How to keep your Agile development team healthy?

Cool! Your agile development team is technically competent, but… Are they mentally and emotionally prepared? Learn how to prevent possible discomforts.

A few days ago a friend of mine asked me, “how can I know if a software company can complete projects using an Agile Methodology?” It was interesting to realize the answer. The combined good practices of this method alongside their corporate criteria can create an excellent business culture, building and growing their business model.

Agile development Methodologies are based on collaborative goal commitment, incrementally. Here is the important part! Each team member has to be focused on a target, mentally and emotionally. To achieve such a reality, it’s true there must occur a change and transformation process within people, I mean, individually, to achieve successful results without the little blockages, making it possible from collective engagement.

Another way to compensate… Emotional salary!

Successful Software companies are considering new talent care trends. With this aggressive run for covering demands and ever-changing information, organizations understand that it’s necessary to provide a balance between professional business goals with human resources, and beyond this, how money is not the only motivator.

Active breaks, sport activities in situ, professional certification cycles to gain new skills or improve them, continuous feedback cycle based on growth and personal and professional development, new models of evaluation between teammates, familiarity with coworkers, participation in technological development marathons, agile weeks or any other related event, and other motivators, they increase mass involvement, promote synergy between multidisciplinary teams. Also, working teams are having fun, stepping out of the box, and receiving a great professional experience.

If we combine the above with the practices defined in agile software development methodologies, we could make an explosive blend of success. Here are some suggestions that may keep your team healthy:

How to set commitments on a task board? Look at the table!

It would be ideal to have a task board that would allow you to list all of the activities, responsibilities, and priorities in a product backlog, everything in a pro to achieve Sprint goal. Every team member should have access and visibility of this task board. Here at Teravision Technologies, we use very good tools that make it easier to get on the table, online and available for each team member in a fast and reliable way. The tools that we use include a face recognition system that identifies each stakeholder within the project, their roles, workload and the possibility to update the status of each activity of the Sprint/Project, quickly and smoothly. Also, we can evaluate the frequency of urgent/unplanned requirements and how they are handled by the team.

Please, Stand – up!

Stand – up or The Daily Scrum according to scrum methodology is a quick meeting of just 15 minutes where the task board must be updated and like the Eminem’ song says: Please, Stand – up! It is a pretty short event to stay sitting… So, A good practice is to stand. The benefits are:

• Increase blood flow for better sharing of brilliant ideas.
• Only 15 minutes! More than that, team members will need to sit and may extend the length of the meeting which may affect their performance in other assigned activities.

Fitness team: a healthy size

According to the scrum methodology, an ideal number of participants should oscillate between 3 and 7. 3 or less won’t guarantee the achievement of Sprint’s goals. More than 7 can make it difficult to communicate daily.

Product Owner: The keeper of the product’s vision or team moderator?

This role is of vital importance in achieving projects with success. This individual keeps the focus and guides the process. Quality assurance is done, provide team guidance and indicate if the product development is not going well. About this last part, the Product Owner must have highly developed skills as well as be great communicators, motivators, and leaders. They prevent and see possible blockages, his responsibility should not be confused with workload distribution or assignation of responsibilities on the board, because one of the Scrum premises is: teams are Self-organizing.

If you want to get the best results with your projects and gain at the same time an outstanding relationship with your team, here at Teravision Technologies we will show you the best options for application development. Contact us.

Related topics: Leadership in an Agile software development environment