IIT Academy: Agile. We’ve all seen it – “W-agile” teams, “Fr-agile” teams, teams that were designed to patterns anathemic to the creation of effective, high-performing, self-managed agile teams. Understand the dynamics behind the formation of teams, apply lean principles to team design to equip yourself with the skills to enable effective team creation. Design for Human Resources, Agile Coaches, Scrum Masters, Delivery Managers, Executives, Project Sponsors – anyone responsible for deciding who goes into a team.

1. TEAM DESIGN
HI Per Lean Practice
Industrie IT
Team Design 202
IIT Academy

2. TEAM DESIGN
HI Per Lean Practice
Feel free to re-use any of these slides - you are welcome!
Please make sure you attribute them to:
Steven Ma at Industrie IT.
Please include the links at www.stevenhkma.com and industrieit.com
Attributions

3. TEAM DESIGN
HI Per Lean Practice
Goals - people
• Invest in long term, high performing teams
• Create conditions for self-management
• Continuously design for muri reduction

4. TEAM DESIGN
HI Per Lean Practice
Goals - scope
• One backlog
• One product owner hierarchy, with clear
definition of ready
• Cross-skilled teams with common
definitions of done

5. TEAM DESIGN
HI Per Lean Practice
Goals - process
• Do what is prudent
• Reduce unevenness (mura)
• Continuously improve

6. TEAM DESIGN
HI Per Lean Practice
Guiding Principles
• Long term teams
• Adoption curve
• Team autonomy maturity
• Guiding principles of agile team design
• Muri index
• Design

7. TEAM DESIGN
HI Per Lean Practice
Long Term Teams
• teams built around the maximisation of
human potential in organisations
• effective units of value-add
• Invested in long-term with a scrum master
who ‘debugs’ the organisation

8. TEAM DESIGN
HI Per Lean Practice
TEAM PERFORMANCE
TEAMTOPERFORM
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 TIME
FORM STORM NORM PERFORM
• NOT ALL TEAMS
ARE EQUAL
• TEAMS REQUIRE
TIME TO PERFORM
• TEAMS SHOULD
PERIODICALLY
INSPECT
PERFORMANCE
AND FIND WAYS
TO IMPROVE
• EVEN GIVEN THE
ABOVE, TEAMS
STILL MAY NOT
PERFORM

9. TEAM DESIGN
HI Per Lean Practice
TRADITIONAL RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
TEAMTOPERFORM
PROJECT 1 PROJECT 2 PROJECT 3
• HAVE DIFFERENT
PEOPLE
• RE-LEARN TEAM
NORMS
• STARTS WITH ZERO
PERFORMANCE
BEHAVIOUR
• PERFORMS BASED
ON SCOPE
CADENCE RATHER
AND
PERFORMANCE
CADENCE,
CREATING A
“HOCKEY STICK
CRUNCH”
CONSTANTLY
REFORMING
TEAMS
PROJECT 3
TEAMS ARE NOT ‘RESOURCES’. DESIGN FOR TEAMS, NOT FOR SCOPE

10. TEAM DESIGN
HI Per Lean Practice
CONSTANTLY RE-REFORMING TEAMS: PORTFOLIO VIEW
WATERFALLPORTFOLIO
PROJECT 1 PROJECT 2 PROJECT 3 PROJECT 4
• NOT ALL TEAMS
ARE EQUAL
• TEAMS REQUIRE
TIME TO PERFORM
• EVEN GIVEN THE
ABOVE, TEAMS
STILL MAY NOT
PERFORM
UNPREDICTABLE
PRODUCTIVITY
ACROSS
PORTFOLIO

11. TEAM DESIGN
HI Per Lean Practice
WHY PRESERVE PERFORMANCE?
TEAMPERFORMANCE
SPRINT 1 SPRINT 2 SPRINT 3 SPRINT 6SPRINT 4 SPRINT 5
HIGH
PERFORMANCE
TEAM
MEDIUM
PERFORMANCE
TEAM
POOR TEAM
~240%
greater

12. TEAM DESIGN
HI Per Lean Practice
KEEPING TEAMS TOGETHER
TEAMPERFORMANCE
SPRINT 1 SPRINT 2 SPRINT 3 SPRINT 6SPRINT 4 SPRINT 5
TEAM

