Share Skills for Agile Team Success

Eliminate Agile boundaries to reduce bottlenecks.

One of the key success factors for Agile teams, according to Michael Depaoli of the VersionOne blog, is the creation of cross-functional teams.  Depaoli explains, “In the last company that I lead an Agile initiative, when I arrived, client dev engineers had tech specialties and code ownership was cut up equivalently.  After just less than a year, the team eliminated the boundaries and we had common code ownership which greatly reduced bottlenecks.”

By sharing skills, each team member improves his or her breadth of skills and this lessons the dependency that team has on any one member. Depaoli suggests that, “Pair programming, shadowing, code reviews, and other techniques help enable the knowledge and skill development”

He also warns that having, “single individuals on agile teams who are the only ones that know a technology is a very risky model from a business perspective.”

For a look at Depaoli’s personal Agile team experiences, and to learn some best practices for creating “cross-functional Agile software development teams,” check out the full post.