Stages of a Team
A team transitions through 4 stages of performance. For each stage, there is a different systemic change the manager needs to make to increase performance.
- When a team is falling behind, add people while managing expectations.
- When a team is treading water, reduce work-in-progress while promoting shared responsibility.
- When a team is repaying debt, add time while finding creative ways to satisfy stakeholders.
- When a team is innovating, add slack while ensuring the projects have business value.
Falling behind
A team is falling behind if each week their backlog is longer than it was the week before. Typically, people are working extremely hard but not making much progress, morale is low, and your users are vocally dissatisfied. (Larson 2019, chap. 2)
The long-term fix is to hire people, but in the short term a manager needs to set clear expectations for users and celebrate decisive early wins.
Treading water
A team is treading water if they’re able to get their critical work done, but are not able to start paying down technical debt or begin major new projects. Morale is a bit higher, but people are still working hard, and your users may seem happier because they’ve learned that asking for help won’t go anywhere. (Larson 2019, chap. 2)
The long term fix is to focus the team on less concurrent projects and preserver time for technical debt. In the short term, a manager should help people on the team view productivity as a shared experience/responsibility.
Repaying debt
A team is repaying debt when they’re able to start paying down technical debt, and are beginning to benefit from the debt repayment snowball: each piece of debt you repay leads to more time to repay more debt. (Larson 2019, chap. 2)
The long term fix is to add a bit of time to allow the “compounding value of paying down technical debt to grow.” In the short term, this means managing stakeholder’s expectations or finding creative ways to satisfy them.
Innovating
A team is innovating when their technical debt is sustainably low, morale is high, and the majority of work is satisfying new user needs. (Larson 2019, chap. 2)
The long term “fix” is to ensure the team still has enough slack to respond to changes and keep quality high. In the short term, ensure that all projects have clear business value to avoid the team being defunded.