Episode Description
This week, Dan Neumann is joined by three of his Agile colleagues, Erik Lindgren, Hal Hogue, and Adam Ulery. In this episode, they discuss a common question with respect to Teams: Should we choose long-running Teams or dynamically formed ones? These four Agile colleagues share today valuable examples on how to form Teams and practical ways to help Teams succeed at delivering high-value products.
Key Takeaways
Advantages of long-lived cross-functional Teams:
Teams get to know each other better and build relationships.
Teams have working agreements that make them more effective.
Stability!
Much less coordination is needed.
Cons of long-lived Teams:
What to do when someone’s professional goals push them in a different direction?
A Team could be kept together as long as possible but eventually, changes will happen.
We always need to look for ways for people to grow professionally.
What to consider when Teams are changing.
Keep the Team involved with the decisions that are being made.
When Teams change, the Team might be needing a skill that isn’t available.
Change is inevitable, be prepared for them.
What are the Team creation methods that work best?
A formal Team-forming workshop sets up Teams nicely for success, developing shared values.
Having a clear understanding of the type of work that the Team will be going after and based on that, finding the matched skills and competencies to that type of work.
Allow self-organization to happen.
Establish what is going to be created first in order to set up a Team; those Teams tend to grow organically.
Choosing a Team’s name can help people feel they belong and gives them the ability to become part of something bigger than themselves.
Why not both long-run and dynamically formed Teams?
Decide with your colleagues what can work better, encouraging self-organized Teams, since it is always positive to decide how the Team wants to be organized for the task in question.
The core of Agility is focusing on individuals and interactions.
When to form a new Team?
Mentioned in this Episode:
Listen to “Podcast Ep. 5: Exploring an Experimental Mindset with Adam Ulery”
Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World, by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, Tantum Collins, David Silverman, and Chris Fussell
Netflix Documentary, The Last Dance
Transcript [This transcript is auto-generated and may not be completely accurate in its depiction of the English language or rules of grammar.]
Intro [00:03]:
Welcome to agile coach’s corner by agile thought the podcast for practitioners and leaders seeking advice to refine the way they work band PA the path to better outcomes. Now here’s your host coach band, agile expert. Dan Newman.
Dan Neumann [00:17]:
Welcome to this episode of the agile coaches corner podcast. I’m your host, Dan Newman. It’s very common where I’ve got a guest two guests. Ah, but today we have three. So this will, this’ll be fun. And, uh, we’ll, we’ll work out the dynamics as we kind of navigate how we get three people to weigh in effectively, but join today by Eric Lindgren, Hal hog and Adam Yuri, who has named himself agile Adam, apparently for the purpose of this conversation. And they’re all colleagues here at agile thought. Eric, Adam, Hal. Thanks for joining.
Adam Ulery [00:52]:
Happy to be here. Thanks mad
Hal Hogue [00:54]:
Dan. Thanks Dan. I am also agile, even though it’s not in my name.
Dan Neumann [00:58]:
All right. Well, agile, how agile Eric will just, uh, the agile part can just be assumed as we go through the topic of the day is one that’s fairly common or I know I’ve encountered it. And I think, uh, everybody on this call has where we interact with organizations and some kind of question about, are we going to kind of dynamically form teams around the work or are we going to kind of establish long running teams and, and how do we navigate that conversation? So we’re going to be exploring that, that, uh, push and pull long running teams versus dynamically forming teams. And actually, maybe we’ll, we’ll start with agile Adam over here. And, uh, is, is this a scenario you’ve run into, or, or a question maybe you could add some color to it?
Adam Ulery [01:48]:
Uh, yeah, I’ve seen this quite a lot actually, uh, with clients a lot of times when we arrive on scene to help a client along their agile journey, they, they are working in a way where, um, dynamically spun teams are operating. Uh, it, whether it be a team kind of spun up for a project or, um, you know, or just as work flows through the organization, they kind of move people to the work, uh, rather than forming a, a long lived team and funneling work to the teams. So it’s very common. That’s what we see a lot. And, uh, there are a lot of advantages that we’ve seen and experienced and helped teams with to forming those, those long lived cross-functional teams.
