Whole teams are self-organizing, cross-functional, fluid, and highly collaborative.
Self-organization means that everyone on the team works together
to determine the best way to perform the work required fulfilling the goals
of the team.
A whole team is cross-functional, containing people with the combined
expertise to perform the work. This includes people with modeling skills,
testing skills, management skills, and programming skills. It also includes
stakeholders with the required domain knowledge.
Fluidity refers to the idea that the team composition will vary over
time. For example, at the beginning of the project, you may need someone
with deep build experience to help organize the team's build strategy, but after
this work is finished, this person leaves the team. Whole teams work in a
highly collaborative manner, adopting the most effective communication techniques
for their situations and striving to work together as closely as possible. It
is through collaboration that people make each other better.
The goal of the Whole Team practice is to ensure that:
- Everyone has a sense of belonging on the team, of being in it together. There
should be no "outsiders," no "them" but only "us." When everyone
is on the team, people avoid blaming others. Instead, there
is a sense of collective ownership.
- The team includes everyone required to build the system. Ideally,
you want a self-contained team that has the skills and knowledge to get the
job done. Realistically, this is not always possible at all points,
and sometimes you will need to bring in outside experts for brief periods
of time for specific goals. For example, you might need someone with
experience at setting up the database at the beginning of the project or,
in the middle of the project, someone with specific expertise in a certain
aspect of the domain.
- Everyone on the team contributes any way that they can. With
a whole team approach there is a move away from specialists who focus
on a specific category of work, such as analysis or database administration, towards
generalizing specialists who may have that expertise but will also work
outside of their specialty to help address the current need.
- The team is self-organizing. The people best-suited
to plan and organize the work are the ones who do the work. This results in better
estimates (particularly when people know that they'll be held to those estimates),
more realistic schedules, and increased acceptance of the plan by the team.
- The team maintains a sustainable pace.
Just as you don't sprint throughout a marathon, you can't go for weeks or
months at a time working unrealistic levels of overtime. Tired people
are not productive people.
- Everyone works together closely. Not only is it safer,
it is better to ask others for help when you need it. Another strategy
for improving collaboration within the team is to have daily standup (scrum)
meetings where you share your current status and explain any problems that
you might have. Non-solo development practices, such as pair programming
and modeling with others, are also common in the Whole Team approach.
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