How To Build Agile Team

The Agile Manifesto states that the best designs, architecture, and requirements emerge from the self-organizing teams. Agile teams are the most important part of the Agile framework as they must operate on the values and principles. One of the major requirements of the Agile team is to stick to Agile concepts and successfully apply Agile tools and techniques. Self-organizing teams can create and execute a strategy and can adjust the efforts according to the circumstances. As many organizations have started implementing Agile Methodology, there is a surge in the demand for Agile professionals. When you get hired in a top Agile company, you have to learn to collaborate with other team members. Also, if you are a Scrum Master or Project head, the company will expect results from you on behalf of your team. Either way, you have to learn how Agile teams can be productive and efficient such that the resources of the company are used maximally producing the best results.

What is an Agile team?

An Agile team is the main group of people in the Agile organization responsible for developing a product. An Agile team consists of specified individuals who are cross-functional experts as they support each other while product development. When an organization gets a bigger project, they are quickly broken down and completed in a lesser time by distributing the team according to the experts in the Agile team. An Agile team is mostly self-organized where the distribution and management of the tasks are collectively done by the different team members. This helps to avoid the hierarchy issues in the team and also, the bottlenecks between the leadership chains are not faced. The main roles in the Agile team include:

1. The Product Owner is the representative of the stakeholders who explain the product from the customer's perspective. The concerns of the end-users are reflected by the product owner, who helps the team build the product features in an iteration. The important responsibilities of a Product Owner are:

• Prioritizes and manages the Product Backlog 
• Changes the epics, user stories, and feature requests into tasks for the developers in the Agile team.
• Becomes a communicator between the end-users and the team
• Collects the suggestions of the customers and users and introduces new ideas, tips, and feature requests for the product. 

2. The team lead is a professional responsible for looking over the process of product development and ensuring that the Product Owner's targets are being met and executed on the scheduled time. The main role of the team lead includes:

• Identify impediments and obstacles during the process and remove them beforehand. 
• Breaking down the targets into tasks that are easier to perform. 
• Distributing work to team members and tracking their progress
• Looking for ways to improve the project delivery process 

Team Members are the backbone of the Agile team, directly overseeing the product development process. They have to develop the product and execute it at the scheduled time. They have to carry out all the goals that have been created by the team lead and the Product Owner. The tasks of the team members include:

• Identifying obstacles so that the team lead can address it
• Working together in a team
• Providing feedback on the project delivery process
• Developing the product in an iterative manner

3. The Stakeholders are direct or indirect users who give feedback on how the product has to be developed. They give an idea about how the product should look like, hence, the entire team will work together to satisfy the needs of the stakeholders who will use the product. Project stakeholders could also be professionals directly associated with the project development process. 

How to Build an Agile Team?

Now that you have understood what makes up an Agile team, let us know what tips we need to follow to build a powerful, effective, efficient, and productive Agile team. Here are a few points to remember to build a productive and healthy Agile team.

Make Communication Clear and Transparent

When a company has adopted Agile, there would be chaos and confusion in the initial stages of functioning. Progress cannot be seen overnight as significant daily work, culture shifts, and staff reorganization are required. As the employees adjust to their new environment, there may be a gap in communication and misunderstanding between the team members. At this stage, the type of leadership is important as the team leader has to explain the reason and goals of the organization and help the team members align with the company’s vision. The company has to set up a clear communication process where the staff can clear their queries about certain processes and give their input through surveys and Q&As. This helps the management to communicate with the employees and helps to promote an open dialogue between both of them. With proper communication, common goals can be identified, resulting in new efficiencies and better creativity across the organization. 

