Succeeding with Agile

Containers, Differences, and Exchanges

In her doctoral dissertation, Glenda Eoyang describes three conditions that, when altered, influence how a team will self-organize: containers, significant differences, and transforming exchanges (2001).

A container is some boundary within which self-organization occurs. Imagine you are at a movie theater that does not preassign seats. The physical boundaries of the theater form a container within which you and other filmgoers self-organize into seats. Another set of filmgoers are in the adjacent theater, and they have self-organized within their physical container. The two containers (theaters) are distinct, so filmgoers in one theater cannot be said to have self-organized with filmgoers in the other theater. ...