When someone's productivity is interesting

Surely each of us ever thought about, and what is it, this is the dream team? Ocean's team of cool friends? Or the team of the French national football team? Or maybe a development team from Google?

In any case, we would like to be in such a team or even create it. Well, against the background of all this I want to share with you a little experience and a vision of that very dream team.


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The stars so agreed that my dream team was wielding agile methodology, so everything I write here is more relevant to agile teams. But who knows, maybe this article will help the guys with a good imagination who don’t need this agile.

What is your dream team?

I want to dwell on the three main teams that I consider to be a must have: self-organization, joint decisions and mutual assistance. We will not take parameters such as the size of the team or the role in it. We believe that in our team this is all well and good.

Self-organization. How to understand that you have already achieved it or how to achieve it?

If your team does not have an evil Pinocchio with a whip, and you together have time to close all the tasks, then you can read the next item.

I believe that the key to achieving this goal lies, firstly, in the personal adoption of the team atmosphere (its rules and customs), and secondly, in the work on the self-organization of each participant. Probably, you can somehow contribute to the development of this direction by initiating into the team, regular team building and all sorts of rewards (not just because of course). The main thing is not to overdo it and not to demotivate the teammates.

By the way, I know a couple of good games that will help strengthen self-organization in the team: the Marshmallow Challenge and Ball Point Game . In these games, at least two teams are needed - it is desirable to attract a team from the outside. In the first game in time you need to build such a stable design so that the marshmallow is raised as high as possible above the table. And in the second game you need to iteratively (from sprint to sprint) to increase the number of balls produced in your factory. I happened to play these games, and this is a very good experience!



In the Marshmallow Challenge, our team did not take first place, but I liked the course of our game. Here is what I saw interesting here:

• during planning, we attempted to incorporate the opinions of everyone within our common goal;
• we did not have a manager who distributed assignments or shared powers;
• we have reached a level of self-organization and self-awareness that everyone took the initiative and took on the tasks from our mental imaginary backlog.

In Ball Point Game (aka Factory of balls), our team won, and we produced about 140 balls in a couple of minutes (there are rumors that there is a team that made about 300 balls). Self-organization did not occur by clicking on the magic button. It appeared intuitively and was based on our overall goal “more balls in the same time”. We lost a lot of performance in the next-to-last sprint (the stumbling fell into a corkscrew ), sacrificing it for a radical improvement. Which ultimately allowed us to win.

Joint decisions. What is it?

This is when the team, making decisions, is at least interested in the opinions of each participant. Even if someone else is not competent enough, you can at least explain where we are at all. Do not forget about mutual respect. Well, in the case of dead ends, you can always play good old scrum poker.

Mutual aid

Agree that when you come new to the team, and no one explains anything to you, there is a foolish feeling of hopelessness (and then thoughts like “well, maybe it ...”). And to avoid this, here, I think, there must be two important components:

• “Shout SOS” when you need help, not to be silent and not wait until someone guesses it;
• To cultivate a healthy empathy in relation to your teammates and not to stand aside.

Well, do you already feel how cool your team is? It's okay, now let's see what can help us.

Good weather catalysts on team aka command incubator

Location

Yes, yes, it is an incubator. And to be more precise - one single location . The most important thing in my opinion, where to start “flattening out” the team, is a close location to each other. And even better, if it is a separate room and no one from the huge space does not bother you. First, some minor problems are solved "on the fly", rather than being shelved. The availability of a teammate at arm's length is far more profitable than the accessibility limited by Skype. Secondly, the atmosphere of teamwork reigns in the room. You feel that you are benefiting the project and the next sitting and working comrade too. This is about the same as in childhood when we sculpted a snowman in a crowd or made a house out of snow, digging it in a huge snowdrift. And everyone introduced some improvements from himself and everyone was fine.

I had a chance to work 9 months away from my team. This is extremely uncomfortable. My work has stretched. My Tasks hung in the In Progress state longer than most of the tasks of my teammates. There was a feeling that they were together form a snowman for the fiftieth, and here I am sitting and still trying to match the carrot for the first one. In general, productivity is the level of the snail.

