My presentation delivered at PM Day, 25November about self-organizing team and how Managers and other Leader should strive to mae this happen.

1. Nadiya Martsenyuk
PM Day, Lviv 2017
Self-organized
teams
Sisyphean endeavor or reality?
Why and practical “How”.
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2. WHY ME?
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3. 1 of 12 Principles
of Agile Software
The best architectures, requirements,
and designs emerge from self-
organizing teams
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4. Do people on your team…
• Place blame
• Continuously ask for more resources
• Fight constantly on Retrospectives
• Skip planned meetings or attend in silent
mode
• Or look superficially aligned and in sync
• Provide millions excuses and cynical
comments
• Have their own personal agenda
• Always question each other’s opinions and
estimates
• Tell you that’s not their area of
responsibility
• Keep information to themselves
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5. Rules of Scrum
as explained by Agile
Advice
• I am truthful about the internal quality of my product (technical debt)
• I know my product well and can quickly describe its high-level
purpose
• I actively seek to help my team mates
• I commit myself to doing whatever it takes to reach each and every
Sprint goal
• I volunteer for a new task from the Sprint backlog as soon as I
complete a task
• I share my obstacles (technical, tools, process, teamwork, personal)
every Daily Scrum
• I am willing to learn any skill needed to help my team
• I work with all the team members to expand the Definition of “Done”
• I live the values and principles of the Agile Manifesto in my team
• I never tell any other individual team member which task to work on
next
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6. WE NEED
SUPER
PEOPLE
NOW
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7. Blind spot of agile
• Not all people are disciplined
• Not all people are attentive
• Not all people are skilled
• Not all people know what they want
• Not all people want to work
• Not all people care
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8. So… what
is a self-
organized
team?
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9. A team with no managers that interfaces with an
organization using a set of principles, conventions
and expectations.
"Self-organizing teams choose how best to
accomplish their work, rather than being directed
by others outside the team." (Scrum Guide)
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10. 10
Let’s agree that
Self-organized teams won’t appear overnight
They will definitely re-organize
Every team member has to self-organize
as well

11. Three main challenges of
self-organized teams
1. Get the perfect team
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2. Get the perfect PM/Scrum Master
3. Place them in perfect environment

12. Before we dive into
changing everything
Let’s see what we have at
our hands
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13. 13
Skills/Values matrices

14. 14
Skills/Roles
Values

15. 15
Ownership
Motivation
Team work
Coaching
Trust and Respect
Commitment
Collaboration
Competency
Improvements
Continuity
10 traits of Agile Self-organized Teams

16. And step by step We start the change
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17. OWNERSHIP
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Generally the team are a group of mature individuals which take initiatives
and work for themselves and don’t wait for their leader to assign work.
This ensures a greater sense of ownership and commitment.

18. How to grow
ownership
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• Stop alienating yourselves from the customer
• Increase visibility
• Show what is done on customer side
• Always share info on your activities (as a leader)
• Share info on cooperation with other departments
• Praise others (not only yourselves)
• Always prepare for Grooming/Planning (both PO and the Team)
• Provide positive feedback on active participation in product
development
• Assignment of the work based on “pull” method – rotate the person
who creates the tasks
• Enforce Definition of Done

19. MOTIVATION
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Team motivation is the key to success.
Team members should be focused and interested in their work.

20. How to boost
motivation
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• Clearly defined Project Vision and Vision review sessions
• Project Objectives should be understood by the team and every
team member have to have the clear understanding of their
contribution
• Shared feedback from users
• Communication of potential changes
• Communication of strategic changes
• Involvement in functional offices/communities activities
• Involvement of experts from other teams to share knowledge
• Cross-team activities/share lessons learned
• Celebrate performance along with results

21. TEAM WORK
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The team can manage their own work with regards to task allocation,
task estimation, story development and testing and delivery of a
successful sprint as a group.
They should work as a team rather than as a group of individuals.