Dan Neumann [02:41]:
That’s awesome. And, and how, um, would it pros of long running teams or a kind of a dynamic key forming team or, or vice versa?
Hal Hogue [02:53]:
So before talking about the pros and cons, I, I will come out and say, I, I’m definitely a proponent of longer term teams and working with them because as a scrum master and as a coach, I really enjoy watching teams get to know each other, build relationships, get those working agreements that make them more effective and just spending time improving iteratively. And it it’s just so inspiring to see that and to know that as a coach, I had, you know, whatever small part to play in that. So, I mean, for, as for pros, it’s building those relationships, understanding how to work together effectively. Um, trying a lot of experiments as a team and maybe failing at some, but also learning at them because every experiment is an experience and it’s an opportunity to learn or fail as a team and as a result grow closer together.
Hal Hogue [04:21]:
Um, some, so all of that being said, I, I’m not completely against dynamic dynamically forming teams. I think that it can work if, uh, we do it in, in a, in, in a, in a certain way, which we might talk about a little bit later. Uh, so cons to long forming teams. One thing is, you know, flexibility. It’s, it’s a little more rigid to have that, that long running team. Um, you TA you, you run the risk of potentially siloing yourself as a team and maybe losing touch or, or losing alignment with the rest of the organization. Uh, I, I don’t think that will is something that would definitely happen with a long running team, but it is something I have seen in the past and have learned to watch out for, uh, siloing yourself as, as that longer running team, because no matter how effective you are as a team, it doesn’t mean a whole lot if you are not, you know, aligned with the broader organization.
Erik Lindgren [05:37]:
Yeah. So, um, I, I always struggle with this, uh, question myself, cuz the scrum guide says, you know, it’s based on stable teams, right? We, so, so that’s sort of the ideal is having stable teams, but then as your product, uh, evolves or as your team needs change, uh, your team structure has to change and the people who were involved in, in developing the, the product that you’re working on has to change. And so, um, you can’t necessarily just be stuck with one team, uh, doing the same thing over and over again. Right. So, um, I, I think the team has to evolve, uh, with the needs of, of whatever it is you’re working on.
Adam Ulery [06:22]:
Yeah. I, I would say I agree with that the team has to evolve and to the extent you can keeping that high performing team who has learned how to work well together as a unit together to evolve together, uh, and, um, evolve with the organization to grow with the organization, if you will. Um, I, I think yields excellent results. And then the way to scale of course, is to spin up new teams and, uh, and not, not break apart a team to go after work, but continue funneling work to the team. Uh, and then scale by growing new teams as unique capacity
Dan Neumann [07:08]:
As you guys were talking about, I think you used the term high performing teams and metaphors or analogies come to mind. It makes me think of every four years, the us men’s Olympic team is formed by like the four fastest dudes that they can put together, but they don’t race together day in and day out. And I forget who we lost to. It might have been China where they have their, their dudes individually might not be the fastest ones individually, but they practice and they practice and they practice and guess which team didn’t drop the Baton in the handoffs, right? The us team, they take the specialists, they basically dynamically form a team and almost inevitably they drop the freaking Baton and lose the race. And it makes me think about that with the way we view agile teams as well.
Hal Hogue [07:50]:
Yeah. I always wonder about the, the effectiveness of, you know, Allstar teams in various sports, you know, baseball or basketball Allstar teams, because when you stop and think about it, it’s a bunch of individuals who don’t normally work together and ver they need to very quickly learn, uh, all of, all of these plays, uh, who, uh, who, who does what, uh, you don’t really have those built in relationships. So sometimes I wonder what would happen if a, if an Allstar team would play against a, a good team that has been around for a long time. And, and I’m, I’m always curious about that, of how great Allstar teams truly are.