But when I moved to the team, the situation changed radically. I felt "on the point of attack". In a couple of weeks I began to close more tasks than I did in a month. I was not even afraid to take on the task of the middle!

Empathy and general atmosphere.

Do not stay away when the teammate was ambushed. Mutual respect, and just a good attitude towards each other, is also a kind of key to success. Ideally, there should be joy for the success of the teammate and pride for his team - and this is already a good motivation for further progress.

It reminded me of a video where a crowd of passers-by together was able to push away parked cars that prevented the ambulance from passing. They did it together, and they were able to move the two cars that were on the handbrake. This is really cool. And I think after success everyone felt his own usefulness to the process inside, he felt that he helped more serious help.

For me, the most terrible dream is when an awkward situation reigns in the team and almost everyone is afraid to say a word, so as not to be mistaken somewhere or appear silly or dumb. This should not be. I understand that everyone has a different character, but every member of the team should feel comfortable in it.

An antidote to the situation described above, and just good prevention will be communication with the team in an informal setting. It is communication, and not spending free time, where everyone has stumbled into their smartphone. It will not be superfluous to get together with the team in the evening to play board games, or go together on a quest, or on a paintball. Fight for your atmosphere in the team!

Team Facilitator. What is this pokemon?



I think I want to say that this should be a leader. But there is a thin and slippery edge. It is not in the interests of the team facilitator to lead the team. He is eager to increase the motivation of the whole team and maintain a comfortable atmosphere in it, he is an excellent “resolver” of intra-team conflicts. His goal is a high performance team.

It is desirable that this was a man from the outside. Each team passes the stages of its formation on the model Takman . So, if you introduce the facilitator at the Forming stage, the team will survive the Storming stage and go to the Norming stage faster than without it. But at the Performing stage, the facilitator is ideally no longer needed. The team copes with everything itself. Although, as soon as someone leaves the team or comes into it, it again falls into the Storming stage. Well then: "The facilitator, I call you!"

It would be another big plus if the facilitator sold the team an idea. I think that this is if you “light up” a spark in your teammates and infect them with the idea of ​​common success in the future, to which we all should strive now, then we can succeed so well in increasing command motivation.

The brutal murder of conflicts.

I really hope that conflicts will never fly into the dream team . We are all kind and able to adequately respond to jokes, extraordinary situations and we do not go to the conflict. It is so? But I know that sometimes a fight is inevitable (especially in the Storming stage). In such moments, you need to urgently throw a pokeball into an opponent to call a facilitator! But often teammates are already in the know about the evolving situation in the team and are ready to shower both poker balls . It is very important to stop the conflict as soon as possible, so that there is no understatement and secret resentment.

Joint planning.



In joint planning, the team should evaluate the current and upcoming work well. I think this is a good chance to evenly distribute the load on each teammate. All comrades should inform their team about everything (difficulties, suggestions, etc.). Otherwise, the team may throw in silence more tasks, from which he will not only become disheartened, but may also harbor an insult - and this is already dangerous for the dream team! Constant and open dialogue is the key to effective planning.

Transparency is just as important an attribute for planning as a magic potion for Asterix. Transparency is needed to work more efficiently and make effective decisions. After all, when we see a complete picture of what is happening, we can always make a good decision, which then does not make us spend time figuring out the reasons for poor performance or failure.

Dailyik.

Dailycars are daily team meetings to find out and recognize its current working status. This cherry is not a dream team cake. Especially if these days go by not on Skype, but over a cup of coffee and in an informal setting. I had the opportunity to participate in such events a few times, and, frankly, when I return for my workplace I want to work and create more and more! Oohaha! Seriously guys. The days, if they are properly organized and the team mates are open to each other, several hares are killed at once. This is transparency, joint planning (I know, there is a retrospective, but here you can learn about the problems much faster), making joint decisions, an idea for the team and just time spent with the team!

So let's create this same dream team!

I would like to believe that each of us worked in a dream team. Then it would be all good. And there would be no queues or delays, because the dream team manages to cope with everything, and there would be no negativity, because the dream team loves its work, etc. etc.

Personally, I am proud and inspired by my team. And to say that I work in a dream team would probably be wrong, because dreams were created to be unattainable, so that there was something to strive for.