The Marvel Of Agile #2: Our Avengers As A Team

The Marvel Of Agile is a series of discussions using heroes and antagonist from media and talking about different concepts and topics that Agile touches on.

In the first The Marvel Of Agile, we explored some roles on a typical software development team using Scrum to imagine who might best fit the roles. The idea there was to explore the personality types we each thought were important to success in that role. In this episode, we explore a little bit about how those people in those roles might become a team.


Some HBR articles I read along my way to this episode

The Discipline Of Teams
Managing Outcomes
Embracing Complexity

Transcript

Shane,

welcome to agile in the wild. My name is Shane,

and I will be your guide as we explore any and everything weird, wondrous and wild about agile.

So let's go.

Okay, he almost could have been highly anticipated Episode Two in the marvel of Agile. I

had a bit of a delay getting this one out, but it is finally here,

thanks to Reese and Marcus for the push. You know, life be life, and sometimes

I look around at us,

you know what I see?

Losers.

I mean, like folks who have lost stuff, and we have man, we have all of us,

our homes,

our families,

normal lives.

And usually, life takes more than it gives, but not today.

Today it's given us something. It has given us a chance to do what

to give a shit.

As you may recall, in the first part, we started the conversation by picking a team, or trying to pick a team from the people in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

The idea was to pick what characters we thought would be best fit each of the roles on a cross functional team,

thinking you might be able to tell something about what we think about those roles, and

more importantly, what we think about when we think of the dynamics of a team,

what things we are important to us and not so important to us, because we All assume that the bonded self organizing an autonomous team, the one that coaches themselves and can collaborate their way through the darkest ambiguity of transforming people, products and organization is what every company wants,

Maybe.

But groups don't just become teams because they report to the same people,

groups of aligned individuals. Can do some really cool things, cooperating and coordinating among themselves, and having coordination and cooperation is awesome.

Short term. It can produce very valuable outputs, it can be very helpful. Can be downright inspiring.

So if things can get done with these high functioning groups of people,

why do we even need teams? There was an idea

Stark knows this,

called the Avengers Initiative.

The idea was to bring together a group of remarkable people,

see if they could become something more,

see if they could work together when we needed them to to fight the battles that we never could

more on that later.

So here we are having picked our people and now try to talk a little bit about how our group may do trying to become a team.

As a reminder, the teams were constructed with a product person, manager, Owner, whatever you want to call them, an engineering lead, assuming there's actually going to be more than one engineer, and somebody needs to kind of tie it all together,

a QA or QE person, quality analyst, for those who may not be familiar with the terms, a lot of times, the tester, but you know, I like to think of them As much more than that. And a delivery person,

someone responsible to drive the vision, someone who is the main architect of that vision, someone who drives quality throughout and then someone to make sure barriers are broken down and the trains run on time

and Pat well.

He picked Tony Stark,

Bruce Banner, Maria Hill,

and then Star Lord as His delivery person.

Mark has had Thanos for his product, spider man for his engineer vision for his quality. And fury for his delivery person

and mine. Well, I had Sherry as my lead engineer, Tony as my product fury as my quality analyst,

and Captain America as my delivery person.

This is the marvel of agile part two.

Let's get it all right. So let's, let's take a look at Marcus's team and talk a little bit about the interactions really. I have him right now. So he has Nick Fury as the delivery guy. Yes, Thanos has a product

that is, that's going to be some conversations there,

and he has vision as the QA and Peter Parker as the development lead.

And I, my first thing I think about this is that from a delivery and product guy, they are going to dominate the QA and development lead.

Nah like Thanos and Nick theory are so much senior than vision and Peter Parker, like cinematic universe. Think about Thanos and the what if episode when of the team?

If you haven't, so you're doing a what if version of

so before we get into that, I try to query AI to see what is the difference between a group and a team, because we're going to talk a lot about a group and how it becomes a team. Much throughout this episode,

and many times we call group a team like we just morph those two words to mean the same without really understanding the distinction between them, individuals in a group work independently on separate tasks that contribute to a larger goal.

Individuals in a team, while they work together towards a common goal, and oftentimes their task rely on each other. In other words, a group is a collection of individuals who coordinate their efforts, while a team is a group who shares a common goal,

coordinate. Well, there is a long list of things to do, and we help each other achieve the things on that list something beyond just cooperation, where to cooperate with someone is not necessarily meaning that you're actually coordinating your activities with them.