Dan Neumann [08:43]:
There was the notion brought up, uh, Eric, I believe it was you that said, you know, as the needs of the product change, those would be signals for when there’s, when there’s a team composition change. And, and, um, that made me think of like a, a measured approach to team management, as opposed to, um, Hey, what’s in the upcoming sprint. Oh, we gotta move people around, Hey, what’s in the next sprint. Oh, we gotta move people around. So what you talked about seemed like a need, well, they’re both need to driven, uh, but, but very different styles of, of approaching the team.
Erik Lindgren [09:18]:
Yeah. And, and usually you try to keep the teams together as long as you possibly can, but sometimes those needs do out, you know, the needs of the program, for example, may outweigh the needs of the team of a particular team. And you may have to move somebody from one, one team to another. Um, but another thing that we’ve done, uh, on some of the places I’ve been is instead of moving people around you move the, uh, the backlog item from one team to another, if there’s specialty needed on, um, the other team, uh, that, that, and the backlog item happens to be in your, your backlog. And, but there’s somebody on the other team that has it. Another thing that we’ve done, and I I’ve seen this done with the success is, is lending out team members for short periods of time to help, uh, move a particular item forward, um, where they will join the team for a few sprints and then, and then go back to their regular team. And, uh, as long as the regular team can spare that person for a period of time, um, you know, that, that has worked where it doesn’t work is if they’re trying to do both jobs at the same time, and they’re doing contact switching all the time, and that just becomes an unsupportable.
Adam Ulery [10:35]:
So Eric is touching on something that, uh, I hear from a lot of clients, you’re, you’re starting to touch on it, um, around what to do as say, someone’s professional goals, take them in a different direction, or, you know, people are worried about getting trapped on this team forever. And we certainly wouldn’t want that. Right. And, um, and as Eric said, you know, we keep ’em together as long as we can, but at some point changes will happen no matter what we expect that that’s healthy. And, uh, we always look for ways for people to, to grow professionally. And if they go from the team to, to some other team, then the team would just simply replace them. And, you know, they’re replacing the, they’re replacing that opening with skills that would be of most value to them at the time. So it may not necessarily be someone who comes in with the exact same skills, unless that’s what they need, but it may be that over time, the team has noticed that they’re, they’re developing a gap in one area, you know, maybe a more modern technology. So when they replace that person, they’re gonna try to fill it with that. Otherwise what they might have done as trained up one or more of the members on the team, in that area. So the teams are going to evolve and expand over time.
Hal Hogue [12:01]:
And something, you said, Adam is when, when the team decides. And I think that’s an important thing to remember, um, when teams are changing. Yeah. The team might decide that they need a skill that isn’t available. And yeah. So let’s do something about that. Let’s but when we, when we do change up teams, let’s be intentional about it. And let’s involve the team with the decision. Uh, in the past, I’ve seen teams get changed just to kind of shake things up. And maybe there was a reason that it, but it, it was kind of on, on the flimsy side and it, there, there, there wasn’t, there wasn’t a lot of real intention behind why we’re changing this team up, but yeah, we all need to, we all need to realize the teams are going to change. Um, change is inevitable. Um, we should just be prepared for it, but be intentional when it, when it happens.
Adam Ulery [13:09]:
Yeah. How was talking? It reminded me of another advantage of long live cross-functional teams, uh, much less coordination costs by management, right. It kind of frees management up to work on leadership. <laugh> work, work more at that leader level in the higher level, uh, rather than spending their time coordinating, moving parts, moving people to work. Right. And coordinating all of that.
