Enabling High Performance: Real Teams

I recently posted some reflection on growing high performing teams through the enabling conditions set out in the work of Richard Hackman. This post unpacks a little more of the detail around what is meant by Real Teams, hopefully helping us to reflect a little more on the implications when working in our own agile settings.

A real team consists of interdependent members within a clear boundary and with a shared purpose for which the collective is responsible and stable enough to exploit differences and work well together.This means that the team works as a collective unit and fails or succeeds as a collective unit. The focus is a on the output of the team as a whole and not on the individuals within in. The various members of the team are dependent on each other and need to work together to get their work done, they're bounded by the need to collaborate rather than a loose application of semantics. The team is also clearly defined, it's clear who's in the team and who isn't and they're given the time and trust that they need in order to carve out effective working strategies.

A real team:

1) Has interdependent members. The members of the team depend on each other in order to complete their work and work towards their goal. They are not working in isolation of each other or as collection of distinct and independent silos.

2) Has a shared purpose. The team members are united in their reason for being. They are all working towards the same goal(s) and will succeed or fail together.

3) Has a clear boundary. The team members are clear who is in the team and the role they are playing. There is also a clear understanding of the wider community, key stakeholders and clear channels of communication between the team and those stakeholders. 

In an Agile context this will look like long formed stable teams, shaped around a product area with an accompanying and clear vision, a cross-functional focus and the empowerment they need to self-organise and shape their working practices. There are no back-end or front-end 'teams' passing work between themselves, real teams in an Agile setting are feature teams and can complete work and deliver value on an end-to-end self-contained basis.