:

  1. An important goal of an Agile approach is to build teams that can solve their own problems effectively (but not all the organizational ones thrown at them). This helps to develop larger numbers of people who are, in fact, problem-solvers.
  2. To get the most value out of a team’s effort, those outside the team should be prepared to get involved in more problem-solving which means impediment clearing, than they may have previously expected. This will enable teams to focus on meeting iteration functionality expectations.

For this reason, the manager’s role is more like a guide; he/she would not jump in to solve the problem even if he/she knows the solution. Having the team do it enables them to manage their own environment (to the extent they can). Whether you are working in Agile or otherwise, relying on single individuals to be ‘problem-solvers’ may mean that you set up a number of single-points-of-failure should such people leave, be transferred, etc. Figure 9.20 shows four simple steps to solve a problem in an Agile Project. First, detect the correct problem and reflect on it. Take the problem to the team without trying to solve it yourself.

The practice of daily stand-up meetings in Agile plays a great role in enhancing the team’s ability to surface problems and collectively reduce the risk of wasted effort by sharing progress information to the entire team members. Daily meetings provide everyone on the team an opportunity to see the status of all aspects of the project in real time. This allows the collective thought process of the team to fine-tune or redirect efforts on a daily basis to maximize throughput. This results in radical alteration of the software development process by allowing sharing of software resources. Development tasks which normally take days could often be accomplished in hours by using someone else’s code as a starting point.

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Figure 9.20 Problem solving rubric

Problem solving tips in Agile Projects:

  1. Create an open and safe environment by encouraging conversation and experimentation in order to surface problems and impediments that are slowing the team down or preventing its ability to deliver value.
  2. Identify threats and issues by educating and engaging the team at various points in the project in order to resolve them at the appropriate time and improve processes that caused issues.
  3. Ensure issues are resolved by appropriate team members and/or reset expectations in light of issues that cannot be resolved in order to maximize the value delivered.
  4. Maintain a visible, monitored, and prioritized list of threats and issues in order to elevate accountability, encourage action, and track ownership and resolution status.
  5. Communicate the status of threats and issues by maintaining the threat list and incorporating activities into the backlog of work in order to provide transparency.

Team Communication to Avoid Problems

From the beginning, Agile framework was designed to provide transparency to both team members and those outside the team. Refining the approaches for management reporting is an ongoing focus area for Agile community.

A typical Agile project maintains a Kanban board showing columns of user stories, development tasks relating to each story, and the state of each development task and tests associated with each story. As the task progresses from design to code to verification, the associated card is moved from one column to the next and finally to a done column. An updated burn-down chart along with a prioritized list of impediments is often posted as well. A manager can walk by a Kanban board and see the status of the team in a few seconds. If an impediments list is posted, a manager can add relevant items to his or her worklist. The risk burn-down chart along with the impediments chart will provide the management idea of which areas to be focused on at the earliest. This eliminates the need for most status reporting, particularly if critical information is put online on a web page, a wiki or a reporting tool.

The executive management gets transparency into all operations by viewing important indicators quickly. Surprises should be avoided, as in software a surprise is rarely a pleasant one. We all know that projects do backfire; executives know this and so does everyone else. It is always a surprise the first time one hears bad news like delays or unforeseen risks. But the kind of surprise executives hate the most are the ones that have a significant impact and were known much earlier than when they were finally informed. This actually means that the decisions were made on faulty information and this was preventable. By use of the information radiators, this problem can be easily avoided as everyone in the project gets a clear view of the progress, risk, impediments, etc. through a visual tool.

Taking the problem to the team can be done in numerous ways but we need to bear the following in mind.

  1. Address it directly
  2. Reaffirm Agile
  3. Reveal the system to itself
  4. Use the retrospectives
  5. Add a revealer

Self-organizing Team

Agile methodology is based on a different philosophy—the self-organizing team. The difference is apparent from the first step the team takes during planning. The team decides how much to commit to in each iteration. And for doing that the team decides on the estimation of the work items together. Research has shown that the team morale is significantly enhanced and the team feels more committed to the work when the team themselves decide how much to commit to and when this commitment is realistic and achievable. The team is empowered to take important decisions in the project and to stand by the decisions all along.