Dan Neumann [13:40]:
Yeah. What, you’re, what you’re bringing up. I think we’ve used the term kind of having that chess master, is it best to have the big brain moving the pieces around on the board? Um, for me, uh, I feel like that puts a lot of responsibility on the chess master to make the right moves and B nobody likes to feel like they’re that pond getting moved, you know, I have great. I’m gonna go at sacrifice to the queen again. Right. Nobody likes that. Um, I’m curious what team creation methods, uh, you folks have seen work well for people who are like, yeah, I’ve seen the bad stuff, but what, what would work
Adam Ulery [14:15]:
As far as forming a team, Dan, is that what you’re asking about? Mm-hmm <affirmative> I think a, a formal team forming workshop really sets up teams very nicely for success where the, the team comes together and a facilitator helps them work through a team agreement, help the team come up with their team values and their team’s, uh, mission. And, um, and, and they form that together. So what they’re doing is they’re developing these shared values, and they’re saying, as a team, what are the things we’re gonna value? You know, what, what will the team mission be? And, and what do we agree to? How, how will we behave to maximize our effectiveness? And mm-hmm <affirmative>, and by starting with that intentionally, you’re getting off on, on a good foot,
Dan Neumann [15:11]:
For sure. Actually, and I’m wondering if, if not, perhaps the, the context maybe is even yet a step before that. So how do we even get the humans together that we would run that team formation workshop with?
Adam Ulery [15:24]:
Well, I’ve been talking a lot, but I’m happy to jump in on that. Um, as tempting as it is to say it depends, uh, one, you know, one thing that you would want to do is have a clear understanding of the type of work that team will be, will be going after, right. Making that clear. And then based on that, um, trying to match up skills and competencies to that type of work, and then, uh, where possible looking for characteristics of the people that can meet those needs and how well they might interrelate with each other, then allowing a lot of self-organization to happen.
Erik Lindgren [16:12]:
I, what I’ve seen, uh, work pretty well too, is if you start with say a product owner and, uh, a scrum master or a product owner and a BA building out a backlog, uh, and then maybe you add, you add an architect in there. And so you have like this little core of the team building out the backlog and determining what it is you’re gonna create. And then as you, as the team, as this core of the team sees what it is you create, then they go out and they recruit people to join that team based on the skillset that they need. Um, either they recruit internally from people that are within the organization, sort of steal people from other other teams, you know, if, if that’s allowed or, or they, they go to HR and say, we need these people, and then they bring ’em in. And so, so that, that, that team just sort of grows organically in the way that’s most optimal based on what they’re working on.
Hal Hogue [17:08]:
Yeah. And I think Adam really hit on an important point when he mentioned self organization, because I, I actually, I, I experienced something a while back that showed me that the answer to this question that we’re talking about right now in this, in this episode is why not both, because I’ve seen a long running team be successful, and then I’ve seen dynamically forming teams be successful. And I saw it together because I was, I was working with a team that had been, we had been around for a long time, and we had gone through all of the, you know, why are, why are we a team? What are our working agreements? Let’s learn how to, how to deliver value and all of that stuff. And we got pretty good at it, but the time came when we stopped, well, we got, we got kind of big.
Hal Hogue [18:08]:
We were, we were well over 10 people. We were like 15 people at that point. And we didn’t really have clear goals anymore when it came to the product we were working on. And we were kind of distracted and unfocused going around, trying to figure out who’s gonna work on what, so what happened was we got together and we decided to embrace this dynamic team thing within our team. So we took our 15 people and we all figured out what our, you know, highest goals are for the next couple of weeks. So what goals do we wanna accomplish? And let’s come up with two or three, like two to three goals. And once we did that, uh, we had that focus and then we decided, how are we gonna organize ourselves around this work? Let’s, let’s form some teams within our team. And we did that.