13. TEAM DESIGN
HI Per Lean Practice
FIXED TEAMS, INDIVIDUAL ROTATIONS
TEAM A
TEAM B
TEAM C
TEAM D
JUL
JAN
FEB
OCT
Rotate individuals occasionally for
personal and professional growth

14. TEAM DESIGN
HI Per Lean Practice
Adoption Curve
Teams do not perform from the moment they
form. Instead, performance is nurtured over time.
Factors for success:
• Pre-delivery preparation for the “why” and the
“what”, including the full team for context
• Sprint 0 to create base technical capability
• Allowing 1-2 sprints for norming and forming
• Allowing 8 sprints for a solid velocity measure

15. TEAM DESIGN
HI Per Lean Practice
originalvelocity
change
uncertainty
make-or-break
point
peakenthusiasm
“themoment
ofclarity”
performing
self-diagnosing
self-organising
sprints @
fine scale
velocity x
enthusiasm x
productivity
2-6 sprints 8-20 sprints1-2 sprints
changeshock
scrumstarts
changeweariness
Short term
Agile Adoption

16. TEAM DESIGN
HI Per Lean Practice
changeweariness
performingself-organising
sprints @
fine scale
velocity x
enthusiasm x
productivity
2-6 sprints 8-20 sprints1-2 sprints
changeshock
make/break+clarity
Short term
Agile Adoption
With Agile Coach

17. TEAM DESIGN
HI Per Lean Practice
perception of maximum performance
maturescrum
incremental
improvements
asymptoticallyapproach
maximalperformance
velocity x
enthusiasm x
productivity
sprints @
long scale
40+ sprints20+ sprints
Long term
Agile Adoption

18. TEAM DESIGN
HI Per Lean Practice
Descaling Organisations
self-
tasking
self-
managing
self-
organising
self-
selecting
self-
guiding
degree of
autonomytask design
delivery design
intra-team design
product context
team design
org’n.context
org’n design
scope
business context

19. TEAM DESIGN
HI Per Lean Practice
perception of maximum performance
re-norming
highperformingteamcontinuallyreset
performance
expectations
sprints @
long scale
significanttry-and-see
“productivityhacking”
velocity x
enthusiasm x
productivity
40+ sprints20+ sprints
Long term
Agile Adoption
With Agile Coach, effective
support from management and
emergence of a self-organised,
high-performing team
*240% increase in productivity **400% increase

20. TEAM DESIGN
HI Per Lean Practice
Principles of Team Design
• Single overall backlog
• Constant Muri reduction
• Design along lines of least dependency
• Design for feature teams
• Aligned sprint schedule
• Common standards and team norms
• Multi-team continuous integration and continuous delivery
• Common Definitions of Done, potentially Definition of Ready
• Whole team product sprint review
• Onshore-offshore rotation

21. TEAM DESIGN
HI Per Lean Practice
Muri
Muri (無理) is a Japanese word
meaning "unreasonableness;
impossible; beyond one's power;
too difficult; by force; perforce;
forcibly; compulsorily;
excessiveness; immoderation”

22. TEAM DESIGN
HI Per Lean Practice
Muri Measure
A lightweight index to make visible
the overburden in individuals,
teams and scaled groupings.
Constantly addressed by an
organisation aiming for self-design.

23. TEAM DESIGN
HI Per Lean Practice
Department X
3.2 (8)
Team A 3 ppl
2.3 (4)
Team J 6 ppl
3.7 (8)
Alex 2
Alice 1
Andrew 4
Joe 8
Jesse 4
Jimmy 5
Jack 1
Jill 2
Jim 2

24. TEAM DESIGN
HI Per Lean Practice
Common Pitfalls
• Product Ownership capacity
• Scrum Master capacity
• Decomposition along functional lines
• Decomposition along architectural lines
• Decomposition along vendor lines
• Once-off team design
• Varying length of sprints
• Not designing teams for dev-to-ops quality

25. TEAM DESIGN
HI Per Lean Practice
Common Pitfalls - Scaling
Scaled:
• Moving people to fit scope
• Splitting people between teams
• Lack of scrum-of-scrum integration

26. TEAM DESIGN
HI Per Lean Practice
Thanks!