The intersection of Agile/Scrum and the Behavioural Psychology of Teams. There is a science behind building teams. This presentation outlines **some** of it.

1. Mark Levison!
@mlevison!
mark@agilepainrelief.com
The Magic and
Science of Teams
Is there a Science
of Teams?

2. Stop Stumbling on Your Way to
High Performance Teams

3. “People Working on the Same Product but not
Collaborating are Essentially Working Separate
Tandem Products”
–Ben Waber, People Analytics

4. 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

5. Benefits
Teams form faster
ication
Commun
Patterns
Cohes
ion
Understand
why
Coffee Brea
ks
are importa
nt
se less
You will lo
ha ir

6. Background
15
min
4
Segments
10-­‐15
min
Presentation
Discussion
Plays
10
min
Wrapup

7. Your Plays

8. Background

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

11. High Performance Teams
• Small number of people with • Committed to a common approach
which
complementary skills. !
– Requires all team members to contribute
• Committed to a common
equally (effort not skill) !
purpose !
– Demands open interaction !
• Have a specific and
– Uses Fact based problem solving !
challenging performance goal. !
– Uses results based evaluation !
• Mutual Accountability
– Provides for modification and
improvement over time !
– Seeks fresh input and perspectives
systematically from outside the team
Derived from “The Wisdom of Teams” !
by Jon Katzenbach and Douglas Smith

12. 7 +/- 2
Go to Flip Chart - Draw out 5 and 9

13. 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.

14. 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.

15. >10?
❖
Draw a flip chart
n (n - 1) / 2

16. Social Costs
❖
1hr per day?!
❖
How many?!
❖
Who?
Maintaining the social relationships - comes at a high cost.

17. Prepare Your Play

18. Prepare Your Play

19. Cohesive Networks

20. Cohesive Networks
VS.

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

22. 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.

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

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

25. Prepare Your Play

26. Prepare Your Play

27. Deception
Lies that are commit

28. 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.

29. Neither formal corporate meetings nor chatting at desks increased cohesion

30. Instead it was overlapping break time and lunches.

31. 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.

32. Team Working Agreements
ectives
All Persp
are good
nch
Team Lu
Day
Daily Scrum
Time
Headp
hones
off
time
Definition
of
Done
pinions
Diverse O
d
Welcome
Scrum Teams need to establish working agreements - what can you establish to support that will help support cohesion

33. Prepare Your Play

34. Prepare Your Play

35. Communication Patterns

36. 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.

37. 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.

38. 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

39. 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

40. 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.

41. Prepare Your Play

42. Prepare Your Play

43. 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?

44. Coach The Team
…not the individuals

45. Tactics
❖
Seating!
❖
Model!
❖
Feedback!
❖
Change Membership?

46. Prepare Your Play

47. Prepare Your Play

48. Perform

49. 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