The Art of Agile Development, 2nd Edition

CHAPTER SEVEN

Teamwork

The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.

Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.

Manifesto for Agile Software Development

Cross-functional, self-organizing teams are the fundamental “resource” of any Agile organization. But who should be part of an Agile team? How do they know what to work on? What makes it possible for them to work well together?

This chapter has the practices you need to create a great Agile team.

• “Whole Team” creates a cross-functional team with all the skills it needs.

• “Team Room” builds a space, either physical or virtual, where the team can collaborate effectively.

• “Safety” creates an environment where team members are able to share their experience and insights.

• “Purpose” helps team members understand how their work supports the company’s big-picture plans.

• “Context” clarifies your team’s stakeholders and committed resources.

• “Alignment” establishes norms that allow team members to work together effectively.

• “Energized Work” encourages working in a way your team can sustain indefinitely.

TEAMWORK SOURCES

The core idea of cross-functional, self-organizing teams has been part of Agile from the beginning. Extreme Programming calls it Whole Team, a term I kept for this book. Scrum calls it “The Scrum Team.” Team Room is just as old; XP calls it “Sit Together” and the original Scrum book [Schwaber2002] talked about the importance of a ...