Building a-self-sufficient-team

Editor's Notes

• #2: Hi everyone,\nwelcome to the “Building a self-sufficient team” talk.\n
• #3: I’m a web developer, and I have been working at Ideato since 2009.\nWe use eXtreme Pogramming and we started using a kanban board neraly one year ago.\n
• #4: \n
• #5: What do we need to build a self-sufficient team? Obviously...\n
• #6: ... a team! And to build a team we should follow some piece of advice...\n
• #7: It’s safe to be open. It’s safe to express yorself on the matter discussed inside the team.\n
• #8: Be transparent about your motives, and disclose information about your experience, your opinions, and your feelings.\n\n
• #9: Admit when you make a mistake. It helps to be cooperative and shuld help you getting better in relation and in what you do everyday!\n
• #10: Ask for help regularly. Everyone at some point need helps, it doesn’t mean you ask for a solution! It means you’re asking a different person to help you think about a solution.\nAsking regurlarly also means you should discuss things with others!\n
• #11: The ideal is for the whole team to sit together in the same room.\nA “break-out area” near the team, where they can get a cup of coffee and chat, allows the team to relax and build friendships.\nA meeting room nearby is useful for privacy or for having discussions without interrupting the team.\n
• #12: The team has to have an informative workspace, where useful information are displayed to help people structure their time and make good decisions\n
• #13: And which people should be part of the team?\n
• #14: Customers.. we need goals and money!\n
• #15: Management from our own organization. The sales manager should be the one selling our products and services, so she has to be involved!\n
• #16: Developers and Operationals are the core of the team from our point of view. They have to be skilled and willing to work as a team with the customer, sales manager and UX and Design people.\n
• #17: Customers have to be CRACK! How much do we love acronyms? ;)\n
• #18: Collaborative: work well with the development team.\nRepresentative: understand the point of view of the end user.\nAuthorized: are empowered to make decisions.\nCommitted: share the development team’s dedication to creating a good product.\nKnowledgeable: have the understanding and experience necessary to provide guidance.\n\n
• #19: Sales manager has to be part of the team. He’s experience can give us tremendoulsly helpful advice in making decision.\n
• #20: Morover we can use her as Psicologist of our customers.\nThe sales manager should work to build an ubiquitus language that help developers and customers speak the same language!\n
• #21: In Ideato we are actually divided into two teams.\n
• #22: The people involved in these two teams are: 4 developers, a Sales manager, a Project manager that is also a developer and that is following the brand new section of the company about training courses, and finally a SysAdmin.\n\nThe objective of our team is...\n
• #23: ...realeasing software!\n
• #24: For Ideato, “realeasing software” means to do it often, freaquently and iteratively.\n
• #25: Other than software, a self-sufficient team should be able to have a budget and deal with its own clients for contracts, invoices and stuff like these.\n\n
• #26: And maybe find new clients by itself. This goal was the most difficult goal and we achived it only partially\n
• #27: Last but not least, one of our goal is building what is called a “whole team”, with all the actors that are part of a project.\n
• #28: The two teams we’ve been speaking about are composed as shown in this slide. What I’m going to point out now is what we did well and what we did wrong for both teams.\n
• #29: The developers are given task such as writing contracts and quotes. The developers where involved in decision making (“should we work for this client?”).\nThe Sales manager and ex-PM are also extremely useful in keeping a cohesive communication with the customers (from the beginning of a project).\nThe sysadmin and the developers work together, often in pair, in development activities and system administration activities.\n\nIdeato and its partners usually tend to involve the customers in a cohesive group that can be transformed in a whole team for those projects that last for months.\nBut even in shorter projects a cohesive group can give you the possibility of discussing decisions and strategies so that customers’ needs are met. And this is usually something a customer remembers.\n
• #30: These are some of the difficulties we are facing right now:\nSales manager and ex-PM are involved in activities that cannot fit into the development workflow. We haven’t found a way to find new customers, training attendes assistance and training courses organizzation into our “team workflow” yet.\nEstimation and quotes are time consuming activities. We usually try to get paid for those, but it is not always accepted by new clients.\n\nAs for the cons of putting together developers and SysAdmin, one of them is ...\n
• #31: ... the sysadmin nature!\n
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