If you answer NO to any of the following questions, I’m sorry to say but your teams aren’t maximizing their performance…
I’m not talking about if they are producing “enough” and if your company is still growing. I’m asking if your teams are achieving their high performance potential?
Let’s get Started
We have a special lens that will tell you in just a few minutes whether your team(s) are high performance.
The lens shines a light on 4 key areas of your teams (the Core 4):
- Reliability – are your teams as reliable as they can be, so that customers and stakeholders can predict and plan with confidence?
- Fast/Efficient – are your teams as fast as they can be so as to release software as quickly as possible?
- Quality – are your teams producing with the highest level of quality possible?
- Customer Focus – Are your teams optimizing the frequency of releasing customer value?
I don’t disagree there could be another lens to look through, but let’s focus on these 4 to start. The interesting part of this lens is that it looks at HOW the teams operate vs industry benchmarks or metrics of what they are producing now. Studying and comparing teams over time shows that the way they operate, the fundamentals if you will, leads them to achieving their highest potential.
Let’s dive in.
Are they as reliable as they can be?
Answer NO if:
- They frequently miss Sprint deliverables, also known as “Spillover”. Essentially they aren’t good at crafting and planning the work to fit in a reasonable timebox (the Sprint).
- Do they work as a team or individually? When relying on individuals to own work, results will always vary. They are human, get stuck, go out sick and take vacations. Teams spread the load and risk providing the support to teammates when needed to reach consistency.
- Do they create tasks of their stories, therefore work together, share and help each other out as needed?
- Are they full stack developers or at least a full stack team? If they rely on other teams, for any aspect in order to deliver, they will not be as reliable as their potential.
Are they as fast/efficient as possible?
Answer NO if:
- Again they don’t work well as a team and work individually over team work. For the same reason, sharing the load and crossing the finish line together.
- Are they good at crafting User Stories that are truly “ready for dev”, that follow the INVEST method… If not, they will spend too much time verifying or clarifying requirements during a Sprint when they should be coding, testing and releasing.
- Do they limit Work in Progress (WIP) , Batch Size, and external dependencies: therefore maximizing Cycle Time?
Do they maximize the quality of the software they release?
Answer NO if:
- You can’t review a documented and repeatable process for testing their work (both Sprint and Regression testing). If it’s not visible and repeatable things will slip through the cracks.
- Does your whole team truly own quality and are they accountable to it? Or is it more that they can “hand off” their work for others to test?
- Does the team wisely invest in test automation so they can keep up with the growth of the code base and combat regression issues?
Are your teams optimizing customer value?
Answer NO if:
- Does the full team collaborate (negotiate) in creating User Stories?
- If just a few, then a just a few will have a customer “focus”
- Does the team Vertically Slice user stories, or split them out horizontally – front end, back end etc.
- Is your team given all the information on the “why” or features and are they accountable to understanding the product/domain/business need of their product?
If you answered NO to any of these questions, I’m sorry but your teams are not meeting their highest potential for High Performance, based on Lean/Agile principles and best practice techniques. The good news is it’s never too late and we at Work-Agile.net are more than happy to help you by providing the techniques and coaching to shift your team’s work habits that will set them up to reach their high-est potential.
More resources:
- Setup a call with us today to discuss how we can help
- Review the High Performance Teams Overview
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