Agile Montage

Challenges, both people and technology, are an integral part of any project. It is said that if there are none, then you should reconsider your involvement in the endeavor. Every project struggles with staffing at some point in time. There's no set formula that spits out the team composition or size based on the problem. Teams usually start with a certain number of people, based on past experience, and then either add or reduce the size as a project progresses. Then, there are other things like commitment; the percent of their daily time are people committed to on a project. These factors in combination of others help estimate the team size to a certain extent. Delegation Maturity of Team Usually, people talk about the maturity of team when you discuss the team sizing with them. One factor that I have never heard being considered is how well the team members delegate. Has anyone of you asked yourself or been asked this question? Did anyone ever come to you and said, "What's your assessment of the delegation skills in this team"? I have never been asked, but I have asked this to others a few times. Decisions - Too Important or Too Dangerous So, why is this such a big deal? Well consider this situation. A team has a product manager who makes all the decisions on the priorities of the functionality to be developed. But, that product manager is gone for two days. Who has that decision making authority been delegated to on the team in his/her absence? Who sets the direction of the team. Probably nobody, because that's just too important a decision for anyone or everyone to make. Even if it is not, who would want to make such decisions? These situations are seldom considered to start with on project teams. And this exists on all fronts, product management, project management, analysis, development, quality assurance, design, etc. People don't want to delegate and the delegates are too afraid to call the shots. Importance in Agile Environments In Agile environments, where teams move ahead and track activities every day, this is a big bottleneck. This is what makes the teams dysfunctional and impairs productivity. And the more we delay putting a delegation structure in place the more fearful the environment starts to get. Decisions start to take longer, frustrations start to build up, and eventually analysis starts to suffer because analysts don't put in that much effort, hiding behind the excuse that there's no clear vision and we may end up dropping this functionality, so why put in too much effort into it right now.