There are a few potential problems that can arise when creating self-managing Agile Teams:
- Functional siloes replaced with Agile Team siloes
- Duplication of effort within each Agile Team (no sharing between teams)
- It can take significant time for a new Agile Team to reach high-performance
- Risk of losing business continuity (if an entire Agile Team resigns)
To address problems 1&2, it is recommended that the Business implements an organisation model that promotes sharing and supports the development of core competencies. For example, Agile Teams could be aligned by common markets, customers, technologies and/or competencies e.g. financial products, education products, mobile products etc
A typical response for dealing with problems 3&4 is segregation of duties into specialist functions, however this always leads to an increase in organisational complexity and thus a reduction in agility.
A less risky alternative is to:
- Maintain domain expertise in core competencies and provides coaching in these competencies as a shared service
- Define the minimum documentation and controls required to ensure continuity
Benefits
- Team agility increases through just-in-time competency development
- Organisation resilience increases through continuity planning
Critical Success Factors
- Reduction in centralised professional development programmes – shifted to the Agile Teams
- Transfer of adequate training budget to Agile Teams
Governance
Value Stream
