AGILE - Working Hard or Hardly Working?

Teams are more than the sum of the parts. Cross-functional collaboration supports creativity, innovation and speed. Who wouldn’t want that? But managing cross-functional collaborative teams differs from managing a functional team or a tradition project.

When I work with organizations that are moving from functional groups to cross-functional teams, managers have three predictable questions:

1. How do I know if the team is working well? I’m not involved in the team’s day-to-day activities anymore.
2. How will I know senior people are doing senior-level work, and junior level people are doing junior-level work?
3. How will I know people are working hard?

These questions reflect traditional organizations, with clear lines of control, individual accountability and defined roles and responsibilities.

Cross-functional collaborative teams do great things. But collaboration wreaks havoc on traditional ways of assessing performance. When the team soars, who receives praise? When they stumble, who is to blame? When teams work collaboratively, it’s difficult--and less relevant--to discern individual contribution. So how can a manager gauge whether the team is doing well and working hard? I’ll answer the common questions I mentioned above one at a time.

How can a manager tell if a team is working well?
Thriving teams deliver results and increase their capacity to contribute. On a thriving cross-functional team, I’d expect to see activities such as:

• Pairing, which speeds learning, spreads knowledge, builds ownership across the team
• Mentoring, fostering individual growth and building team capability
• Informal lunch-and-learn sessions to support group learning and infuse fresh knowledge and skills
• Discussions about standards to address code quality
• Coding katas where programmers hone their craft
• Explicit decision-making
• Retrospectives focused on team improvement

Activities don’t matter if the team fails to produce results, so look for a task wall or some other mechanism that makes progress (and problems) visible. Look for demonstrable results on a frequent and regular basis. A team that produces results and improves their own process and practices is on the right track.

What about the seniors doing senior-level work and juniors doing junior-level work?
When I see teams where senior people offer the most of the ideas, always take the most technically difficult work, make most of the decisions and initiate improvements, I worry. Has the team devolved into a pecking order? Are junior people part of the discussion or are they expected to shut up and accept the highest-paid person’s opinion? Talented junior people leave if they don’t see a way to contribute and grow.

“Senior” work looks different on a healthy cross-functional team. Senior people enable learning, participation and take the larger view. Job-security behavior--hoarding knowledge, hogging ownership, excluding others from learning--ruins teams. I look for senior people focusing on team learning and product quality. I look for leadership toward the group’s goals, not just technical prowess.

Healthy teams welcome everyone’s contribution. That doesn’t mean everything happens by consensus. They recognize when individuals have technical, process or domain expertise to lead a decision or mentor. Expertise and respect don’t always match up with seniority in years, experience, job grade or education.

I also look for team members pitching in based on the work that needs to be done, not just the job they were hired for. For example, a “senior” GUI developer may not be as fast or experienced at writing test scripts as an agile tester. When the undone work is test scripts, any team member with reasonably good skills or the ability to learn should feel free to contribute. I’d rather see the GUI designer pitch in at a junior level than turn up his nose or say “Testing isn’t my job.”

Great teams use all of the skills available to meet their goals--regardless of job description or grade level. Don’t make it harder for that to happen. Broaden the definition of senior-level work. Then, broaden job descriptions and grade levels so that people can contribute fluidly.

Are they working hard?I remember visiting an office where the manager assured me everyone worked hard. He pointed to the “obvious” signs--pizza boxes left over from a late night at work, serious faces and the absence of casual chatter. These signs mightindicate hard work--more likely, they signal imminent burnout.

“Are they working hard?” is the wrong question. Functioning teams make work look easy. They have good camaraderie, know how to have fun and a good fight. And they get down to business. Listen for an energized hum, signs of social relationships, fun--and results. If the team is meeting the goals they committed to and producing work that their customers want, that’s all you need to know.

Some managers ask, “Couldn’t they do more if they worked harder?” It’s impossible to know. What I do know is this: Tampering with a team thriving team doesn’t make it better, it usually makes it worse. Don’t mess with a good thing.

Cross-functional collaboration is a competitive advantage. A well-functioning team can solve problems beyond the grasp of individuals working within narrow job descriptions. Team-based organizations speed up decision making by avoiding pushing decisions up the chain and then back down again. Teams bring back pride in work and engagement.

Are you willing to live with the ambiguity? Are you willing to trust that people are working hard when you see results? Can you live with not knowing who to praise and who to blame?