today we had an offsite for all the agile…. folks at our company. i use agile…. because we’re having an identity crisis of sorts. actually that’s why i have been pushing these past several months for us to get together and talk about it, and why i have had hope that we could together decide some first steps at claiming an identity we’re all happy with.
this is the first offsite we’ve had in almost 2 years i think. in that time the company, and our ‘team’ has split into separate business units, each with their own goals, org structures, priorities, and ways of getting thing done. before the split we were loosely joined together in a team, with the same line manager. for a while we tried to actually act as team, with our own backlog, and daily stand-up, but the motivation to actually work together and collaborate with each other was not enough to sustain this. so the stand-ups stopped happening and the BU split more or less sealed the deal.
gradually though we’re finding that we still have some interdependencies with each other despite the BU split. on the infrequent occasions when we do talk to each other, we discover that we still face some common problems, and we could even learn some valuable things from each other.
but is one offsite enough for us to call ourselves a team? i think the key ingredient we’re missing is a common purpose. our individual remit remains more or less focused on our teams. in some instances the perspective widens to encompass x-team initiatives, more from the project management point of view. but as a group i think we sell ourselves short by not looking beyond our fences, not dreaming big, and not giving ourselves permission to be the catalysts for the change we keep wishing for.
it reminds me of what i see on the teams i’m coaching. they’re generally more happy and productive when everyone is working towards the same goal, when they are collaborating rather than just cooperating and when they forget about ‘role definitions’ and just help each other get the job done.
funny that.
Notes From An Agilist 