The next aspect of self-organization happens during the iteration cycles. Together the team decides who will work on which work item and make sure that all the work is completed. When the team is responsible for decision-making, they remain focused on the commitment because they own it; if the commitment is to be completed then they are the ones who must do it. On the other hand, if someone outside the team (the manager) is responsible for deciding who will be doing what then the team gets a subtle but clear indication that they are not the ones who are responsible; but it is the responsibility of the manager to figure out how to meet the commitment. In Agile, the manager’s role is to support the team to achieve its target.

A classic example of the manager helping the team to become self-organizing rather than directing them what to be done is here: The manager Marry has entered the room where the daily stand-up meeting of the team was taking place. The team was deciding on the architecture of the new version of their product and they are planning to start coding on that day based on this architecture. All the components of the design are identified and noted into small sticky notes on the wall. The team asked for the approval of Marry as she is a veteran in designing large complex modules. By looking at the components Marry could readily find out that a very vital component was missing which will cause a lot of rework from the second week unless it is incorporated into the design from the beginning. But she resisted the urge to tell the team directly what is missing, but she wanted them to find out themselves. She said ‘Look guys, the design looks great; but a vital component is missing which will create a problem during integration with system X. I know you all are capable enough to find it. So I am going to grab a cup of coffee and come back in 10 minutes. I hope you will be able to figure out what is missing’. Now the team has a clue, they started thinking hard, examining and brainstorming each integration component. And suddenly they found out that a bridging component is not present to talk to a third party system. And what is more is that they changed one inefficient component while reviewing all the components for this exercise. When Marry came back they were proudly ready with their answers. So, the kind of leadership Marry has shown here is more of a ‘guru’ than a ‘nanny’. She provided the team with the necessary guidance to achieve the goal, but she did not tell them the ready solution. This feels empowered and becomes more cohesive, committed and focused due to their greater involvement in the decision-making.

This is a paradigm shift for the organization culture and to make this successful there should be buy-in from the executives in the organization. A manager in Agile organization should have the following job responsibilities:

  1. Help remove impediments that the team is not able to resolve by themselves
  2. Provide guidance and input to the team on technical difficulties that come up
  3. Hold regular one-to-one meetings with team-members to provide coaching and mentoring
  4. Give input to features enhancement
  5. Stay abreast of developments in tools, technologies and techniques that the team is working with
  6. Plan training and continuous skills development for team members
  7. Stay up-to-date on industry news and developments across similar organizations
  8. Plan and manage budgets and financials of a project
  9. Conduct performance evaluations and provide feedback to team members
  10. Take up career development and career planning with team members
  11. Induct new team members and remove the ones who are not able to perform

You can notice that the primary responsibilities that a manager in the traditional model has is to decide on what and how works need to be done, while committing to the work on behalf of the team is omitted in the Agile model. The manager is adding more value by involving the team for taking such decisions and in turn, is getting more commitment for the project goal.

Two types of leadership techniques that promote team empowerment are adaptive leadership and servant leadership. These concepts are quite different than the conventional leadership models. Due to the high focus of Agile methodology on the ‘people’ these styles of leadership are more popular among the Agile communities.

The concept of High Performing Team in Agile is based on the principles discussed above like building an empowered team and a self-organizing team. In a survey by Quantitative Software Management Associates it was found that Agile teams are 37% faster to market and 16% more productive. This is possible because the high-performing Agile teams can deliver exceptional results over average time by efficient resolution of issues and shorten the cycle times. As discussed above, the most important factors that help to create high-performing teams are:

  • Motivation and reward
  • Skills
  • Leadership
  • Communication
  • Work environment
  • Clarity of purpose or goal
  • Productive conflict resolution

Ground rules and their importance in team building

While working in a team, it is extremely important to set up ground rules, which guides the group’s behavior. This will ensure that an environment is created where members can discuss difficult topics, get into constructive discussions, and free thinking is encouraged. This helps in team building and team performing without unnecessary conflicts. Establish clear expectations regarding acceptable behavior for each and every member of the team. All team members share responsibilities once the ground rules are established clearly.

Each team’s ground rule may be different and these can be modified based on what works for the team and what not. A few examples of ground rules can be:

  1. During daily stand-up nobody gets engaged into cross-conversation.
  2. After each code check-in the happy path testing script needs to be run by the developers.
  3. During an ongoing Sprint, no change to the Sprint backlog will be allowed. The items will be added to the product backlog to be re-prioritized in later Sprints.

