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Blog
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HOW TO BUILD AN EFFECTIVE TEAMWORK IN TECH TEAMS
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Introduction
Some say hiring a bunch of talented techies would build a dev team performing real high, however, it goes much further. For a team to be truly effective, its members must unite with the same vision and be motivated to bring that vision to life. They must share clear, measurable goals, and be committed to each play their part in the overall success of the group. Read how to build an effective work process for the tech teams in our short article.
It happens that sometimes the C-level management, not related to the tech department, takes over the role of dealing with the tech team in the company. There can be several reasons for such a transition, such as company size, no team lead or a strong will to be at the core of any business strategy in the company.
C-level is responsible for the business, its efficiency and profitability. No matter how hard people try to reach that, it seems pretty impossible to own an expertise in all fields. Creating internal communication processes between executive management and other departments is known to be one of the most challenging business tasks.
C-level is responsible for the business, its efficiency and profitability. No matter how hard people try to reach that, it seems pretty impossible to own an expertise in all fields. Creating internal communication processes between executive management and other departments is known to be one of the most challenging business tasks.
- First, assigning tasks and monitoring their implementation is indeed problematic, if there is no clear picture of how realistic the tasks and how adequate the deadlines are. No matter how we do not want to, but we have to admit that engineers do take advantage of that quite often.
- Second issue comes with lack of HR skills - c-level is simply not always capable of hiring a professional and productive team by their own forces and building an efficient team. This is coupled with understanding how many employees are required for the existing scope to be executed of good quality and in time. This issue results in a company having a bloated and, what is worse, not very professional workforce.
At first glance, it seems like the problem lies within the recruitment process and the most common solution would be simply opening a new position. However, on the system level, the challenge remains the same - staff comes and goes, while the level of company’s performance keeps on the same line (and it better be not plunging). One of the efficient resolutions would be implementing Scrum methodology into the project management.
Scrum is one of the agile project management frameworks that consists of meetings, roles, and tools to help teams working on complex projects collaborate and better structure and manage their workload. Although it is most often used by software development teams, scrum can be beneficial to any team working toward a common goal. Such methodology is used not only in the tech industry but is also vastly implemented in logistics, sales and other fields.
The main role in this agile method belongs to the product owner who is responsible for the final business outcome and represents the stakeholders. He or she composes the backlog of the product which is a list of all features, requirements and limitations of the product and allocates the tasks to fulfill the scope of the project.
The most important and deliverable tasks are set at the weekly meeting for the upcoming sprint which is also referred to as “iterations,” essentially breaking the project schedule into digestible blocks of time in which smaller goals can be accomplished.
At the meeting, listed tasks for the upcoming sprint are then put to the “To Do” column. Once they are taken into work, they are transferred to the “In progress” list. At the end, they are moved to “Done”, meaning coded, tested and integrated into the evolving product or system.
At the meeting, listed tasks for the upcoming sprint are then put to the “To Do” column. Once they are taken into work, they are transferred to the “In progress” list. At the end, they are moved to “Done”, meaning coded, tested and integrated into the evolving product or system.
On each day of the sprint, all team members should attend a daily Scrum meeting, including the ScrumMaster and the product owner. This meeting is timeboxed to no more than 15 minutes. During that time, team members share what they worked on the prior day, will work on that day, and identify any impediments to progress.
Once the sprint is completed, the team conducts a sprint review during which the team demonstrates the new functionality to the PO or any other stakeholder who wishes to provide feedback that could influence the next sprint. This process is constantly repeated until the final product is ready to be released.
Once the sprint is completed, the team conducts a sprint review during which the team demonstrates the new functionality to the PO or any other stakeholder who wishes to provide feedback that could influence the next sprint. This process is constantly repeated until the final product is ready to be released.
After each sprint teams run a retrospective - it is a Scrum meeting devoted to the review of the accomplished milestones. Members of the team write the results down, discuss ins and outs of the sprint and its consequential processes. The main goal of the retrospective is to pay attention of the team to what was done well and what can be improved in the upcoming sprints. What is important is that there is no goal in pointing out the mistakes.
Another key figure in the Scrum process is a ScrumMaster who is in control of adhering to the methodology and structure of Scrum work. ScrumMaster teaches other team members all the aspects of the Scrum process and looks for ways to optimize the work. Developers’ communication with other teams is led by a ScrumMaster. This is a mentor, coach, fasilitator and a diplomat in the team who knows how to overcome emerging obstacles, who lists all necessary resources and maintains the team productivity at its maximum.
Advantages:
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Project team works in small iterations with defined goals and objectives which speeds up the work pace.
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Project team fulfills several tasks at the same time and reaches the goal in a shorter time.
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Large-scale tasks are decomposed into smaller ones which makes the adjustment more flexible.
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Agility of altering and eliminating emerging challenges minimizes financial risks.
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Each member of the team has a clear picture of what he or she is responsible for.
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Tangible weekly results keep a high level of motivation for the team.
Flaws:
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Scrum is not suitable for large-scale and complicated projects as coordinating the teams involved may be challenging
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This methodology requires a high level of trust between the involved members
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After long sprints productivity movement drops which requires either reorganising or dismissing the team
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Clients must always be in touch with the team and give regular feedback
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SCRUM Values
In order to benefit from Scrum, teams should follow five main Scrum values listed in “Scrum Guide”:
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Commitment
Scrum team acts like one strong unit where all the players must trust each other. They commit to the sprint over the whole period of each interaction and dedicate themselves to the ongoing self-improvement in order to find the best solutions.
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Courage
In Scrum a team may face challenging issues without a specific solution. Scrum teams have the courage to ask straight and honest questions and give the same answers to come up with the best solution.
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Concentration
During any sprint Scrum team completes various tasks from unfinished stories. Scrum team focuses on that scope of work which was selected from the list, to reach set goals for the sprint.
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Openness
During Scrum things may not turn out as expected. Members of the Scrum team should be open to new ideas and possibilities which would help train individually and advance a product or a process.
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Respect
Joint effort in Scrum methodology is a key to success. For the sake of maintaining teamwork on the level, team members should respect each other, respect their ScrumMaster and Scrum process itself.
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Conclusion
Therefore, implementing the Scrum methodology for an in-house IT department helps build an effective work process in the team. Based on consistency, transparency and adjustability, this agile framework allows the CEOs and other stakeholders to clearly see the efficiency of the team, its productivity and actual execution period of the projects.
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