5. Drawing Exercise
At your table produce a drawing that shows
the benefits of a self-organizing team.
• Form into groups of 3 or 4
• You have 10 minutes
• Everyone at the table should draw at
least part of the drawing
Begin!
8. "Self-organization is the
process where a structure
or pattern appears in a
system without a central
authority or external
element imposing it
through planning"
- Wikipedia
9. Self-Organizing Systems
• Not planned or directed
• Spontaneous emergence of order and
behaviour
• Sum is greater than the parts
• Robust, adapting, self-healing
• Influenced by initial conditions
• Influenced by feedback or changing
conditions
10. Agile and Self-Organization
"Build projects around motivated
individuals. Give them the
environment and support they
need, and trust them to get the
job done."
- Agile Manifesto Principles
12. How to enable self-organization
• Setup the initial conditions
• Continually tune
o Reinforcement
o Change conditions to grow self-organization
13. How do you BEGIN?
• Boundaries
o What the team must do, or must not do
• Empowerment
o What authority is granted to the team
• Goals
o The reasons the team exists
• Ingredients
o The raw materials for success
• Nurture
o Ongoing feedback and evolution
15. BEGIN - Boundaries
• Depending on the maturity of the team and the
organization, you may not be able to completely
empower a team
• Explicitly list the things that a team must do, and
must not do
• You should try to keep the conditions as unrestrictive
as possible to increase the level of self-organization
17. BEGIN - Empowerment
• What authority is granted?
• Be explicit about what they are allowed to do
• e.g. Self-management
o choose own tools
o own day-to-day schedule
o manage own vacations
o clear own impediments
• Err on the side of trust and respect
19. BEGIN - Goals
• Why does the team exist?
• Don't control - tell them what the goal
is, but not how to achieve it
• Allow people to organize themselves
around the work, rather than the work
organizing itself around the people
• Side effect - motivation
o Increased sense of purpose and commitment
22. BEGIN - Ingredients
Does the team have what they need to
thrive?
• People, e.g.:
o technical skills required by the work
o interpersonal skills to work as a team
o If these are not there need to add or work
on them
• Resources
o required tools
o access to information
o education
24. BEGIN - Nurture through
Feedback
• This is not something you set and forget
• On an ongoing basis you need to provide
feedback to amplify the behaviour you
want and dampen the behaviour you
don't want
• Use feedback rather than imposing
control
25. BEGIN - Nurture through
Evolution
• Once teams have grown and earned trust
change conditions to reduce control and
encourage further self-organization
o Boundaries should relax
o Empowerment should increase
o Goal - should from from specific work to a
Vision
26. "Agile managers work the
system, not the people"
- Jurgen Appelo, author of Management
3.0
28. Drawing Exercise - Debrief
How does the drawing exercise fit the BEGIN model?
Boundaries
• Groups of at least 4
• 10 minutes
• Everyone at the table should draw
Empowerment
• You decide what to draw
Goal
• Produce drawing showing benefits of self-organization
Ingredients
• paper, pens, table, you
Nurture
• Chris and Shawn walking around, giving feedback
32. Initial State
• Company of about 500 people
• Transitioning to Agile
Removing cubicles for team rooms
Agile training for everyone
Committed to the transformation
• Re-aligning their work along Agile lines
• But, just starting their Agile transformation
33. Reason Needed to Reform
• Company had teams oriented along
component lines
• Two teams needed to be reformed to
become feature teams, capable of
delivering end-to-end slices of functionality
35. Typical Team Forming
• Chosen by management
• People grouped based on skill set
• No team/project chartering
• No team building
36. Could we just put everyone in a
room and have them hammer out
some teams?
37. Overview of Process
• All people together in room
• Stakeholders presented and discussed work
and vision
• Management provided their support for the
people, and trust in the results
38. Overview of Process - Exercises
• Wanted to reveal people along three facets:
o Skills, Values and Personality
• Ran three exercises to create a Personal
Information Sheet:
o Marketplace of Skills
o Motivating Values
o Myers-Briggs Personality Type Index
• Everyone presented their sheets to the
group
39.
40. Choice of Exercises
• Lots of different facets, so lots of possible
exercises, for example:
o Hard skills, soft skills, emotional
intelligence, personal values, motivators,
personality types, etc
42. How Does This Fit the BEGIN
Model?
• Boundaries
o What the team must or must not do
• Empowerment
o What authority is granted to the team
• Goals
o The reason the we are doing this
• Ingredients
o The raw materials for success
• Nurture
o Ongoing evolution
43. BEGIN - Boundaries
• Time boundary - Had to be done in one day
• Teams had to be equally sized
• Teams had to be whole teams - required all
necessary skills
• The exercises and choosing process were
created for the group
44. BEGIN - Empowerment
• Able to create own team membership as
a group
• Able to request addition of extra people
if they felt they were required
• Opt out - anyone could opt out of the
process
• Veto - Consensus was required for the
results
45. BEGIN - Goals
• Goal for this exercise: To create two
well-balanced feature teams
• Goal for teams: Stakeholders presented
upcoming work and their vision
• We had our own goals:
o Show people it is possible to self-organize
o Start self-organizing from the beginning
o Start team building process as early as
possible
46. BEGIN - Ingredients
• People in the room (team members,
stakeholders, management, facilitator)
• Exercises that were designed to reveal
people to each other
• Process was designed to ensure everyone
was heard
• As a result the missing ingredients
became obvious, for example required
skills
47. BEGIN - Nurture
• Management display of faith in teams
• Facilitation of process to ensure it went
smoothly
• Followed up the self-selection process with
team building activities
• Able to build on the foundation that was
established
49. Exercise - BEGIN Solving a
Problem
Either:
1. Pick someone at the table who has a
situation where they want to encourage
self-organization
Or:
2. Canned Situation: You have hired a
completely new team. Apply the BEGIN
model in the context of someone at
table's company.
15 minutes - Begin!
