Chemistry in a SCRUM team - Forming Covalent bonds
You might get confounded as how Chemistry is relevant in ‘Agile’ world. One can see it is very preposterous at a glance. Nevertheless notion of chemical bonds in this blog will be a metaphor to better explain certain relationships that would exist in team relationships and their effects.
Ionic Bonds
Before attending to team management, lets see what this ionic bond is. In school Chemistry, we would have learnt, Ionic bonds will form bonds among atoms and compose molecules by exchanging electrons on each other. Essentially each atom will be in its most stable form by giving/welcoming electrons on each other. That’s enough!
Now let’s switch to a composition of an agile team. Generally we have PO (Product Manager), Scrum master, and Engineering pod in a scrum team. Of course engineering pod can also get composed with different silos like, Dev, QA, UI, App Eng and so on. So what? What is the correlation with ionic bonds?
Yes, In team chemistry, Ionic bonds mimic relationships exist among strong and weak entities. Similar to some atoms losing electrons and some are getting more, in teams, some functions having more dominant power,privilege in decision making and some get less recognition, less ability to influence. In spite of that, they build kind of parent-child relationships those will not be that healthy for the eco system is long run. Similar to substances (e.g.NaCl) formed by ionic bonds which acts solid but aqueous. This does same in the team situations, where teams keep their bonds as long as they are getting the individual advantage over others. When it doesn't, unrest occurs. So Avoid ionic bonds in the team. I have observed in some teams, Dev is playing a dominant role where QA and others are being very supplementary commodities. In some cases, PO overrules engineering decisions and vice versa. This kind of situation can create lot of frustrations, lead to attrition of key resources and lay down the foundation for politics. So then what we should foster?
Answer: Covalent bonds…
Covalent Bonds
How covalent bonds work? Going back to school chemistry class, covalent bonds are forming molecules by “sharing” electrons instead of exchanging them as in ionic bonds. The beauty of covalent bond is, each atom is trying to exert their forces on each other but still stay in unity. How? Because shared electrons will keep them stable irrespective of their own interests. Lets see how this connects to scrum team?
Scrum team members should have covalent bonds built among each other. Then what will be their shared electrons? Of course, “Team goals, values and vision” will be the shared components keep them tied together. Also it is very imperative that scrum members carry their own uniqueness and voice over other. E.g. QA should have their own space like dev do, engineering teams should have healthy battles with POs but still keeping them together with shared interest like goals, values, and vision.
When forming scrum teams, it is very crucial to establish common goals, values and vision as a shared component so that covalent bonds will get formed. During the team formation process, forming, storming, norming, performing (Tuckman 1970), goals, values, vision and any other shared ingredients should be defined in the ‘Forming’ stage. Storming stage will leverage the differential element of teams as their unique skills and interests leading to a “healthy tension” . Norming results with the compounded shared goals, values and vision that laid in forming. Then performing happens as a sum of all above!
So the question, are you having covalent or ionic bonds in your teams? Ask from your team. :)