22. How to
encourage
team work
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• Spot Integrators and recruit them to help you with building the
team
• Share the visions and long-term goals
• Define team values – encourage wishful thinking
• Set team goals (preferably aligned with project needs)
• Make individual goals (preferable aligned with project needs
and team goal) public
• Encourage people to ask for help
• Start 30-day challenges
• Stop rumors by sharing as much as possible and as soon as
possible

23. COACHING
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The team is left to do what they’re best at – delivery of software –
but they still require some level of mentoring and coaching and
facilitation by their Scrum Master, but they don’t require “command
and control.”

24. How to coach
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• Make sure you know what is mentoring/coaching
• Find team mates who are good at teaching and enforcing Agile
principles (see Matrices)
• Organize group formal and informal learning activities (trainings,
knowledge sharing session, etc.)
• Set requirements to your trainers
• Invite auditors/assessors with recommendations
• Set the example – find a mentor/coach for yourself
• Learn and brag about it

25. TRUST AND RESPECT
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Team members trust and respect each other. They believe in
collective code ownership and testing and are ready to go the extra
mile to help each other resolve issues.

26. How to build
trust
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• First step: Make people trust you by resolving their even the
smallest pains
• Talk about your management profile, your weaknesses and
ask your team makes to “watch you”
• Practice 360° feedback
• Keep your promises and guard the promises of others
• Understand and be a proponent of diversity
• Trust your team

27. COMMITMENT
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Communication and most importantly committed individuals are vital in a
self-organizing Agile team. Team members communicate more with each
other, and are fully committed to delivering their tasks individually and as
a group.

28. How to build
commitment
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• Share vision and mission – of product, customer, your
company, your team
• Share feedback from early adopters, stakeholders
• Build the product with your team
• Show your commitment to the team
• Eliminate all contradictory goals
• Name your team
• Ask your team for commitment

29. COLLABORATION
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The team understands that to deliver software successfully, they should
understand the requirements and aren’t afraid to ask questions to get their
doubts clarified.
Constant collaboration with the Product Owner is essential.

30. How to
facilitate
collaboration
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• Invite PO to share Product Vision frequently
• Invite PO (if overseas) to visit and meet the team
• Proxy-PO within the team (BA/RM, senior member of the team,
team member with requirement management/business acumen
skills present – see Skill/Roles Matrix)
• Ask questions digitally
• Turn on your cameras
• Agree with PO and the team what are their collaboration
rules
• Define and approve communication channels and process

31. COMPETENCY
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Individuals need to be competent for the job at hand. This will result in
confidence in their work and will eliminate the need for direction from
above.

32. How to build
competency
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• Have clear and understood competency models
• Understand the difference between career development plan and
competency development plan
• Align personal development plans with project initiatives
• Enforce thought out personal development plans (could be
based on Personal Learning Contract)
• For formal training: hand-pick internal and external trainings for
your people
• For informal/incidental learning: review and make people
share their observations with others
• Expose your teams to diverse learning resources
• Use tests and certification as a tool of learning and use them
regularly
• Practice succession planning

33. IMPROVEMENTS
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Continuously improving their own skills and recommend innovative
ideas and improvements.

34. How to
encourage
continuous
improvement
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• Revamp your retrospective
• No complaints/general praise
• Use Prime Directive
• Assign Initiatives if action items fail
• Retrospective of Retrospectives
• Allow the team to determine their capacity to include
process improvement initiatives
• Post-mortems/Retros with context not focused on Sprint
(any process implementation)
• Pre-mortems on big initiatives and milestones
• Daily knowledge sharing (even not project/process related)
• Share/Make public career/improvements plans with the
team
• Lead by example

35. CONTINUITY
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A new team takes a while to mature and become self-organized. Overtime,
they can understand their working habits as a team, so changing its
composition every now and then doesn’t help. It is best to have the team
members working together for a reasonable duration.

36. How to make
the team
antifragile
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• Document the processes at your project at “barely sufficient” level
• Have clear escalation procedure that every team member is
familiarized with
• Have you team values defined and shared with newcomers the first
thing during onboarding
• Make it easy for people to leave

37. Do we have
time for
questions?
THANKS
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