When Agile Falls Short: Let’s Return to the Basics (Part 2)

In a previous article, I talked about the basics of Scrum and if they don't work anymore – that maybe it is because we are not getting the basics right anymore. If you've missed it, you can read it here: When Agile Falls Short: Let's Return to the Basics (Part 1). In this article, I would like to look further into team dynamics. How do you get the basics of team performance right?

Let Them Own the Process

There are a few principles that you need to get right, and the most important one is to give your team autonomy and purpose. Without it, there are just puppets. This is the intrinsic motivation that drives your team – it is the driving force that makes them want to succeed.   

Purpose gives team members a clear, shared goal that inspires them to achieve something important. Autonomy allows them the freedom to decide how to reach that goal. Together, these factors create an environment where teams are driven not just by external pressures like deadlines or rewards but by the satisfaction of doing meaningful work in a way that empowers them.  

Think of a special forces or special task team that has been put together to perform an operation. Once they are on the ground, they have the power to make their own decisions and do the job as they see fit.   

Give your team the power to make their own decisions. This means they have the freedom to do their job the way they think is best. On high-performing teams, it's up to the members to decide how to achieve the goals set by leadership, and together, they work towards a goal that is bigger than just completing tasks.   

While management sets the overall direction and goals, it's up to the team to figure out the best way to achieve them. This ensures that those who are closest to the work and understand the details and challenges are the ones making the important decisions.  

Keep Your Team Small

You want to keep your team small – ideally between 7-9 people. Anything more than nine, and the team loses the small team dynamics. A rugby scum is only eight men – so there you have it. Research shows that teams larger than nine members slow down significantly because communication and coordination become more complicated.  

This is supported by Brooke's Law, which says that "adding manpower to a late software project makes it later." The reason is that bringing new people up to speed takes time and effort, which delays progress. Also, as more people join, the number of communication channels increases, making it harder for the team to stay in sync and communicate well. Each member has to manage more information, which can further reduce productivity.  

Larger teams not only face communication problems but also need much more effort to manage. Studies show that projects with teams of 20 or more people can take up to five times longer to complete than those with five or fewer members. With more people, there's a greater need for coordination, planning, and alignment, which means more time spent in meetings and less time on actual work.  

Additionally, big teams often struggle with decision-making and staying aligned. In smaller teams, members can easily stay connected, understand the project's goals, and make quick decisions. Larger teams, on the other hand, can get slowed down by different opinions and conflicting priorities, leading to delays and inefficiencies.  

Keep Things Visible and Talk to Each Other

In Scrum, transparency is crucial for success. For a team to work well, everyone needs to know what the others are doing. This is easiest to achieve in small teams, where communication is clear and everyone is aware of the tasks, challenges, and progress.   

Scrum requires that all work, issues, and progress be visible to everyone on the team. You can use information radiators like Kanban-board to achieve this. When team members know what others are working on, they can offer help, give feedback, and solve problems quickly. This openness builds trust and helps the team stay aligned and focused on their goals.

When teams get too large, daily communication becomes messy. With more people, there are more ways for messages to get mixed up, efforts to be duplicated, and updates to be missed. This makes it harder to keep things clear and aligned, which is why Scrum keeps team sizes to 5-9 members. This size helps ensure everyone can communicate openly and effectively without unnecessary complexity.  

Ensure Your Team is Cross-Functional

Cross-functional means that a team has all the skills needed to complete the work from start to finish, so they don't need to depend on outside experts or members of other teams to finish tasks. It means the end of the functional unit – we don't group all the people with the same speciality into one group as we see in a matrix organisation. Each functional department in the organisation will send an expert – to be part of the team.   

With all the necessary expertise within one team, there are fewer handoffs, delays, and misunderstandings, which helps the team work faster and more efficiently.  

In a cross-functional team, every member can contribute to different parts of the project. This setup promotes collaboration and knowledge sharing. It also supports the idea of autonomy, as the team can decide together how to tackle tasks without waiting for specialists from other teams.  

In a recent project I was involved with, I was leading a functional team. We would regularly get stuck as we always had to wait for feedback from another functional unit to come back to us before we could proceed. The team were frustrated as things were not moving. The solution was to bring in someone from the other team to also be part of our team and to have daily 1-hour sessions to solve queries. This speeded up things tremendously and got rid of the bottleneck.   

Strive to Do Better with Every Cycle

A key value in Scrum is continuous improvement. After each sprint, the team looks back to see how they can make the next sprint more efficient. Scrum uses principles from statistical process control (SPC), which is all about measuring performance, finding ways to improve, and keeping quality consistent throughout the process.

Each sprint gives teams a chance to tweak their methods and find ways to do things better. Scrum teams regularly ask, "How can we improve?" This constant cycle of reviewing and improving helps them adapt to challenges, work more efficiently, and produce higher-quality results over time.

The Leaders Become Servants

In Scrum, leadership changes from a command-and-control approach to servant leadership. Instead of directing the team on what to do and how to do it, managers focus on helping the team work as efficiently and effectively as possible. Leaders set the vision and goals but trust the team to find the best way to achieve them.

This approach gives teams the freedom to try new methods, adapt, and improve their processes. It encourages creativity because team members can explore different solutions. Plus, by letting teams take ownership of their work, Scrum boosts their sense of purpose and motivation, as each person knows they are making a meaningful contribution to the project's success.  

Conclusion

Scrum accelerates human effort. It does not matter what the effort is. In essence, Scrum helps teams to work more efficiently, achieve better results, and stay focused on what truly matters: solving problems at hand as a cohesive unit.   

To do that, start with the basics. Before you worry about sprints, scrum masters and daily stand-ups – first worry about the following:  

• Is your team size between 5-9 people?
• Is your team cross-functional?
• Do they have the autonomy to make their own decisions?
• Do they regularly stop what they are doing and look at the process and see how they can improve it?
• Is the project manager acting as a servant leader whose daily task is to ensure nothing is keeping the team from doing their work smoothly without any blockages or impediments?