You may help them, they may help you, but there's really no alignment. Even further than beyond the help,

coordination is a connective process that allows individuals to support each other without shared ownership,

an effective group that will coordinate at a high level to help each other get their tasks done, even when their tasks don't really directly impact each other,

can be a useful tool.

They may be part of a larger company's program, but at the level where the individuals are, there isn't a strong connectivity between what they need to accomplish. Lots of work gets done this way.

That's good. What if

I don't want to change mine? I want the watcher for everything.

Watching didn't work well with others. That's true. Independent

Well, as I say, Thanos doesn't work well with

other than Thanos got the job done like he had Division.

He had the team. He threatened the team. He pulled the thing together by threats.

You sure you don't want to kill

he killed gamora's entire world, and then took her and then killed Gamora, and

then killed Gamora, right? It's

quite a half.

I like it though. You sure you don't want to swap your QE vision out for Ultron.

Since you like the bad guys, I mean, when I think about the team, I do think about the as I've always been the conflict between the delivery manager and a product manager and Nick Fury and Thanos are two very strong personnel, like very.

Strong personalities. So I think there's a lot of good, maybe not some good conflict in there, but there's a lot of opportunity to make sure that you're actually on the right path

between Nick and Thanos. They're gonna like that the alignment, if you get alignment between Nick theory and Thanos, I'm pretty sure that that path is a pretty good

path. It may not be good for the rest of us, but

they're going to be sure about how they're going about this. Get the joke, healthy conflict. Yeah, I don't know if it's going to be healthy all the time.

Both of them, in some ways, like to hold things close to their chest. They play, they play games a lot that people aren't seeing. And it'll be interesting whether or not that they come to any alignment

in terms of perspective, because both of them are, in some ways, both of them are very altruistic the means in which they use to get there.

May not be as empathetic. I mean, you know, Dennis does was thinking of the greater good. He was thinking of the greater good. He absolutely was. And Nick Fury is thinking of the greater good, right? They're both thinking of the greater good. It's just how they go about it. This is where cooperation and coordination really struggle with conflict.

We all believe in having healthy conflict, I think. But when there isn't a reason to keep the conflict healthy, like some North Star, some shared principle, conflict can turn unhealthy very quickly, and in fact, can end up in a false harmony where people become avoidant because, well, my work isn't really dependent on your work, and we don't share a goal or objective other than at levels way above us. So we can kind of go around our own way, unless forced to coordinate.

I mean, even when you share goals, people can be conflict avoidant and not share critical feedback because of how it may sound or be perceived, meaning we lack our own ability to navigate conflict and we can mistrust others ability as well.

A health care research study maximizing team performance, the critical role of the nurse leader, examined the role of nursing leaders in facilitating the development of high performing change teams using the Tuchman model of group development as a guiding framework.

Tuckman, for those who don't know, is the forming, the forming, storming, norming and performing stages developed by Bruce Tuckman in the 60s.

He suggested that these inevitable phases were needed for team development and growth,

and in that first phase forming,

the study noted two things that accelerated the development of high performing change teams. One was purposefully picking the team,

purposefully considering group dynamics and doing a little social engineering.

And the second was also ensuring the team forms a shared mental model.

A shared mental model is a joint understanding of things and can be supported by things like Team charters, ways of working, shared principles. These mental models are different than cultural norms and have more of a if then component to them. So when conflict arises, this map helps to anchor people around what is important and how we go about getting that thing done.

I like the term anchoring like a nexus point where all things stop and come back together, a a pull to a single point where we can all see a fact as it is, like we are here on a mall map. For those that remember actually walking in malls,

however,

since we are talking movies

and The Avengers, you can see how as a group of individuals who, by all means, are looking to keep people safe, fail collectively because their conflict wasn't healthy, your work with the Tesseract is what drew.

Loki to it and his allies. It is a signal to all the realms that the earth is ready for a higher form of war, a higher form. You forced our hand. We had to come up with nuclear deterrent, because that always calms everything right now, remind me again how you made your fortune Stark. I'm sure if he still made weapons Stark would be neck deep. Wait, wait, hold on. How is this now about me? I'm sorry, isn't everything. I thought humans were more evolved than this. Excuse me. Did we come to your planet and blow stuff? I just think in this team that Nick Fury is going to need to protect the team a lot, yeah,

from the

he's going to have to protect the team a lot, because I Peter's not standing up to nobody.