Most of the ground rules are set or modified during the retrospective meetings. After working together for one or more iterations, the team can take a call on the rules they want to change as those are working for the team. Some new rules may also get added if there is a need felt. So, it is important to keep the ground rules as a live document and update it as and when there is a need.

 

Discussion Points

1. What are all the ground rules set for your project? Discuss about the advantages of the ground rules.

Constellation

It starts in an open space. Put an object in the middle of the floor (Figure 9.21). Ask the team members to stand around it at a distance. Read out a statement and if they agree with the statement, they need to move closer to the object as much they feel the statement is true. If they feel the statement is false then they need to move away from the object. This helps to understand the pulse of the team.

Power

Power is the ability to influence the behavior of another. Understanding power and the use of power can influence the outcome of the project. The project manager needs to understand his power in the organization and also needs to understand the power of stakeholders in the project in order to utilize it for the success of the project.

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Figure 9.21 Constellation

Forms of Power

Based on ways to influence the people, there are different types of power.

  1. Reward power can be gained from one’s capacity to reward compliance and is used to support legitimate power. When someone is rewarded through recognition, a good job assignment, a pay rise, the employee may respond in kind by carrying through with orders. Rewards often comprise financial remuneration but can also be intangible as well.
  2. Coercive power is the opposite of reward power and is the ability of the power holder to remove something from a person or to punish them for not conforming when a request is made and here also the employee may respond by carrying out the orders given due to fear of punishment.
  3. Legitimate power comes from the authority of your rate and position in the chain of command and it is the legal power. Example: The project manager does some favor or unsavory act just because he is the project manager.
  4. Referent power derives from your subordinates’ identification or their association with you. You have this power by simply being ‘the boss’ and people identify with the ideals you stand for.
  5. Expert power comes from your knowledge in a specific area through which you influence others.
Culture and Team Diversity

Cultural diversity and differences within a distributed team are inevitable. The business and workplace norms may vary significantly across locations causing uneasiness among the team. On the broader perspective, there is a sharp contrast in Western and non-Western values. The Westerners value the individualism, assertiveness, equality, informality, achievement while the non-Westerners value collectivism, indirectness, hierarchy, formality and modesty. So aligning the whole distributed team on the same cultural note should be the focus for creating a high performing team.

Cultural Alignment

Team work is the key enabler of any Agile project. It is very important that at the beginning of the project you plan to bridge the cultural difference between the various teams like, onsite development team, client team and the offshore development team so that the mutual trust is built between the teams.

One of the most critical steps for the success of a distributed Agile project is for the distributed teams to come together in person at the beginning and spend quality time sharing key project information and building a relationship with each other. Following consideration are important to achieve this:

  1. Significant investments by HR to impart cross cultural training
  2. Visit by client team leads to development team location for initial setup and introduction
  3. Key people will have significant onsite experience

Build the Team over Time

Real teams take the time to form, and it will work best if they stay together on multiple projects over long periods. One of the challenges of distributed teams is that this formation process gets extended by reduced face-to-face communication among the team members. As a result, new team members take longer to ramp up on the team’s practices as well as the customer problem domain. It also takes longer for team members to get to know each other on the personal level that is required to build a healthy and open team environment for really effective work. That is the reason, reorganizing distributed teams is even more disruptive than a co-located team.

Team formation Tasks

Cooperate with the other team members to devise ground rules and internal processes in order to foster team coherence and strengthen team members’ commitment to shared outcomes.

Help create a team that has the interpersonal and technical skills needed to achieve all known project objectives in order to create business value with minimal delay.

There are additional items that you need to be aware of while working with a distributed Agile team:

  1. Agile teams often do not produce a lot of formal artifacts, like specifications and design documents, which new team members could use to learn the relevant information from and get to speed quickly. So, special attention must be given to new team members who are working remotely when they join the project to understand their orientation need. Consider assigning them a buddy or mentor to help them get up to speed. Distributed teams may produce additional artifacts like wiki pages to document designs and processes for ensuring knowledge flow continuity to the new team members and for helping new team members get up to speed.
  2. A core team is your biggest asset—building teams from a set of core members who will be on a project for several releases will help. Adding other team members who are there for shorter periods will then be less disruptive as they can leverage the learning from the team’s core members. Over time, the composition of the core team may also slowly change. For each project avoid starting teams from scratch with no continuity guaranteed between projects.

