What do you look at/for that will help you determine the agile health of your team?
Andrey GrubinPMP, PMI-ACPBrooklyn, Ny, United States
In addition to looking at the stability of velocity, what else you observe/care about how the team works together, whether the teams are meeting their commitments, etc.? Saving Changes...
1. Are agile ceremonies perceived by the team as adding value or are they just going through the motions?
2. Are they being open at identifying problems during retrospectives and daily standups or are they sticking their heads in the sand?
3. Do you see individual team members pause their own work to help a lagging team member?
4. Do you see them moving from being specialists to generalizing specialists by volunteering to perform tasks outside of their core competencies.
5. Are they following their own ground rules?
6. Are they demonstrating self-discipline as a team - for example, when asked to take on more work than can fit within their understanding of their sprint capacity do they attempt to educate the requestor or do they blindly take on the additional work?
Kiron Saving Changes...
Stéphane ParentSelf Employed / Semi-retired| Leader MakerPrince Edward Island, Canada
Does the team welcome changing requirements as a customer advantage?
Does the team favour face-to-face conversations?
Is working software the primary measure of success?
Can your stakeholders sustain the development pace indefinitely?
Is the team attentive to technical excellence and simplicity?
Does the team properly reflect on how it can be more effective and adjust its behaviour accordingly?
Saving Changes...
Frank CalbergFrank Calberg ServicesZürich, Switzerland
As Kiron mentioned in his point # 2, I also learned that openness is one of the key agile values. In other words, for an agile team to be able to adapt, information must be open and free flowing. So here are some things I would look for:
1. To what extent do people share what they do and think in an open / transparent way, so everyone can see results of the work quickly and solve problems quickly.
2. To what extent do people use social media such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook etc.
3. To what extent do people feel psychologically safe to share what their emotions are in different situations - including both positive and negative emotions?
4. To what extent do people spend time learning about what their own values are as well as what the values of people, they work with, are?
Thilo WackHead of Existing Product and Test Lab| optimedTholey-Hasborn, Germany
For me it also comes down to
- openness, having candid conversations and surfacing issues without fear
- collaboration: helping out, always be looking what one can do to get the commitments from the daily stand-up done (apart from just working on one's own taks card) so that no one cares and remembers who actually did what and results truly are the team's success (or failure)
- being willing to reflect on oneself and the team and be willing to change, i.e. experiment and try something new in order to always improve Saving Changes...
Is the team learning and trying new things (where relevant)? Retrospectives are not just a ceremony. They are a way to identify ways to improve and, in the process, become more cohesive. Saving Changes...
Andrey GrubinPMP, PMI-ACPBrooklyn, Ny, United States
Thank you all for your feedback and suggestions on this topic! Saving Changes...
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