magic and science of teams

Mark Levison!@mlevison!mark@agilepainrelief.com

The Magic and Science of Teams

Is there a Science of Teams?

Stop Stumbling on Your Way to High Performance Teams

–Ben Waber, People Analytics

“People Working on the Same Product but not Collaborating are Essentially Working Separate

Tandem Products”

Myths or Facts❖ Scrum is tool for creating a high performance teams!

❖ Video Conference Tools are as good as face to face!

❖ Coffee Breaks!

❖ Face to Face Communication Matters!

❖ Put People in Room and You get a Team!

❖ Social Talk!

❖ Constraints harm Teams!

❖ Teams need saving from Cowboy’s

Cohesion You will lose less

hair

Teams form fasterUnderstand why Coffee Breaks are important

Communication

Patterns

Benefits

Background  

15  min

4  Segments  10-­‐15  min

Plays  10  min

WrapupPresentation

Discussion

Your Plays

Background

Performance

Picture: Copyright Berteig Consulting Inc. www.berteigconsulting.com

High Performance Teams

• Small number of people with complementary skills. !

• Committed to a common purpose !

• Have a specific and challenging performance goal. !

• Mutual Accountability

Derived from “The Wisdom of Teams” !by Jon Katzenbach and Douglas Smith

• Committed to a common approach which     – Requires all team members to contribute

equally (effort not skill) !– Demands open interaction !– Uses Fact based problem solving !– Uses results based evaluation !– Provides for modification and

improvement over time !– Seeks fresh input and perspectives

systematically from outside the team

7 +/- 2

Go to Flip Chart - Draw out 5 and 9

Many of our behaviours evolved pre-language and still need to be supported today. We evolved with face to face communication and participating in small groups. Bonobo’s forage in groups of 6-7 for several days foraging.

Contubernium or Section

Section - Unit of 8 recruits, Shared a tent, fought together, also **socialized, played together** - basically they did everything together. Militaries since that time have **often** had similar sized units.

>10?

❖ n (n - 1) / 2

Draw a flip chart

Social Costs

❖ 1hr per day?!

❖ How many?!

❖ Who?

Maintaining the social relationships - comes at a high cost.

Prepare Your Play

Prepare Your Play

Cohesive Networks

Cohesive Networks

VS.

Single biggest effect on productivity and stress - cohesion. About 30 times more important than experience. - Ben Waber People Analytics.

Cohesive networks create high trust because the constant stream of information exchanged about your close contacts. This creates the high level of trust required for great teams.

Shared Language

…and Shortcuts are part of what enables a cohesive team to get work done more quickly.

Weakness - cohesive networks share many assumptions that don’t always get challenged. They can become insular believing in themselves more than is healthy.

Prepare Your Play

Prepare Your Play

Deception

Lies that are commit

Cohesive networks have additional advantage that news travels fast. When someone is having a down day that news spreads around the team rapidly. Net result they benefit far sooner from peer support and understanding.

Neither formal corporate meetings nor chatting at desks increased cohesion

Instead it was overlapping break time and lunches.

What matters - having a water cooler/common coffee place. Having common breaks. Finally a longer lunch table. The longer lunch table helps because it makes it possible for a team to sit together and for a couple of outsiders to join them.

Headphones off time Diverse Opinions

Welcomed

Daily Scrum Time

Definition of

Done

Team Lunch Day

Team Working Agreements

All Perspectives

are good

Scrum Teams need to establish working agreements - what can you establish to support that will help support cohesion

Prepare Your Play

Prepare Your Play

Communication Patterns

From

to

From Broken to Well Connected Information derived informally or by using Sociometric badges. !Informal - tell people what you’re doing. Of the course of a few days draw simple matrix - record the number of exchanges between two people, the evenness, the flow and quality. Record using a simple table - use it draw a simple graph.

Key Measures❖ Energy Level!

❖ Engagement!

❖ Exploration!

❖ Content

Source: The New Science of Building Great Teams. by Alex “Sandy” Pentland.

• Energy level as measured by the number of exchanges among team members. An exchange is a comment with an acknowledgement. • Engagement the average energy between team members should be roughly equal. On teams where exchanges are unequal poorer decisions were

made. This is especially true on distributed teams. • Exploration is conversation outside the team - most important for creative teams (i.e. all of software development) which need a regular dose of fresh

perspectives • The content isn’t as important as the fact the conversations happened.

Story about a German bank where the communication among team members was almost entirely over email. Their goal was to a launch a new product and the results were considered disastrous. Video discussions are count to some degree but not anywhere near as much

Qualities❖ ~35%!

❖ 1 on 1!

❖ Whole Group

• 35% of variation in team performance account for by number of face to face exchanges. • 1 on 1 or very small group - in depth • Whole Group - brief to the point statements • Rough balance between whole group and one-on-one

Social Time

Social time accounts for more than 50% of positive changes in communication patterns. Conversations happened on breaks at water cooler, coffee machine and in the lunch space. Back to those long lunch tables. Sadly beer at the pub and formal organized offsite events had limited effect. !Many of the conversations were not about work. Non work conversations helped to build trust. Sadly some organizations discourage conversations outside of work.

Prepare Your Play

Prepare Your Play

Isolated? Why?

• Are they trying to contribute and being ignored • Do they cut off others? Do they discourage listening? • Do they only talk to one other team member? • Do they face other people in meetings or try to hide physically? • Do they speak loudly enough? • Is someone else in their team dominant? • Do their peers consider them competent?

Coach The Team

…not the individuals

Tactics❖ Seating!

❖ Model!

❖ Feedback!

❖ Change Membership?

Prepare Your Play

Prepare Your Play

Perform

References❖ “People Analytics” - Ben Waber!

❖ “The New Science of Building Great Teams” Alex “Sandy” Pentland!

❖ “The Wisdom of Teams” - Jon R. Katzenbach and Douglas K. Smith !

❖ “Leading Teams” - Richard Hackmann!

❖ “The Wisdom of Teams” - James Surowiecki