Exercise 9.1 List the activities to develop a project team? (You just acquired the team)

______________________________

______________________________

______________________________

______________________________

______________________________

______________________________

Discussion Points

1. What type of power did you use in what type of situation? Discuss the implications of using other types of powers in the same scenario.

Exercise 9.2 Identify and match the types of powers as depicted in the following activities

Functional manager assigns an architect to work on your team Reward power
You create a policy to award people who finishes their jobs earlier Legitimate power
Lots of other project managers asks doubts to you about project management as you have very good knowledge and skills in it. Punishment power
A project manager says that there will be 10% cut in our salary as we did not meet our profit target last year Expert power

 

Discussion Points

1. List and discuss the characteristics of effective project teams. How will you develop the characteristics of an effective project team?

 

Discussion Points

1. Discuss the conflicts you managed in your recent project.

 

Summary

This chapter discussed the importance of Soft skills that are essential for Project managers. Since Agile projects are mostly people driven soft skills are necessary and we need skills like conflict management, negotiation, Leadership skills, and interpersonal skills to deal with people. Emotional Intelligence doesn’t mean being soft—it means being intelligent about emotions—a different way of being smart.

Emotional intelligence is your ability to acquire and apply knowledge from your emotions and the emotions of others in order to be more successful and lead a more fulfilling life. Emotional Intelligence is the ability of an individual to deal successfully with other people, to manage one’s self, motivate other people, understand one’s own feelings and appropriately respond to the everyday environment. The sum of the individual parts is called collaboration. Collaboration means the whole is greater than the sum of the individual parts. The collaboration includes innovation, astonishing results. This chapter also discussed the concepts of Adaptive Leadership concepts, Servant Leadership concepts in addition to emotional Intelligence, concepts.

 

Answers to Exercise Questions

Exercise 9.1: Possible Answers

Hold team building activities for team members
Training for team members where needed
Establish ground rules for team member behavior. Set clear expectation for them.
Create and give recognitions and rewards.
Take all possible steps to correct mistakes, if any.
Place team members in the same location; co-location, if possible. Arrange for regular team meetings periodically.

Exercise 9.2: Answers

Functional manager assigns an architect to work on your team Legitimate power
You create a policy to award people who finish their jobs earlier Reward power
Adding Resource during Escalation Expert power
A project manager says that there will be 10% cut in our salary as we did not meet our Profit Target last year Punishment power

Chapter 9 Questions and Answers

Question 1. Servant leadership can be mapped to which of the leadership style?

  1. Autocratic
  2. Persuasive
  3. Participative
  4. Mentoring

Question 2. Following are the examples of coaching tones except

  1. Loving
  2. Compassionate
  3. Uncompromising
  4. Compromising

Question 3. The ability to influence the behavior of other is called as:

  1. Politics
  2. Emotions
  3. Power
  4. Mentoring

Question 4. Which of the below statements is NOT correct about ground rules:

  1. These rules are set for the project duration and should not be changed
  2. These help in team building
  3. If any rule is not working for the team then it can be changed or dropped
  4. The team decides on which rules work for them and which not

Question 5. The work that a project team member is expected to perform in order to complete the project activities is called

  1. Accountability
  2. Responsibility
  3. Role
  4. Authority

Question 6. Which of the following is not a collaboration mode?

  1. Accommodative
  2. Competing
  3. Compromise
  4. Responsive

Question 7. Which of the following is not a real team’s characteristic?

  1. Customers are consistently receiving outstanding service and product
  2. Team standards can vary based on the complexity of the project
  3. Members are comfortable with the consistency and shared leadership
  4. Team outperforms all reasonable expectations by working as a cohesive whole

Question 8. What is normally the reason behind a working group to interact with each other though they are not working as a team?

  1. As the management mandates to work together
  2. They want to become a team in future
  3. The primary reason for interaction among the members of this group is to share information, best practices or perspectives
  4. The interactions are mostly for personal needs

Question 9. Following are the stages of team development except

  1. Forming
  2. Norming
  3. Adjourning
  4. Closing

Question 10. You are the project manager of a complex project and the project is running for the past 2 months and team members begin to work together and adjust work habits that support the team. They are in which phase of the team development?

