I've had the opportunity to be a part of some really great teams.
Most of my former teammates are still my friends. In almost every case,
the managers have been members of the teams instead of setting
themselves apart from us.
They have recognized and played upon the
strengths and skills of each member of the team, building us up and
accomplishing projects efficiently. Going to work was fun. The work
itself may not have been, but the camaraderie of the team made the
effort worthwhile and exciting.
Recently, I've had the unique
opportunity to see this kind of leadership in a new light. I was
priveleged to attend Clinton Keith's IGDA Agile Game Development
Webinar. At the same time, my place of work was going through a
dramatic upheaval. We moved the center I worked at and, along with
that, a dramatic and militant management style was introduced.
Apparently, without rules, we have chaos and everything must be repeated three times en masse in order to be understood. Teamwork is given lip service, as in "The only way we work is as a team", but management is set apart from the rest of the team. Smoking and creative self-expression are off-limits, but rote learning of corporate mission and quality statements are encouraged.
In required daily
huddles, we are told that we will be working under certain impediments
and requirements. Instead of interaction, a "shut up and deal"
attitude is expected. This corporate militant style favors a divide
and conquer mentality over creative and collaborative problem-solving.
Seeing these 2 styles side-by-side has given me a unique perspective on
the true heart of teamwork and what makes that heart beat.
At
the heart of the scrum team is the interaction of the team. A daily
meeting around the task board is interactive, vibrant, collaborative,
visual, and tactile. It is a visual way of showing the goal the team
is striving toward and the progress they are making. They, each and
every member of the team, are peers.
They own the goal. It's a team effort. They gather around the board to align themselves with each other, to honor each others' contribution to the effort, and to course-correct when they are missing the mark. They argue, discuss, share, learn, continually improve, celebrate, boost each other up, and create solutions.
There is another thing that scrum does for the
team: it creates transparency. Since scrum depends on collaboration
and continual forward progress, problems are addressed by the team as
they crop up instead of dealing with them later or covering the problem
under a layer of "spin".
A structured, militant environment will never create a team. A team
works together toward a shared goal. A group works together toward a
goal given to them. Scrum is messy, and noisy. It lives, it breathes,
it stretches, it morphs and it expands. Interaction is the heart of
the team. The heart of scrum, is the team.