Last updated on May 4th, 2022 at 06:03 am

Are there teams you have worked in that follow a flavor of an Agile implementation be it Scrum or TTD or Kanban to the letter? And if so do you do it because you feel the need to implement a method and all its guidelines or do you do it because it is what the team needs?

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With the new uptake in Agile in the last couple of years, almost every organization implementing Agile software or otherwise has started implementing Agile. They even have in-house Agile Coaches to guide them through the process. The most common agile implementations today have been Scrum, Kanban, Pair programming.

Though there are purists who swear that there is only a prescribed SCRUM methodology or framework that needs to be implemented for one to do RIGHT way. And only doing it the right way would make a team successful. I have seen many successful teams use slight variations and achieve the desired goal of becoming a stable high performing team.

One good example would be that Scrum prescribes that every team member should be cross-functional, in most organizations we have exclusive Development and test teams. It is almost impossible for these team members to be able to swap tasks as they have specialized skills. I am sure you can think of several similar examples. To be a truly agile team I have seen organizations do away with test teams completely so that Developers can swap tasks and test them.

This is a solution, however, I think your overall cost would go up and it also questions if a developer would be a good tester and think about all the possible edge cases. There are several companies trying out this strategy. It would be interesting to see how successful they are over a couple of years.

But in general, it is all about identifying tools and techniques that would help the team work faster rather than burdening the team with overarching frameworks, and making the teams work the way tools work is impractical.

Also when you are introducing a team to Scrum it is always better to start with a physical post-it board. This really helps the team and the ScrumMaster to identify how the teamwork and what the organization expects of the team.

The tools can then be modeled to the needs of the team. It’s important to note when that when the team is undergoing some fundamental changes it is important to guide them through change with set goals without re-engineering the team to the new process as well as to adapt and figure out the way the new tools work.

All that matters at the end of the day is that you embody the core values of the agile manifesto and you increase the productivity of your team.

I would like to hear from you, How many of you have true cross-functional agile teams?

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