  1. Forming
  2. Storming
  3. Norming
  4. Performing

Question 11. You are the project manager of a complex project and the project is running for the past 2 months and team members are interdependent and work through issues smoothly and effectively. They are in which phase of the team development?

  1. Forming
  2. Storming
  3. Norming
  4. Performing

Question 12. All of the following are the indicators of team effectiveness except

  1. Reduced staff turnover
  2. Increased team cohesiveness
  3. Improvements in competencies
  4. Increased staff turnover

Question 13. Conflict is inevitable in a project environment

  1. True
  2. False

Question 14. Conflict if managed properly can lead to increased creativity and better performance. Conflict should be addressed in all of the following manner except

  1. Early
  2. Usually in private
  3. Using in direct approach
  4. Using collaborative approach

Question 15. Which of the following are the characteristics of conflict except

  1. Openness resolves conflict
  2. Conflict is an individual issue
  3. Conflict is a team issue
  4. Conflict should focus on the present

Question 16. The success of project managers in managing their project teams often depends a great deal on

  1. Their ability to resolve conflict
  2. Their ability on negotiation
  3. Their leadership ability
  4. Their technical ability

Question 17. Factors that influence conflict resolution methods include all of the following except

  1. Time pressure for resolving conflicts
  2. Relative importance and intensity of the conflict
  3. Position taken by players involved
  4. Your style of conflict resolution

Question 18. Your project is about to be moved to UAT in next 2 days. Two key team members are fighting with each other about the environment issues in UAT production server. You are being called by them at night 12:00 clock, which of the following indicates your position?

  1. Time pressure for resolving the conflict
  2. Relative importance and intensity of the conflict
  3. Position taken by players involved
  4. Motivation to resolve conflict on a long-term or a short-term basis

Question 19. Your project is about to be moved to UAT in next 2 days. Two key members are fighting with each other about the environment issues in UAT production server. You are being called by them at night 12:00 clock and you are trying to incorporate multiple viewpoints from other team members and insights from differing perspectives and trying to lead consensus and commitment. Which of the following techniques can you use?

  1. Confronting
  2. Collaborating
  3. Smoothing
  4. Forcing

Question 20. Which of the following conflict resolution technique will give best result for the project manager?

  1. Collaborating
  2. Compromising
  3. Smoothing
  4. Confronting

Question 21. Your project is about to be moved to UAT in next 2 days. Two key team members are fighting with each other about the environment issues in UAT production server. You are being called by them at night 12:00 clock and you are trying to emphasis the areas of agreement rather than areas of difference. Which of the following techniques can you use?

  1. Confronting
  2. Collaborating
  3. Smoothing
  4. Forcing

Question 22. Ability to influence other people is called

  1. Politics
  2. Power
  3. Conflict
  4. Negotiation

Question 23. The ability of the power holder to remove something from a person or to punish them for not conforming when a request is made is called

  1. Coercive power
  2. Reward power
  3. Legitimate power
  4. Referent power

Question 24. Mahesh is the project leader of project ABC and he did his job excellently and received STAR of the year award from CEO of that company and he also got promoted and appointed as project manager for another high priority project, this actually represents

  1. Super effect
  2. Halo effect
  3. Recognition effect
  4. Start effect

Question 25. Mahesh is the project leader of project ABC and he did his job excellently and received STAR of the year award from CEO of that company, and he also got promoted and appointed as project manager for another high priority project. Mahesh is taking decision on his own even if team members are not accepting it and this represents

  1. Autocratic
  2. Legitimate
  3. Expert
  4. Referent power

Question 26. Mahesh who is having 25 years of experience is having difference of opinion with Mohan who is 20 years of experience about testing process of your project. They are approaching you for a solution. You are asking Mohan to accept what Mahesh says as he is more experienced. Which technique you follow here

  1. Withdrawal
  2. Problem-solving
  3. Forcing
  4. Escaping

Question 27. In SHU-HA-RI concept of gaining knowledge and skills SHU stage means:

  1. At this stage the student tries to read the concepts and understand
  2. At this stage the student can ask the master questions about the underlying theory of the rules
  3. At this first stage of learning the student follows the instruction of a single master and instead of trying to understand the underlying theory is concentrating mainly in following the rules
  4. At this stage the student will concentrate on the rules but can try to explore exceptions as well

Question 28. In the Dreyfus model of skill acquisition, which are the five stages?

