In this article, I draw on the book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni to compare his insights with the values promoted in the Scrum Guide and to find out which properties of Agile teams support product development. 

One of the most popular concepts describing difficulties faced by teams is outlined in The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick  Lencioni. Lencioni presents five interrelated areas which determine the effectiveness of a group.

According to the author, the critical area which constitutes the foundation of a healthy team is trust. It can be expressed in the team members’ openness to each other. In particular, it manifests itself in their readiness to expose their weaknesses and mistakes. For Lencioni: Trust is the belief in the good intentions of other people in the team. What follows is that the team members don’t need to be overly cautious and they don’t develop unhealthy defence mechanisms. When they feel safe, they can focus on their goals and tasks. They have no problem asking for help and they are more likely to take risks. 

This is where we go to back to the Scrum Guide. Although it isn’t focused on teambuilding as such, there is a clear analogy. The values that form the basis for teamwork are enumerated here:

1. Build Trust

Scrum’s response to Lencioni’s trust is openness understood as readiness to communicate freely in terms of tasks and challenges faced by the team as well as to accept feedback, even if it’s difficult.  Another value mentioned in the Scrum Guide is respect shown to other people on the team, regardless of their experience, background, and, most of all, the differences in the ways of acting and thinking. 

2. Master conflict

Another pillar of teamwork described by Lencioni is the approach to conflict. Conflict is not understood here in its regular negative meaning. It means a discussion, an exchange of arguments, presentation of various poins of view.

One of Scrum values is courage defined as readiness to do the right thing, take risks, and solve difficult problems. In my opinion, courage, accompanied by the above-mentioned openness and respect, is what is needed to overcome the fear of conflict. 

3. Achieve Commitment

The third area identified by Lencioni is commitment, especially when it comes to taking decisions and planning future actions together. The team members who don’t share their views in debates (perhaps because they are afraid of conflict) might find it difficult to be committed to the performance of a project, even if they seemingly agree with the team’s ideas. Speaking up for yourself to share your ideas, doubts, and fears reinforces the feeling of the team that the decision is taken collaboratively, which makes it easier to relate to and translate into action. 

Scrum also refers to commitment as an important value. It is presented as personal dedication to acting as best as possible for achieving the goals of the team. 

4. Embrace Accountability

The fourth area is accountability: assuming the responsibility for the team’s work both by personal engagement and, above all, by pointing to the behaviours of other team members which have a negative impact on the group in general. This way, the team is able to react to problems quickly and smoothly, following high standards and preserving the atmosphere of mutual trust. 

What about Scrum? Let’s refer to openness again: being open to both receiving and giving feedback. One of the concepts underpinning Scrum is empiricism: working in an experience-based manner and learning from mistakes.

5. Focus on results

The final level of Lencioni’s pyramid is attention to results. In theory, it seems obvious that teams are built to respond to particular needs, but some members tend to concentrate on being in the group as such or on their private interests. Powerful teams avoid distraction and they focus on their common goals. 

The corresponding Scrum value is focus, which means basically the same: making sure the team meets the goals set, which may be related to the client’s or user’s satisfaction. When teams base their work on priorities and collective goals, they are able to optimise their strength and deliver value. 

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How to use this knowledge in practice?

To my mind, working on raising awareness of the team leader and team members is enough to bring positive outcomes. It’s a good idea to think about which value is not sufficiently distinct in the team. Or, on the other hand, perhaps one of the dysfunctions described above is noticeable in the team’s work? 

Another starting point for analysis is the set of questions developed by Lencioni:

• Do team members openly and readily disclose their opinions?
  
  
• Are team meetings compelling and productive?
  
  
• Does the team come to decisions quickly and avoid getting bogged down by consensus?
  
  
• Do team members confront one another about their shortcomings?
  
  
• Do team members sacrifice their own interests for the good of the team?
  

When you find the areas for improvement in your team, listen to the Manager Plus podcast, where Mariusz Chrapko suggests exercises for particular dysfunctions.

To learn more on this subject, take a look at these: 

• The Five Dysfunctions of a Team – the book has a form of a business story, which I find really satisfying 
  
• Scrum Guide – I guess it doesn’t need an introduction 
  
• An article about the Scrum values
  
• Sample exercises for teams – they will help the team in getting to know the Scrum values
  
• Lencioni’s resources to accompany the book
  
• Mariusz Chrapko’s podcast – episodes 97–101 about the dysfunctions of teamwork (in Polish)

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Liberating Structures may serve as a great tool if you want to activate every single participant in your meeting. Liberating Structures are a collection of over 30 ideas for effective workshops, discussions, and problem-solving meetings, also for large groups.

Below, I will present 3 structures and I hope they will inspire you to experiment with them.

1-2-4-All

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This technique can be used if you wish to engage everyone in the group in generating ideas, in a rapid fashion. After stating the question or problem that the participants are going to deal with, the work goes on in the following way:

• Give the participants time to think about a solution individually
  
• Generate ideas in pairs, based on individual insights
  
• Share ideas in groups of four to see the similarities and differences
  
• Every foursome shares one selected idea with the rest of the participants

This way, every person in the group gets a chance to provide a solution; the issue gets analysed from a variety of perspectives; and the participants can be inspiration to each other.

W3 – What, So What, Now What

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This method can be used to wrap up past events and make conclusions. The work is done in groups of 5 to 7 people. Make sure that every group includes a person whose task is to facilitate the discussion. Before doing the exercise, the participants should be instructed about what each stage of the discussion must feature.

WHAT

First, there’s time for everyone’s self-reflection, then the groups discuss the facts related to the event analysed. What happened? What did you notice? Together, they write down their observations and share them with the other groups.

SO WHAT

First individually, then in groups, the participants talk about their conclusions based on the situation, hypotheses, patterns, and the significance of what happened. After the discussions within the groups, their results are shared with the others.

NOW WHAT

The discussion is structured in a way similar to the previous stages. The groups think of actions that need to be taken based on their conclusions. After the individual and teamwork, the ideas are presented to the rest of the team. There is also time for additional comments among the groups.

This technique is great for Retrospectives and for larger Lessons Learned meetings.

Troika Consulting

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This structure proves useful when you want to consult a problem you’re working on with your colleagues. It will work both at larger meetings, with the participants divided in groups, and in everyday tasks, if you get stuck trying to find a solution. You can get valuable insights from other people and you become more open to asking for help and building trust. The work is done in groups of 3 people. The more versatile the groups, the more creative the solutions are.

The person who initiates the subject of the discussion (“client”) presents the issue to two “consultants”. The consultants ask in-depth questions concerning the analysed issue.

They talk to each other and suggest possible solutions. The client is standing with his or her back to the consultants (or with a disabled camera in the remote environment), not taking active part in the conversation, only listening. Then, the client turns around to face the consultants and to share what was most valuable about their discussion.

Next, another person takes the role of the client and the process is repeated.

All these microstructures are described in detail on the LS website along with numerous examples of how to apply them and the suggested times for each stage. The individual structures can be combined into strings to create plans for longer workshops. If you’re looking for inspiration for non-standard meetings or presentations, this is a great source.

If you’re looking for an experienced IT Partner to build your solution feel free to contact us. We believe each project is unique as each company has different needs. Thus we can adapt our approach and various techniques to a particular case. All to achieve the best quality of a final product.