I read this article from Roman Pichler that took the perspective of a Product Owner working with an underperforming development team and trying to turn things around. While it’s a good article, it inspired me to look at other reasons that a team might not be performing well. Things outside of the team.  

So, instead of the Product Owner looking at and trying to improve the team, what if they changed their focus to underperforming influences that surround the team?

A New Lens

I would say that IF a Development Team is (underperforming) the first levels of exploration should be:

  1. Leadership – Organizational Culture;

  2. Leadership – directly of that Team;

  3. Product Ownership – Organizationally;

  4. Product Ownership – directly of that team;

 

5.     THEN, and only THEN, look inside the team…

How about them apples? It’s the Culture, the Ecosystem, the System that matters most!

I guess my point in writing this is not to react or comment on Roman’s article. It’s to weigh in with the idea that rarely are performance challenges at a team level. Sure, they may appear there. But, in my experience, the majority of the time the root cause is outside of the team.

Now another reason that we all focus on improving the teams is that it’s an easier target. Well, certainly easier than fixing the leaders or the organizational culture. But if we want to begin a journey towards true high-performance, that just maybe where our lens (and effort) should be focused.

Stay agile my friends,

Bob. 

https://medium.com/stuart-engineering/creating-and-developing-high-performance-agile-team-part-1-the-benefits-of-high-performance-24495db82951

 

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