  1. Novice, learner, competent, proficient, expert
  2. Novice, advanced beginner, competent, skillful, expert
  3. Novice, advanced beginner, competent, proficient, expert
  4. Practitioner, advanced beginner, competent, proficient, expert

Question 29. Where in Agile are the principles like SHU-HA-RI, Dreyfus, Tuckman, etc. used?

  1. To ensure Agile principles are understood by all
  2. To teach product backlog creation
  3. These principles are used in Agile coaching as group development tools
  4. To teach 12 principles of Agile

Question 30. Which of the following is not a common failure mode in Agile projects?

  1. The spy
  2. The icon
  3. The hub
  4. The butterfly

Question 31. You as a vendor were having a conflict with the client and both of you decided to go for a third party to resolve conflict. This is called

  1. Arbitration
  2. Negotiation
  3. Problem-solving
  4. Court settlement

Question 32. Which of the following conflict resolution technique provide temporary resolution?

  1. Problem-solving
  2. Smoothing
  3. Compromising
  4. Forcing

Question 33. The ability to bring awareness to the emotions as they arise, notice them for what they are, and decide how to best use them is called:

  1. Emotional intelligent quotient
  2. Awareness quotient
  3. Collaboration quotient
  4. Ability quotient

Question 34. Which of the following statement is true?

  1. Cooperation is same as collaboration
  2. Innovation is an example of cooperation
  3. Sum of the individual part is collaboration
  4. Astonishing results is an example of collaboration

Question 35. All of the following are hallmarks of cooperation except

  1. nnovation
  2. Two-way conversation
  3. Real understanding
  4. Progress in relationship

Question 36. Which of the following is the biggest challenge of distributed Agile team?

  1. Conflict management
  2. Communication
  3. Configuration of code
  4. Negotiation

Question 37. Which of the following is an expression of radiant thinking, a natural function of the human brain, and they allow creative ideas to bloom and flow.

  1. Brainstorming
  2. Mind mapping
  3. Interviewing
  4. Future visioning

Question 38. In which of the following facilitation technique team members imagine that all their problems are resolved, dreams have been achieved and goals have been fulfilled. Step back and describe how those happen?

  1. Brainstorming
  2. Mind mapping
  3. Interviewing
  4. Future visioning

Question 39. In which of the following facilitation technique, team members imagine the problem and then imagine there were no history, rules, regulations, culture or climate. If none of these things existed because we were just starting up what might we do? How we might approach the solution?

  1. Brainstorming
  2. Mind mapping
  3. Green field site
  4. Future visioning

Question 40. Which of the following ensures that all voices that want to be heard are heard?

  1. Consent check
  2. Consensus heck
  3. Team check
  4. Overall check

Question 41. Which of the following ensures consensus reached and team moves forward?

  1. Consent check
  2. Consensus check
  3. Team check
  4. Overall check

Question 42. All the stakeholders agrees on a single course of action is called

  1. Unanimity
  2. Majority
  3. Plurality
  4. Dictatorship

Question 43. The fifth level of conflict is called

  1. Crusade
  2. Contest
  3. World war
  4. Disagreement

Question 44. Following are the examples of adaptive approach except

  1. Attention is focused on the value-added outcomes.
  2. Job descriptions are intentionally broad-based on allowing for flexibility and collaboration.
  3. Roles are fluid. Within limits, people are expected to play roles for one another.
  4. Policies are mostly oriented towards drive and control.

Question 45. Following are the causes of conflict in Agile project except

  1. Facts
  2. Goals
  3. Values
  4. Skill level of the team

Question 46. Following are the characteristics of ‘real team’ except

  1. Customers are consistently receiving outstanding service and product
  2. Team standards are met continuously and seamlessly
  3. Members are comfortable with the consistency and shared leadership
  4. Not focused on collaborative performance

Question 47. Following are the characteristics of ‘Servant Leader’ except

  1. Empathy
  2. Conceptualization
  3. Command and control
  4. Persuasion

Question 48. ‘Following the Rule’ is the stage of

  1. SHU
  2. HA
  3. RI
  4. All the stages

Question 49. Following are the Agile team motivational factors except

  1. Variety of work
  2. Individual salary hike
  3. Build trust
  4. Team focused reward

Question 50. It starts in an open space. Put an object in the middle of the floor. Ask the team members to stand around it at a distance. Read out a statement and if they agree with the statement, they need to move closer to the object as much they feel the statement is true. If they feel the statement is false then they need to move away from the object.