And vision, yes, morally, he likes to tell people what they're doing, but Thanos killed him, so

I like, I didn't get to hear that, but I think I do think, oh, that vision is a good QA, I wish I would have

thought of that. Or QE, yeah, because he knows everything, so we can test everything. Like, I can see vision going like, Hey, this is not right. And then they don't just plucking the gym out of his head. It's over

like, yeah, we're not gonna do this happen before in reality. I mean, it happens. Sometimes it's like, yeah, we know, we understand, but we're going to do it anyway, because the value that's never a good income outcome with your QA is saying, Don't do

it. Sometimes you you go with the greater good you know,

trying to get, that's how you get a snap, yeah.

If you're sitting there at every, every daily stand up, going, please, don't snap. Please, I'm gonna use the don't let perfect get in the way of good like we're trying to get there.

You don't always have to

do every thing that's in the in the backlog. Okay, in Bruce Lee, the ultimate address, we talked about the problem with perfection and how it got in the way of progress.

Marcus is speaking to a scenario we have all had, but I have to tell you, in this fragile, agile world where there are still way too many plans that put QA last in line, and they get crunched against the timeline because inevitably, the preceding iterative waterfalls were late.

It pains me to hear the compromises they have to make routinely

like it probably gives them no chill for the half the things headed to productions on a wing and a prayer

I will say in groups, this is a common behavior. QA was often seen as something to be compromised.

I think it is best that instead of trying to force someone to acquiesce or rolling over their honest concerns, a team will address their needs and align on a plan that helps them get closer to the outcome we all want, right? That

was close.

Oh, you want to look forward in time. This only happens when most people feel comfortable sharing their thoughts and worries. Since they are aware that their perspectives are welcome and respected,

there is a sense of belonging.

More on that later. Now here's Marcus on his team.

All right, let me explain my team a little here. I'll start with Peter, and I'll end with Thanos. And I'm sure, like, there's a lot of attention on my pick for Thanos here, but Peter, Peter Parker is a tech lead, very gifted, technically, very innovative. He can figure things out on the fly. He's the guy that that's going to work well with others and come up with a great solution. He has a guy in the chair. He's used to working with people. That's my guy for Tech Lead vision for QE. So vision may only be like, two years old, but he has all the knowledge in the world, you know, in he's the guy that's that's going to come up with the what Fs, you know you want, you want someone on your QE team that is strong technically and understands what's being asked, but you want them to think beyond what's being presented to them, right? They need to think about,

you know, the possibility, other possibilities, or this thing that's not happy path that could happen, because I've seen it happen before.

Then I'll go to to Nick Fury as my delivery manager. Who better than Nick Fury to come up with innovative ways to get things done? You know, he's always got a backup to his backup, to his backup, right? So

fury? Fury is the guy that.

So

everyone's going to depend on the team is going to depend on him to find a way to get the thing done.

And then Thanos,

you want your product owner to understand what the stakeholders are asking. You want the product owner to work on behalf of your stakeholders, and think about, you know, the environment and what's going on. And I think Thanos proved that he is all about the greater good and working for his his stakeholders. You know, some may say he was right. You know, he he had the best interest of

all living beings in mind when he thought, you know, we need to get rid of half of them so, so I like to pick for Thanos, and I like the diversity that I have on this team. We have young, we have old, we have robots.

Okay, let's look at, let's look at Pat's team. All right, let's, let's now make fun of Pat. All right, I know Mark is waiting for this. This is gonna be. This is our team here. All right, we have

developers, Tony Stark.

Qe is Maria Hill.

The product person is David Banner. And then the delivery of Star Lord, yeah,

perfect. Well, you think Marcus,

you know, he likes the basic humans. That's what he you know, Semi. You got a semi or, yeah, you say I'm biased to humans.

Well, wait, banners, sort of human, I guess. I guess he is a human.

No, I'm thinking, I'm thinking, it's weak. Your team is weak. Man like

I think you get a sandals in there and he's ruining everything for you. Adam grind, in his latest book, mentioned that there was a study that suggested that women on a team increase the collaboration of the team. I

wonder what he would say about aliens or gods or other sentient beings like

is Groot a being or a race,

could adding rocket to your team help the perspective of modified animals everywhere.

You know, it does seem like diversity equity, inclusion is starting to get a bad rap. And I think, like so many ideas, it is more about the execution than the idea itself.

