Agile collaboration is the practice of working together effectively within a flexible teamwork system, such as Scrum, to achieve common goals. It focuses on creating a strong team culture where members support each other, take responsibility, and keep improving through shared objectives. such as Scrum, to achieve common goals through mutual support.
A common metaphor for agile teamwork is a rowing crew: team of people each pulling an oar in a shell boat. Rowers use the term swing to refer to a crew whose members are all perfectly synchronised.
Above picture shows complete harmony. This means each rower:
puts an oar into the water at the exact same time
pulls for the the same time and distance at the same speed
lifts the oar out of the water at the same time, and
slides forward at the same pace
Swing doesn’t happen very often. Someone is usually off by a fraction of a second at some point each stroke, and that’s enough that everyone in the shell feels it.
Team members sailing on this Sailboat aligned towards a sprint goal
We are conducting Daily stand ups and Sail boat retrospectives scrum events to understand if the Scrum team members are facing any hurdles like strong winds , anchor that is pulling them back to achieve their sprint goal.
Obstacles are addressed and resolved to guarantee smooth progress throughout each sprint, enabling swift delivery of features.
Mindset of PM team has always been to ensure the scrum team's boat sails swiftly without any hurdles during the sprint execution cycle . Transparency and team collaboration is the crux of SCRUM.
This reminds me of a very famous English rhyme - "Row row row your boat , Gently down the stream......."
There are many good results when a cross-functional team achieves the feeling of swing that comes from collaborative agile teamwork.
The spirit of 'I', 'me' converts to a powerful 'We' .
Small, Frequent Handoffs. Handoffs of work between team members are frequent, small, and without fanfare, because tasks are designed to overlap. Team members become like couples who’ve been together long enough that they finish each other’s work.
Short and Valuable Meetings. When teams achieve the swing of cross-functional collaboration, meetings are short and valuable because feedback loops are short, and happening in real time. Team members are working together and communicating often, so most people are up to speed already, so meetings can focus on what matters.
Collaborative Planning. Teams work towards a goal, and they generally achieve that goal. The mindset shifts from individual focus to collective unity.
Try-It-and-See Mindset. In agile and collaborative cultures, a try-it-and-see mindset prevails. Instead of arguing over practices (such as user stories vs. job stories or story points vs. time) or frameworks (Scrum vs. SAFe or Kanban), empowered teams experiment and decide for themselves what works best.
Fun and Engaging Work Environment. On an agile team in swing, team members are having fun. I sometimes decry that work is called work. I sincerely want work to be fun. I’m not naive: I know that won’t always be the case. But when a team is working together well, it is fun.
Inevitable Success. Finally, with swing there is a feeling that success is inevitable. As a Scrum team delivers more and more value, achieving outcome after outcome, the team starts to almost consider itself unstoppable.
Agile Collaboration Is Hard, But Achievable
Achieving all of this isn’t easy, just as it’s not easy for a rowing crew to swing. But when a team is collaborating well, it is a sign that you have built a successful agile team.
As a company, we’re lucky to work with many different agile teams, training them to improve collaboration and find their swing.
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