A software team that I have been working with had began to bump heads, get annoyed with each other and had steadily lost their mojo and momentum. They had been working on their program of work for over 2.5 years and the little team niggles that were initially tolerated, were now beginning to bite.
They had done exceptionally well to get this far and had enjoyed a very successful agile adoption within the first 18 months. But 2.5 years working on the same project is enough to drive anyone a little mad, and so here they were withdrawing from face to face contact, setting up personal backlogs and seeking support from other sources outside of the team.
The team cohesion had decayed slowly over a long period of time and so it wasn't immediately clear as to where things had gone wrong and why. It was my task to try to help them get back on task and get to the end of the program, which was so close but just out of reach for the team. If only they could hold it together for another 3 months...
Some of the team members had read about "Social Contracts" and thought that they needed some sort of agreement in order to get the program finished. They had never had a contract before and had initially been an implied and unwritten code of conduct between the team. Now it seemed that some visibility and an agreement on explicit terms and conditions for working in the team may help to at least reset their expectations of others and of themselves.
This was not going to be an easy thing to facilitate, as there was a great deal of emotional baggage that had built up in the team, and if it wasn't handled with a great deal of care it may just fragment them and result in a complete failure.
We started off with a brief brainstorm on possible terms and conditions for an agreement and covered some obvious things such as being on time for meetings, aligning their efforts on stories, removing their personal backlogs, treating each other with respect - you get the idea. Nothing really far reaching here but did help to warm up the team and get them at least collaborating a little.
So far, so good. Next I wanted to challenge their expectations a little and start to peel back some of the bottled up emotional baggage. Now it was going to get a little more difficult for the team, and I was also a little nervous. I put a basic diagram up on the white board to represent the team's current seating arrangement and then asked for a volunteer to start. An unsuspecting lamb stuck his hand up and his fate and the team's would now be challenged!
I now asked the team to provide one or two comments on what the volunteer had done well, and they responded providing some good positive feedback for their team member which was recorded on the board. Moving around the diagram and considering each person in turn, all of the team members eventually received some good, positive feedback from the others. Again, so far so good! And everyone was still in a good frame of mind. Now to turn up the heat a little...
On the diagram we had gone around everyone and eventually ended up at the initial volunteer again. At this point I now asked for comments on what the team wanted this individual to do more of. (Notice here that I deliberately avoided directly addressing failure, but wanted to keep things up beat, hence looking for positive comments that the individual could take away and work on.) The tone changed subtly as the team began to confront their values and expectations. Still in a positive frame of mind and phrasing things carefully and professionally so as not to offend the individual, they provided some deep insightful comments and expectations, which were gracefully received if a little uncomfortable for the individual concerned. Again moving through the diagram, eventually everyone in the team now had a couple of positive comments and a couple of improvements. Great! We had gotten this far with no major blow outs. Now for the closure and commitment...
Arriving at the initial volunteer again, I asked him to make a commitment to the team to achieve the improvements suggested from the feedback. He provided some firm actions when prodded and also some timings on when those actions would be implemented. Going around the board again, each member in turn agreed to provide their commitment to the team to work on their individual feedback.
We also set up a follow up if needed to review how the commitments were implemented and how they were going. Fantastic! The team had gone through the difficult process of soliciting feedback, some of which was very sensitive, and made a commitment to address those areas for improvement.
It was a bit of a relief for me as well, as everyone seemed to emerge from the discussion unscathed and still smiling if a little surprised at what they had committed to.
It has been a few months since we went through this exercise, and the team have worked very well together delivering on their objectives slightly ahead of time. They were able to hold on until the end and then some without any further disruptions.
At the time I wasn't very sure if this approach would work, but going along the lines of a retrospective - looking for the good elements before approaching challenges, and then looking for ideas and a commitment to make good on the feedback seemed to have worked well in this particular instance.