  1. Constellation
  2. Consent check
  3. Consensus check
  4. Conflict management

Answer Sheet for Chapter 9 Questions

Question Number Answer Question Number Answer
Question 1 Question 26
Question 2 Question 27
Question 3 Question 28
Question 4 Question 29
Question 5 Question 30
Question 6 Question 31
Question 7 Question 32
Question 8 Question 33
Question 9 Question 34
Question 10 Question 35
Question 11 Question 36
Question 12 Question 37
Question 13 Question 38
Question 14 Question 39
Question 15 Question 40
Question 16 Question 41
Question 17 Question 42
Question 18 Question 43
Question 19 Question 44
Question 20 Question 45
Question 21 Question 46
Question 22 Question 47
Question 23 Question 48
Question 24 Question 49
Question 25 Question 50

Answers for Chapter 9 Questions

Question Number Answer Question Number Answer
Question 1 C Question 26 C
Question 2 D Question 27 C
Question 3 C Question 28 C
Question 4 A Question 29 C
Question 5 B Question 30 B
Question 6 D Question 31 A
Question 7 B Question 32 B
Question 8 C Question 33 A
Question 9 D Question 34 D
Question 10 C Question 35 A
Question 11 D Question 36 B
Question 12 D Question 37 B
Question 13 A Question 38 C
Question 14 C Question 39 C
Question 15 B Question 40 A
Question 16 A Question 41 B
Question 17 D Question 42 A
Question 18 A Question 43 C
Question 19 B Question 44 D
Question 20 D Question 45 D
Question 21 C Question 46 D
Question 22 B Question 47 C
Question 23 A Question 48 A
Question 24 B Question 49 B
Question 25 A Question 50 A

Explanations for Chapter 9 Answers

  1. Answer C

    Servant leadership can be mapped very well with participative leadership style.

  2. Answer D
  3. Answer C
  4. Answer A

    Ground rules are for the benefit of the team and if required can be changed or new rules added.

  5. Answer B
  6. Answer D

    The negotiation modes that are used for conflict resolution are as follows:

    1. Accommodative: 100% co-operative,
      0% assertive
    2. Competing: 0% co-operative, 100% assertive
    3. Compromise: Equal distance from
      co-operative and assertive
    4. Collaborative: Combination of co-operative and assertive
  7. Answer B

    Real Team, Stage Four, Characteristics

    1. Customers are consistently receiving outstanding service and products
    2. Team standards are met continuously and seamlessly
    3. Members are comfortable with the consistency and shared leadership
    4. Team outperforms all reasonable expectations by working as a cohesive whole
  8. Answer C

    The primary reason for interaction among the members of this group is to share information, best practices, or perspectives

  9. Answer D

    Adjourning is the last stage and is not closing.

  10. Answer C
  11. Answer D
  12. Answer D

    Increased staff turnover indicates some problem in the project. Reduced staff turnover is an indicator of team effectiveness.

  13. Answer A
  14. Answer C
  15. Answer B

    Conflict resolution should focus on issues and hence it is a team issue and not personalities or individual issue.

  16. Answer A
  17. Answer D
  18. Answer A
  19. Answer B
  20. Answer D

    Confrontation or problem-solving is always the best way to resolve conflict and will give permanent and effective result.

  21. Answer C

    Emphasizing areas of agreement is called smoothing.

  22. Answer B

    Power is the ability to influence others.

  23. Answer A
  24. Answer B

    A star project leader need not be a good project manager as both requires different skill sets. Most of the companies are doing this mistake and is called halo effect.

  25. Answer A

    Taking decision on own without anybody’s input is called autocratic.

  26. Answer C

    Here you are trying to force others to accept views and hence forcing technique being used.

  27. Answer C

    SHU: At this first stage of learning the student follows the instruction of a single master and instead of trying to understand the underlying theory is concentrating mainly on following the rules.

  28. Answer C

    Novice - focus is on getting to know and following the rules.