Hal Hogue [19:06]:
And we ran with it for a couple of weeks. And it worked really well because the, the overall team had already been working together and they established that relationship. Um, so that’s one thing. Another thing is they had that common goal to rally behind and focus on. And I think most importantly, they had a say in how they were going to organize. They were enabled by management to self organize around the problem with a few constraints to keep it from getting too crazy. But the fact that they were directly involved in it, they had a clear goal and they already had that relationship. It really made the dynamic team thing work and actually reached out to them just recently, a couple people. And they said, they’re still, they’re still doing it and it’s still working. And that that’s awesome. That that’s something that’s so great to hear that they tried an experiment and it worked,
Adam Ulery [20:06]:
That’s such a neat experience. And I I’m hearing several things in that story that made me realize why it was successful. Um, one of them was the, the team was mature. They had been together for a, a long enough time where they kind of understood each other as a team and they, they knew each other and how they operated and things like that. So it allowed ’em to do that, uh, more advanced, uh, technique there. And I, I think that’s really neat. Uh, the other thing is they were forming around goals and, you know, it was clear to them why they were forming into the groups they were. Um, and then of course giving them the autonomy because they were mature and had, uh, clearly demonstrated competency. They were allowed to take some of those decisions into their own hands and, and make them about how they formed. And so, man, that’s a, what a fantastic recipe. What a, what a cool story.
Erik Lindgren [21:11]:
I, I find it humorous, uh, how’s definition of a big team is tall people. <laugh>
Adam Ulery [21:16]:
<laugh> yeah,
Dan Neumann [21:18]:
That’s a question. The seven plus or minus two, right. It’s outside of, you know,
Hal Hogue [21:22]:
Double digits, man. That’s, that’s getting up there,
Speaker 1 [21:26]:
Have a topic you want us to tackle, send an email to podcast@agilethought.com or tweet it with a hashtag agile thought podcast.
Dan Neumann [21:38]:
I’ve had a micro scaling, uh, situation similarish, I think to what you’re describing, how, although the, the team members didn’t move too much between the two teams, but we would do kind of a synchronized planning and, and occasionally shuffle backlog items back and forth between the team so that we avoided some of the team members changing. But yeah, we’d certainly have a person sometimes float and maybe be an advisor on the other team, not picking up items, but certainly being available. So that was how we kind of navigated getting the, the pair of rigid teams and it, and avoiding kind of all the, the downside of having the wrong skillset.
Hal Hogue [22:18]:
Yes. And what I’m hearing through all of this is focusing on individuals and interactions, you know, the core, the core of agility, the core of what we do. It’s, it’s, um, taking the situation into context, thinking about the people, how they work together and trying things based on that and seeing if they work like that. That’s the, that’s the secret sauce? I think
Erik Lindgren [22:47]:
I was bringing it back to agile.
Hal Hogue [22:49]:
<laugh> I try, man. I try.
Adam Ulery [22:51]:
Awesome.
Erik Lindgren [22:54]:
So one thing, uh, that, that, uh, you know, does help, I think in team formation, uh, or some of these team building things that you can do in the beginning where people are getting to know each other and so forth and, and silly as it sounds, you know, something as simple as choosing a team name sometimes gives people, uh, something to rally around and an identity of the team, you know, and, and, and really just, uh, solidifies those relationships and, and, oh yeah, we, we are one kind of thing. Does anybody have any like good team name creation stories that they can think of? Go ahead. Well,
Adam Ulery [3:34]:
I’ll, I’ll comment on that. Uh, Eric, that I, I think you’re, you’re hitting on something that is, is more powerful than it appears on the surface. Right? A lot of times as coaches, as you know, when we go in and we’ll encourage, uh, newly formed teams to take a name and, uh, there’s more going on there than just coming up with a fun name and way to reference themselves, right. As you mentioned, it gives them an identity. It does give them kind of this, uh, ability to be part of something bigger than themselves. And, and they can associate themselves with that. So, uh, build some of that allegiance and, um, excitement as well. I think so. So that’s pretty cool. Um, I’ve seen some interesting team names. We sh we could share some of those,
Dan Neumann [24:24]:
The thing you’re talking about is teams coming up with their names. And I have seen that be more powerful than some instances where I’ve seen names be given, we are going to make you a team and you’re going to be the X, Y, or Z team, or you all need to go name yourself after animals. Even that bit of a constraint can be like, we don’t wanna be freaking animals. We wanna be something else. You know, we wanna, I dunno, minerals, I don’t know. So just that enabling the teams to choose their, their name is first active self-management
Hal Hogue [24:58]:
Oh, yeah. That’s what I was going to say, Dan, that’s, it, it, it’s an opportunity for them to, to flex those muscles and figure out basically how to work together, because this is a decision that they have to make. So they’re going to go through that whole cycle of throwing all these ideas out there and then having this, this soup of stuff and trying to, trying to figure out what they wanna go with and eventually zeroing in on a decision. And it’s awesome watching new teams go through that. And, and the, the methods they have for figuring out what name to settle on, like, oh, let’s make a poll or let’s, let’s do this or that. And they really get into it. And it, and it’s great. It’s a great way to establish that identity and figure out how to work together.