I mean, for people who are actually against having diversified points of views and perspectives, or leaning towards equitable outcomes or excluding as a principle,

then you have to question like, Who hurt you?

We can argue about how we get to those places, but if we are arguing about those places as an ideal destination,

then we have a long way to go, because while homogeneity is good for some things, darism evolution, they show that It is rarely a sustainable path. Right?

The race isn't to the Swift, but to those who can adapt.

I only ask that you take this matter seriously.

The only matter I do not take seriously, boy, is you

Yeah, when I look at the team, I think about like, again, where are the most conflicts going to happen?

And it almost feels like the most rational, balanced person on your team is your QE is Maria Hill,

which when we think about a QE, I don't know that that probably is, that probably sounds about right, that that's supposed to be the most rational person on the team, because your your development lead, is awesomely visionary, but he's a egomaniac

Banner as a person tends to be

and where I where I think about banner from a product standpoint, Banner as a person tends to be conciliatory, like he kind of gives ground to people, like stronger personalities tend To dominate him

until

he hawks out and then,

and then he destroys the entire team.

That's the dichotomy, man,

every day, stop just for once in your life, don't smash big monster.

Let's go.

I think about, think about this though too. See, like, you know, the lead and the product manager has got to have, that's got to be a good, tight working relationship there, right? Because, and having a you know, product manager that has an understanding of the subject matter, you know, well enough to know when they're developing the vision and creating the tickets that,

in building out the epics and whatnot, and the whole vision that that I understand the technical limit I get what you're saying when you're telling me this is going to take a lot longer, right? We might have to pivot here, or we might have to do this later. Those types of things Tony and and and David Banner worked together the best at all of the measures. I mean, they would then collaborate. They worked really well, other than Captain and Natasha, okay, or Hawkeye too, but whatever

Pat mentioned the word collaboration, and I think it's a good time to talk about this

earlier, we defined coordination as a connective process that allows individuals to support each other without a shared goal.

Cooperation can be useful when a team needs to work efficiently and quickly and when individual contributions are essential,

we sort of viewed Marcus's team through this lens.

Pat brought in collaboration, which is a collective process where team members share responsibilities, ideas and materials to work together on a shared goal.

Collaboration can be essential for solving

complex problems, developing innovative solutions and fostering a sense of ownership and commitment,

because all the heroes from the Avengers shared a common goal, but rarely coordinated their efforts with each other.

Lots of times, when they came into contact, they bickered or traded barbs or whatever.

It really wasn't until someone like Fury who had the foresight to think we need something bigger than a group of people who are not great at coordinating their efforts

became a thing, and that sharing a common goal really sharing it. And the idea was to go from people who didn't even coordinate to people who are now collaborating.

And so Pat started with a pair that collaborated.

You know what I think about when I think about Tony and David working together, is they developed Ultron, and that wasn't the play

that like, like David the whole time, was like, I don't think we should be doing it. That was just David going along with Tony's. Tony

was like, no, let's just

he let him have the vision, though. He let him have that vision. So he let him, you know, David, that wasn't David's vision. The Ultron was not division.

Well, no, but yeah, you gotta, you gotta try and fail.

They did fail,

except when it impacts the entire you know, yeah, Sokovia, thanks you for that, right?

Don't create a genocidal AI Deming put it best with the outcomes over output.

Feels like as the wilderness of agile becomes a cul de sacs. We lost that.

Outcomes are the differences made by the outputs, and measuring outputs will make an incomplete picture,

and Ultron was certainly an output, and Pat is right,

you have to try and you have to fail. But

is Ultron failing forward? Or you want me to help you put Jarvis into this thing? No, of course not. I want to help you put Jarvis in this thing. We're

out of my field here. I do think that Star Lord is very interesting as a delivery person. I'm still trying to, like mull on that one. Well, look at the the the way he was able to, not trying to force his will on, but able to hold that team together. You know, that is the Guardian of the Galaxy, right? So you talk about personalities, I mean, you know, I'll say this, your team is going to have a lot of fun. Josh wanted to kill Gamora. He's like, Oh, he goes, hold on. It's like, Wait a second. I think this is a really good balance you can do. So he comes, don't you want to your your retros are going to be very fun. Your retros are going to be fun. Like, I don't know. It just feels like there's going to be, like, alcohol.

Hey.

Yeah, there's going to be lots of reflection. I You might even do some meditation

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