    Advanced beginner - able to apply the rules according to the environment. All activities are treated separately with equal importance.

    Competent - Able to perform multiple activities and handle multiple sources of information simultaneously.

    Proficient - Able to get the holistic picture of the process and judge the deviations from normal.

    Expert - Able to use an analytical approach to apply the acquired knowledge to resolve new situations.

  29. Answer C

    These principles are used in Agile coaching as group development tools.

  30. Answer B

    Common failure modes in Agile projects are - the spy, the seagull, the butterfly, the administrator, the hub, the opinionator, the expert.

  31. Answer A

    Going for third party is called arbitration.

  32. Answer B

    Smoothing provides temporary resolution and the same problem can get surface any time. It is the best answer out of others.

  33. Answer A
  34. Answer D
  35. Answer A
  36. Answer B
  37. Answer B
  38. Answer C
  39. Answer C
  40. Answer A
  41. Answer B
  42. Answer A
  43. Answer C
  44. Answer D
  45. Answer D
  46. Answer D
  47. Answer C
  48. Answer A
  49. Answer B
  50. Answer A

Key Terms

Concurrent engineering An approach to project staff ing that, in its most general form, calls for implementers to be involved in the design phase. (Sometimes confused with fast tracking.)

  1. Continuously practising the application of active listening frameworks helps to develop active listening skills within Agile groups.

Daily stand-ups Concise discussions of project status with the entire team.

  1. Daily stand-up meetings, daily interactions with the product team and stakeholder co- ordination are ways of encouraging collaboration and coordination.
  2. Standing helps the meeting to be short.
  3. To report status to the customer all of the following forms are being used—formal documentation, informal documentation and daily stand-ups.
  4. Conflict resolution allows teams to preserve trust amongst members.
  5. Preferred level of conflict within team is—Level 1.
  6. When one person complain about another, use of three step intervention approach of conflict is the best approach.
  7. Sum of knowledge all of the people on the team is called Tacit knowledge.

Halo effect is the assumption that because the person is good technically, he will be good as a project manager.

Concurrent engineering An approach to project staff ing that, in its most general form, calls for implementers to be involved in the design phase. (Sometimes confused with fast tracking.)

  1. Continuously practising the application of active listening frameworks helps to develop active listening skills within Agile groups.

Daily stand-ups Concise discussions of project status with the entire team.

  1. Daily stand-up meetings, daily interactions with the product team and stakeholder co- ordination are ways of encouraging collaboration and coordination.
  2. Standing helps the meeting to be short.
  3. To report status to the customer all of the following forms are being used—formal documentation, informal documentation and daily stand-ups.
  4. Conflict resolution allows teams to preserve trust amongst members.
  5. Preferred level of conflict within team is—Level 1.
  6. When one person complain about another, use of three step intervention approach of conflict is the best approach.
  7. Sum of knowledge all of the people on the team is called Tacit knowledge.

Halo effect is the assumption that because the person is good technically, he will be good as a project manager.

Leadership styles

  1. Directing: Telling others what they need to do
  2. Facilitating: Coordinating only with the input of others
  3. Coaching: Instructing others clearly
  4. Supporting: Providing assistance along the way to do work
  5. Autocratic: Making decisions on own without input
  6. Consultative: Inviting ideas from others before taking decision
  7. Consensus: Problem-solving in a group with decision-making based only on group agreement

Organizational breakdown structure A diagrammatic representation of the project organization arranged to relate work packages to organizational units.

Project management team They are the members of the project team who are directly involved in day-to-day project management activities. On some smaller projects usually it includes virtually all of the project team members.

Project manager The person responsible for managing a project who is also responsible for the success and failure of the project.

Projectized organization Any organizational structure in which the project manager has full authority to assign priorities and to direct the work of individuals assigned to the project.

Responsibility assignment matrix (RAM) It actually defines who does what and you should know that the staffing management plan defines when will people get added and removed from the project.

Expectancy theory People are ready to work more energetically when the expectation is clearly set for them and usually people put in more efforts because they accept to be rewarded for their efforts. Same theory works not only for reward but also for punishment. When they know the punishment they get if they are doing the job, they will tend to work to finish the job as per expectation to avoid punishment.

War room is a technique for team building. As part of this, the project team meets in this room daily at a specified time even if there are no issues to discuss. It actually helps to create a project identity.