Agile Principle 11 – Self Organizing teams produce best architectures, requirements and design

Let your team organize itself and watch the speed unleash!

Agile manifesto – principles number 1 – 10 were ones I could embrace or at least accept.  And yes I know it’s your 10th birthday this month.  But really, number 11 is a difficult one for this control oriented, project management/ manager type to swallow.  You’re saying that self-organizing teams can get it done?  Yeah right.  Please!  🙂

I write this tongue-in-cheek, kidding…for the most part.  Yet a small team (4-8 members) with high ownership over a product and minimal structure will out perform the same team with well defined process and poor ownership.  Ideally teams have both.  Success happens whether or not, from SCRUM jargon, you have the right mix of chickens or pigs OR from project management land, the right mix of stakeholders and team members.  Teams that come together, advance from storming to performing do achieve great things, even if they’re not organized in “text book” ways.

The premise is to infuse ownership and engagement!  That trumps process every time!  Measure the outcome not the process!

Related articles

• The Elephants in the Agile Room (pkruchten.wordpress.com)
• Agile Principle 5 – Motivate, Support and Trust People (tapuniversity.com)
• Agile Principle 8 – Constant Pace of Development (tapuniversity.com)
• Agile Principle 1 – Customer Focus (tapuniversity.com)
• Agile Principle 6 – Face to Face Interaction (tapuniversity.com)
• Agile Principle 10 – Maximize work NOT done! (tapuniversity.com)

Tagged: Agile, Agile software development, Business, Management, Programming, Project and Program Management, Project Management, Scrum

Posted in: Agile, Business Analysis, Software Development, TAPUniversity