Understanding self-organization: Self-organization teams in Agile are deceiving people.

Introduction

I didn't say anything when they said they needed a self-organizing team to implement agility.

I did not say that self-organizing teams in Agile do not need managers.

When they said that the self-organizing team in Agile has no clear roles, and each person is self-managed and has cross-functional skills, I still did not say anything.

Now, when I want to say that self-organizing teams in Agile are deceiving people. At this time, they did not speak.

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Body

 

Among the twelve principles in the agile Declaration, there is one: "The best architecture, needs, and design come from a self-organizing team ." In the current agile tide, people are always paying more attention to various practices. This article is often mentioned only when agile implementation fails: "Self-Organizing teams are too difficult to build, agile requires too much people."

 

In most people's understanding, self-organizing teams in Agile are like this. This team is autonomous and requires no additional management. They manage themselves without obvious division of roles. Everyone has superb skills. In short, this self-organizing team is a special force composed of a small number of special troops. They can attack the city and do everything they can. Many agile bosses and agile articles share the same voice, and such self-organizing teams often exist behind success stories, which does not seem to need to be proved.

 

At first, I understood that. I also have my own experiences. At that time, we were implementing scrum. I was a member of the team. In the early stage, we suffered from trust, communication, and other ways, and encountered technical business challenges. When we overcome all these difficulties, this team is indeed a self-organizing team with self-management, mutual trust, and respect, which is very similar to the self-organizing team we understand. Of course, I ignored the small difference, that is, these people were no different from others at the beginning, and there were various kinds of tangle and suffering in the process, at last, we changed to the ideal state. After all, there are not many opportunities to be called elites. Who will jump out and say they are not elites.

 

However, when I changed my role to a manager, I began to understand people's pain. This kind of self-organization requires too much people. You can hardly find a group of people with such values and skills in the real environment. In addition, most of the agile practices I promoted as managers (note that I have not implemented a full set of agility) also ended in failure.

 

Recalling my previous experiences, I can't help but have a little doubt about the self-organizing team in agile. Is the self-organizing team a prerequisite for implementing agile results or agile implementation? Can Agile implementation be successful if the personnel quality cannot be met? Is it the only helpful way to ask a coach? How did the coach lead the team to success? What should I do if the coach leaves? I have no answer.

 

The unsolvable situation lasted for a long time. One day, I was shocked when I checked the Wikipedia. Self-organization is totally different from the "self-organization" we imagined, and there is a huge theoretical system behind it. So I started to learn and try it in management. After changing teams of different sizes, I can confirm that the ideal self-organizing team is actually a result, not a prerequisite. You can create a self-organizing team from the ground up using self-organizing team concepts and agile practices to increase the chances of success from scratch.

 

The self-organizing team in agile is actually the result of agile, not a prerequisite. The process of implementing agile is also the process of building a self-organizing team. For this reason, I once again read the agile declaration. The original English text is: "The best practice tures, requirements, and designs emerge fromself-organizing teams. the suggested translation is: "The best architecture, requirements, and design emerge from the self-organizing team." The emergence and self-organizing teams have special significance.

 

Postscript

The title party wants to introduce the self-organizing team to more people. If you are willing to learn by yourself, you can view the self-organizing theory and self-organizing in the Wiki, and also recommend the book "complexity" and "out of control". If you have patience, you can wait for me to write it slowly. If you want to learn more quickly, you can contact me face to face.

This article is from the "David Zhang 33" blog. For more information, please contact the author!