Sam Whiting who is a scrum master for New Bamboo gave a talk discussing Patrick Lencioni’s 5-dysfunctions of a team (Absence of trust, Fear of conflict, Lack of commitment, Avoidance of accountability and Inattention to results). He looks at the symptoms, causes and the behaviours so that they can be eradicated from a team. This reviews how people can work together and build not a good team but a great team. Getting groups of people to work as a team can makes the difference in a project. When this happens continuous improvement can become part of the working culture and produce great results.
This talk for me was really interesting as it highlighted multiple points were a team could fall over and the difference a good team could have to being a great team. I have seen in teams a certain amount of apathy and when this happens how do you get people back working towards the same goal. Sam came up with some interesting ideas of trying to make the team personal, with the idea if you know a bit more about your team then this link will increase the urge to do better job within the group.
It would have been really useful to not have only listing the 5 dysfunctions but having real world examples of when this happened and using a methodology the team dynamic was resolved. I could relate to the issues but even with running retrospectives and team pub time I haven’t seen particularly successful ways of getting the team not only back on track but being better than good.
The session was recorded so if this is something you struggle with you can watch the session here.
Thanks Sam for a good talk (and Agile Practitioners for organising) and I enjoyed the presentation style, entertaining slides to hit the message home.
Agile in London 