What Makes Agile Teams Succeed

A small group of agile coaches, including RonJeffries and ChetHendrickson came together on Saturday to consider the question "What makes agile teams succeed (or Fail)?" Using the Group Wisdom Without Groupthink process, we generated, discussed, and ranked about a dozen ideas.

Compared to previous groups that I have facilitated this type of session for, there was more discussion around each of the suggestions. The names we chose to represent the ideas, which are listed below, each stand for a richer idea that the group developed.

Here are the top-ranked ideas that the group generated:

Tier One
Have motivated people

Tier Two
Manage by (carefully chosen) objectives and metrics

Tier Three
Communication
Disciplined us of best practices

Tier Four
Don't time slice your people

Tier Five
Don't automate process until they are well understood
Don't have multiple product owners with overlapping authority
Great story cards


You may also be interested in seeing the results from groups that have considered (essentially) the same question:
BayAPLN
Chicago Scrum Gathering
P-Camp 2008
Code Camp 2007
Agile Open California 2007


Cheers,

Chris