It is now common to hear about IT organizations kicking off big Agile transformations. While there is a lot of training offered on how to improve the delivery process, culture change and mindset shifting, people are not prepared on how to shift their roles. In traditional environments, everyone has a clear job description that explains their function and what they should/shouldn’t do. In a functional role, it is clear from whom to receive the work and where to send it after a certain expertise/skill is applied. In Agile, all these roles change to “Agile Team member”. What does a Team member do? What is the job description for this role? How can someone use the previous skills and expertise under this new role? What University Degree do I need to be "Product Owner", one of the "3 Amigos", "On-Site Customer"? And why does everyone talk about collaboration?

1. From I to T
Collaboration of the Functional Roles in Agile teams
Ardita Karaj
Agile and Beyond 2014
Hello #AAB2014
From @Ardita_k

2. This presentation brought to you by the letters I and T
And by Me!
More
about
me
later

3. Roles in Agile Teams
Scrum Roles:
Product Owner, Scrum Master, The Team
XP Roles:
On-Site Customer, The Whole Team, Coach, Tracker
Other Agile job descriptions:
Knowledge Worker, 3 Amigos, Generalizing specialist, Product Champion, Squad,
Tribe, Guild, Servant Leader, Pizza Team

4. Prefer better to bigger
James Shore
Teams can be as small
as two and as big as
you need to accomplish
a common Goal

5. Agile Teams Are
Self
Organized
An Agile team uses the
strength of individuals
and provides room for them to
grow expertise and experience

6. The strength of an individual
Deep Knowledge and understanding of
one or two specific areas, systems,
disciplines and/or cultures
I

7. Why
I
Pro
 Researchers / Specialists
 Evangelists
 Teachers
Con
 Create delays/dependencies
 Knowledge bottlenecks
 Hide messy solutions and code
Image by Erik Johansson

8. Grow on expertise and experience
Broad knowledge on multiple areas, systems,
disciplines, cultures and connections between them but
without any depth on any
“Hyphen”

9. Why Hyphen
Pro
 Large Program Managers
 Networkers
 Generalists
 Learners
Con
 No expertise on any area
 Hard to find pure hyphen types

10. What is a T shaped person?
Really awesome at one or two areas,
fairly good on some other areas.
Breadth of understanding the
connection between different
areas, systems and disciplines
Broad
Depth of understanding and
experience on one or more
areas, systems and disciplines
Deep
T

11. Why








T
Generalizing specialists
Apply knowledge across situations
Influencers
Experience + Creativity
Share Knowledge, Tools and Code
Connectors
Explorers
Bottleneck removers

12. Where to
Mastery
Basics
Heuristics
begin

13. What helps to create
T
Team Collaboration
Self-organized teams
Osmotic communication
Pairing
MobProgramming
Code reviews
Team ownership of code
Tight WIP limits
Try something new
Remain curious
Ask
for help
Mentoring
Pave the cow paths

14. Passport to
learn!
By working on an Agile
team, you have the
opportunity to grow,
learn, become T shaped

15. Is there one switch to switch
From Functional roles
To Partnership relationship
Be proud of your specialty and understand/respect the strength of
the others on your team

16. Me 4 Years Ago
Me Now
UX
Design
Release
management
Software
Development
Business
Analysis
Team
Leadership
Agile
Project
Management
Process and
Agile
methodologies
Coaching
/
Training
Change
management
Me
Speaker
Guitar

17. Goal of the bridge:
Enable cars to move from one side of
the bridge to the other
How?
By having just enough T shaped sections
Goal of Agile teams:
Deliver changes fast to customer
for feedback
How?
By having just enough T shaped
people

18. Exercise
1
You are given a Goal.
Create an Online Catalogue for a Pet store
You have a pool of I shaped people with different skills.
Build your Team and Process!

19. Changes in people allocation
Exercise
2
• 25% Richard: Marketing
• 25% Ben: Customer Care
• 50% Kat: Project Management
• 25% Vlad: DB Admin
• 25% Phil: IT/Infra
• 50% Martin: Release Engineering
 Debbie (Ops) collaborate with Steve (tech writer) and Kat (PM)
 Lorna (BA), Kat (PM) and Lee (Tester) shared tasks
 Lee (Tester) collaborate with Lorna (BA) and Debbie(Ops)
 James(Java) pair up with Phil (IT) and Jonathan(PHP)
 Vince(QA) and James(Java) pair programming and code reviews with Jonathan(PHP)
 Jason(Bus), Matt(UI) and Steve(writer) sitting close to Richard (Marketing) and Ben (Customer care)
 Jonathan(PHP) pair up and sitting close with Vlad(DBA) and Martin(Rel.Eng)

20. Discuss
How was your team and process with I shaped people?
What changed from the T shaped people?

21. ?
Questions

22. Build your
T
Share it with me
Email : Ardita.Karaj@gmail.com
Twitter : @Ardita_K
Stay hungry, Stay foolish ~ Steve Jobs