Building A Team: Letting the team self-organize

Self-Organized A traditional work environment follows a clear hierarchy which consist of employees and managers. In a team, a manager's duty is to manage the employees' work productivity, and the employees' duty is to complete assigned work by carrying out instructions. This kind of work environment structured teams around managers as the ones with the skills and employees as reliant on those skills. While this still exist today, it is not realistic. The introduction of agile has since changed how managers and employees contribute to the team.

The agile framework has shifted managers to the backseat where they are no longer managing the team but instead coaching and training. The employees or known in agile as the developers are now in the front. Developers in an agile team can include software engineers, graphic designers and database specialists. These developers are highly skilled in their field of expertise where it is impossible to be managed. A manager would not be capable to instruct work yet alone do it. This leaves the developers to take control of their responsibility on the delivery of a product. In agile, this is called a self-organized team.

A self-organized team makes a lot of the decisions for the project. The agile team is responsible for scheduling the work and estimating the completion. It is the agile team's responsibility to work closely with the product owner as this will help with determining the features in a final product. The agile team must be committed to the delivery of a product within a reasonable time frame. The delivery of a product is feasible as an agile team is able to breakdown work into smaller task thus improving their performance. These changes are the core ideas of why an agile team is considered as self-organized.

A team that is manage is not agile. By shifting the responsibilities away from a project manager to the developers, a team can become self-organized. The role of a project manager is no longer fulfilled by creating estimates and driving the work. The developers who are responsible for the work are now also responsible for scheduling it. Overall, by breaking down inefficiencies, self-organized agile teams are able to work in an environment for delivering a quality product.

Work Cited

"Agile at Work: Building Your Agile Team." Lynda.com - from LinkedIn, www.lynda.com/Business-Skills-tutorials/Welcome/175073/379413-4.html. Accessed 1 Nov. 2017.

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