The four ears model by Friedemann Schulz von Thun explains how communication works in the field of practice. This four ears model is an excellent reminder of the extent of information we get when talking. Also, this communication model gives us critical points for further action or talks.
Most of you know the situation when we had planned some work, let’s say a few different tasks. Then we started most of them, work in parallel and when time is up only a small portion of the work is really completed. In teams working towards deadlines or iterations this usually at least feels bad or has consequences, such as more budget needs to be requested or delay of delivery.
Self-organizing teams are an integral part of agile software development and one of the 12 principles of agile manifesto. Even outside agile software development, self.organizing teams can bring a lot of benefits to the organization. The sole purpose of these teams is to ensure that the process of decision making is decentralized, faster, and agreeable to all members. The self-organizing teams are autonomous, hence it becomes possible for them to determine how they want to approach a given problem. They also decide independently of any other teams, group or managers on what decision to take, implement and how to complete any tasks.
It is not a secret that companies are always looking for better ways to handle their software development needs to avoid projects dragging for long periods. Agile software development is one of the most preferred ways of software development due to its dynamic development nature, whereby, requirements and solutions evolve during the entire development process. The emphasis on collaboration between different self-organizing and cross-functional teams is at the core foundation of this method. Characteristics of a good agile development team When selecting a team for agile software development, a company should ensure that at a minimum, they meet the following factors.
When implementing agile software development in teams, context seems one of the least noticed factors. That’s remarkable as it is one of the most important aspects to consider when adopting agile methods. With a series of posts I want to shed some light on that topic, looking at context in agile software developments from different angles. Contexts that are relevant and worth to consider when starting agile software development are organizational culture, team setup (distributed or collocated, skill levels, language and cultural differences) and experience in agile methods and principles (maturity).
