The Importance of Stable Teams – with Tim Wise

November 10, 2016

Dave Prior

Reading: The Importance of Stable Teams – with Tim Wise

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LeadingAgile’s Tim Wise spent some time talking with Dave Prior about how important stable teams are to making Agile work. Tim and Dave also discuss the impact of not having them and what you can do about it.

Show Notes:
00:08 Interview Start and Tim introduction
00:53 – Topic Introduction – Why you need stable teams to make Agile work
02:03 – Tim explains what stable teams are and why they are important
04:51 – Dave presents a common argument against stable teams
05:30 – An example of an organization being successful without stable teams
07:12 – How Digital Agencies struggle with Agile due to a lack of stable teams
07:35 – Why are we advocating for stable teams? What’s the reason behind it?
08:08 – Why you need stable teams to be predictable
08:30 – Research about teams and making them work
10:08 – Shouldn’t really skilled professionals just be able to work together? ( Studio Musicians vs. Professional Athletes)
12:33 – Packing your team with all “A” players does not make a great team
13:18 – Google’s Search for Perfect Teams
14:00 – Establishing Team Norms and a Shared Purpose
15:01 – Why great teams are able to be flexible and cope with change
15:28 – Trusting the skills and abilities of your fellow team members
15:52 – How trust enables greater focus
16:48 – Diverse Collective Intelligence and Self Organization
18:09 – How a team exploits their own conditions and uses their own capabilities to get the most out of each other.
19:49 – Teams spread across multiple projects have lower throughput that teams working with a single focus
21:29 – Team stability metrics and collecting data on team performance that can be used to identify hot spots in the organization that can be addressed
23:05 – What if you don’t/can’t have stable teams? What should you do in order to still get value out of Agile
23:47 – Advice for Digital Agencies that lack stable teams
25:53 – Understanding the cost of making the choice to not have stable teams
27:08 – Making the choice for stable teams and one backlog (regardless of the number of projects)
29:44 – Running a test to prove stable teams work
30:28 – How to reach Tim for more information