Normalizing Failure

When you look at the idea of self-organization, where multiple experts come together and work on a single product without having a main team lead, you may believe it would lead to total anarchy. However, Agile teams are process-oriented teams where every member has a purpose and something to bring. Often, when a new process is started or new projects are taken, people do not take risks and have no opportunities to learn from the risks. In old processes, failure may be viewed as something which is intrinsically bad and should be avoided. However, in Agile teams, failures should be normalized as one learns much more from failures. While obviously, the process has to be successful for the company to gain profit, but in a fast-paced and flexible Agile environment, failures are inevitable. They hence should be accepted as a part of the process. Failures could be normalized by acknowledging members of a team who take a risk during the development process while conducting staff meetings. You could also have monthly awards for people who have taken higher risks and have learned more than other staff members. The awarded members can share their experiences with everyone on the team and also encourage them to take risks during their process. When people start looking at risks as a learning opportunity, they will start normalizing failures and their negative impact will be significantly reduced. 

Balance the team adequately

When you have the right people in your team, you can adapt and collaborate efficiently. There are many “people problems” that take place while forming an Agile team. When you have a professional who has a visionary mindset, they would only give ideas for the product but do not experiment with different features. Also, technical professionals such as engineers may find it hard to adapt to the flexible nature of Agile. All these problems decrease the team's efficiency and threaten the failure of Agile Methodology. When you form your Agile team, make sure you understand everyone’s personalities and working style so that you can allow the work easily without having any conflict. Identify every person’s strengths and weaknesses to create a balanced team to achieve the project goal and objectives. 

Use the Sought Feedback

No matter how good your process is going and how fast you can develop a product feature, it is always great to seek out feedback to ensure that you are developing the correct product. When you gather many feedbacks you can analyze the areas that may be going wrong and correct them before it is harder to change. Agile teams often have various methods and systems to take the software out to the customers so that they can collect feedback in the early stage and incorporate it into the product. Also, the feedback includes the opinions and internal feedback from the team members and the organization's members. Remain completely honest with any blunders that you see in the product features so that the team members can continuously learn and improve continuously. Retrospectives are a great way to reflect the mistakes taken in the previous iterations such that the same mistake may not repeat in the future. 

Build the team based on Trust

Without trust, any team cannot be efficient or productive as trust is required to function as a team truly. When you do the things you promised, and hold up ends, it becomes easier for the team members to complete their work on time. As long as you can trust the other person with a job, you cannot perform well as there would be some discomfort working with particular employees. You have to begin trusting people that they can complete their work as promised. Also, you have to complete your work without any follow-up such that the other person trusts you completely and does not have to follow up on you unnecessarily. 

Respond to changes

As an Agile team, you should always be ready to face changes in the team as you cannot expect the process to stay the same from the beginning. An Agile team always faces changes and a key ability of the Agile team is to respond to changes rather than staying committed to previous plans. To become the best Agile team, the team members must constantly reevaluate their priorities and shift their resources accordingly. The team should always accept changes, whether it is by the client or by any circumstances, they always have to be flexible to be successful. 

Focus on the results

Agile teams should not obsess over which kind of process or procedure is used to produce a specific result. Their concentration should be entirely on the results or the product feature that is being developed. This way the team members do not have to stick to a particular pattern of work during the product building. As they focus more on the product, they can choose any process to achieve the result. This empowers the developer to make their own decisions, develop creative solutions, and solve problems using their skills and expertise. 

Concentrate on the entire team than individuals

When you focus on individual tasks and whether they are completed, the entire Agile project may not be successful. The keyword here is Agile, which means “team,” where the entire team is responsible for a project working or not working. In traditional teams, every individual used to get works assigned which on completion would be the project's success. However, in Agile, successful projects are only created by self-organizing teams where everyone is accountable for the completion of the product. Hence, everyone is appreciated for the project work and not only for their contribution.  

Conclusion

Agile teams are self-organizing teams that contain a panel of experts who work across various functionalities. The Agile team consists of developers, product owners, and a team lead who manage the product development. Building a powerful Agile team takes much effort and hard work from the management and employees. When you communicate openly with the team members about any changes or improvements, you get an idea of making stronger connections among people. Other points such as focusing on the results, concentrating on the entire team, and fostering a growth mindset and an Agile environment are also great ways of building a powerful Agile team.In addition to fostering a growth mindset and an Agile environment, Simpliaxis offers Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) certification training to further empower individuals and organizations in building powerful Agile teams.