Dan Neumann [25:46]:
That’s awesome. So let’s, um, let’s explore instances where it does make sense to maybe maybe form a new team. I think we’ve, we’ve heard the term tiger team or skunk works team, you know, or, or, you know, various types of things where you, the organization is gonna get tremendous benefit from pulling together new teams. So what, what types of circumstances do you guys see be good catalysts for, you know, we, we, aren’t gonna take a current team and feed it, new backlog items. We’re going to incur the expense and the disruption of spinning up a new team.
Adam Ulery [26:17]:
Yeah. I think, um, if you have some special project or special initiative or, or goal that, that you want to achieve, uh, maybe something that’s, uh, a bit temporary, uh, that may require deep specialties in an area, uh, certain, certain skills that may, may not be common, things like that. Tho those could be reasons to form one of those tiger teams, which is really just sort of formed to go after that one specific objective. And then they kind of go back to doing what they’re doing, kind of another area I think of as innovation, I could see it happen where, uh, some teams come together to innovate on something. And again, I think it really needs to be bound in, in some sort of an objective we’re, we’re innovating to achieve some result that we all agree to. Um, and you know, we get this team together to do that, and then they can go back to what they were doing.
Erik Lindgren [27:23]:
Well, also, when the needs of the organization go, uh, beyond what current teams, uh, are capable of achieving, if all the teams are fully engaged and there’s a new initiative, and, you know, you either gotta grow one or create a new one, you know, it, it, it’s gonna depend you, you gotta, you gotta bring in more people. And so you gotta go through that whole process.
Adam Ulery [27:47]:
Yeah, yeah. Increasing capacity.
Hal Hogue [27:49]:
Yeah. Maybe, maybe you have a team that’s being pulled in three to three very different directions and their goals just are all over the place. And the work is all over the place. It probably makes sense to think about them as a single team. Maybe we need to, and we need to create a new team and focus them on one of those products or goals or focuses or whatever. It’s just get the team, the focus that they, that they need and that they honestly deserve. Because when we, we, we want teams to have an environment where they can succeed. We can’t force a team to succeed, but we can help provide that environment where they have the best opportunity just to succeed at delivering high value products.
Dan Neumann [28:48]:
We’ve come to the point of the podcast where I wanna appreciate each of you for joining Hal, Adam and Eric. And now I want to ask you for, uh, a closing thought on the subject of, uh, long running teams versus dynamically forming teams.
Hal Hogue [29:03]:
Yeah. Um, you know what, the four of us are a dynamically forming team when it comes to this podcast. And I, I mean, I can’t speak for everybody else. I think it, I think it went pretty well. Um, but what if we, what if we think about the future? What, what if we do this, you know, 10 more times, and we have opportunities to talk about how it went and how much better could we be? That’s kind of the long running part of it. So I’m, I, it just makes me think of that. Cuz there’s four of us here. Like that’s a team, um, we’re dynamically forming, but long running, we could reach an even, you know, higher potential
Erik Lindgren [29:43]:
Want to choose a team name.
Adam Ulery [29:45]:
<laugh>
Dan Neumann [29:47]:
I was gonna, I was gonna ask for a manager to assign one to us.
Hal Hogue [29:50]:
Yeah. I, I can’t be trusted to name a team.
