Effective vs Efficient Teams
We hear more and more about large organizations adopting Agile software development practices recently. This is not surprising given that Agile practices have many advantages over traditional methods. One significant difference with Agile is the focus on building good teams. Unfortunately organizations new to Agile often miss two fundamental questions before jumping into an Agile adoption. The questions are deeply related, but not directly at first. Why do Agile? To put it simply: Software projects can be better, faster, or cheaper by using Agile practices. Pick any, and only, two. What kind of team should be created? Efficient or effective? An efficient team is commonly what an organization has in mind - highly skilled and predictable in execution. Generally, they are workgroups made up of multiple experts working on and sharing their expertise across multiple projects. The individuals on these teams are allocated to projects 90%+ of their time and have very little slack tim...