Being Agile: Eleven Breakthrough Techniques to Keep You from “Waterfalling Backward”

Maintain and Protect Dedicated Teams

Unless you’ve adopted the practice of self-organizing teams, it’s typically management’s responsibility to assign team members to a project and then protect the team. It is to management’s benefit to protect the team so that the team can get its work done and ultimately deliver the product with customer value and high quality. Protecting the team means preventing any interruptions to the work the team has committed to accomplishing in its current iteration. Furthermore, management must keep each team member focused on and committed to a single project so that team members can maximize their output.

In the real world, teams have to respond to short-term crises and shifting priorities. The easiest way to manage ...