Adam Ulery [29:53]:
Yeah. That’s, that’s great. How it makes me want to just continue to riff on that idea, but <laugh>, I won’t, I think it’s great. Um, I think, uh, a parting thought would be if you aren’t yet using long lived cross-functional teams in your organization, and you’re listening to this, uh, look for, uh, ways that you might experiment with that idea. And, uh, you know, it, it might start with just some conversations in your organization, uh, to try to discover, um, what opportunities there might be to experiment with the idea, uh, you know, and those conversations could potentially lead to something. And, um, and I, you know, I think you would get a lot of value out of trying that out.
Dan Neumann [30:43]:
And I believe there is a podcast with a certain Adam Mueller that people can find and will put into the show notes about using experiments within teams. So we’ll be sure to link to that hard to believe you brought up the idea of experimenting Adam
Adam Ulery [30:57]:
<laugh>
Dan Neumann [30:59]:
What about you, Eric?
Erik Lindgren [31:00]:
Well, I guess the thing to keep in mind is, is the whole thing about self-organization right? Let, let the teams help you decide what, who, who are the right people for the team so that you have the, the most engaged team possible, uh, rather than making it a top down approach. So I I’ll just go with self-organization.
Dan Neumann [31:23]:
I love it. Self-organization for the win, for sure. I wanna appreciate that you took time to explore this topic with me and I will offer the chance if you have something on your continuous learning journey you wanna share with our listeners, uh, go ahead and do that.
Erik Lindgren [31:40]:
Well, uh, related to the topic of teams, I would, uh, I would throw out, um, the book, uh, team of teams. Can anybody remember the, the author’s name? It was general somebody McCrystal, I think
Dan Neumann [31:55]:
MC
Adam Ulery [31:56]:
Crystals, Stanley McCrystal,
Dan Neumann [31:57]:
Stanley McCrystal. Yes.
Erik Lindgren [31:59]:
Thank you. Um, yeah, it, it’s a, it’s a great book about team formation and, and just really being agile in the military, uh, in, and in order to achieve the goals that they, they had, uh, where they had to share, uh, information very rapidly across an, a huge organization. They would have calls with 2000 people on them daily. Uh, so, uh, really interesting book, uh, on, on team, uh, formation and, and how to manage them.
Hal Hogue [32:34]:
Yeah, I’ll go with something that I, I watched a, a little while back, but I think it really relates to what we just talked about. And it’s a documentary on Netflix called the last dance. And it’s basically the story of the, uh, Chicago bulls team in the 1990s. You know, the one that won tons of championships and spoiler alert if you’re not aware, but they had, they had this superstar on their team, Michael Jordan, and you hear a lot about him, but if you watch this documentary, it really goes into the, the, the deeper aspects of the team and how this, that, that never would’ve worked. If it would’ve just been Jordan doing his thing, it, it, it’s a great example of a, a long running team that has built a really good relationship and, and is just ma kind of mastered what they do. So I, I highly recommend watching that documentary E even if you’re not really into, uh, American basketball,
Dan Neumann [33:39]:
That’s perfect. I may have to, may have to look up that one as well, and definitely resonate with Eric as well on, on team of teams being a pretty solid read. So with that, I want to appreciate the listeners of the podcast for continuing to listen and making it worthwhile for us to get together and do this. And Eric, Adam, Hal, thank you for taking some time here and, uh, jumping in on the episode of long running versus dynamically forming teams.
Hal Hogue [34:03]:
Thank you, Dan. Thanks
Dan Neumann [34:04]:
Dan. Until next time,
Outro [34:07]:
This has been the agile coach’s corner podcast brought to you by agile thought. The views, opinions and information expressed in this podcast are solely those of the hosts and the guests, and do not necessarily represent those of agile thought. Get the show notes and other helpful tips for this episode and other episodes@agilethought.com slash podcast.
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“If the product changes, the Team has to change too. We can’t get stuck with one Team and do the same thing over and over again; the Team also has to evolve.” — Erik Lindgren
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