An agile team structure can increase performance through improved collaboration and productivity. I’ve experienced how the right structure can result in quicker delivery and better quality. You’ll discover the main roles, the best team sizes and how to structure your teams for the most efficiency. Use this guide to build an agile structure that will be the key to your success.
Agile Team Roles and Responsibilities
Agile team structures have various roles that execute specific functions. Defining each role has helped me manage projects more effectively. So, who are the key players in an Agile team?
Scrum Master:
- Removes team obstacles
- Runs Agile meetings
- Coaches the team on Agile
- Protects the team from outside distractions
The Scrum Master is a great example of a servant leader. They do not manage the team, but instead enable the team to be its best. I’ve seen talented Scrum Masters turn underperforming teams into high performing teams.
Product Owner:
- Shapes the product backlog and its priority
- Communicates the product vision to stakeholders
- Decides what functionality the product should have
- Approves work results
The Product Owner is essential for the success of the project. They connect what the business wants to what the team delivers. A great Product Owner can make a tremendous impact on project outcomes.
Development Team:
- A cross-functional group of individuals
- Self-organizing and self-managing
- Works together to build product deliverables
- Usually composed of developers, testers, and possibly designers
The Development Team is the workhorse of Agile projects. They have a diverse skill set, which enables them to solve problems and innovate efficiently. Balanced teams usually outperform the team in which members only work within their silos.
Other Agile methodologies have slightly different roles. For example, Extreme Programming (XP) adds an on-site customer, and Kanban adds a flow manager. These roles are specific to the given project.
Optimal Agile Team Size and Composition
The size of the Agile team is one of the most significant factors that determines how effectively it will operate. In my experience working with Agile teams, I’ve found that smaller teams are generally more productive and cohesive.
An ideal Agile team size is:
- 5-9 team members
- A “two-pizza team” (a team that can be fed with two pizzas)
- Large enough to possess a variety of skills
- Small enough to communicate effectively
Teams larger than nine members tend to be less effective. Communication overhead grows exponentially as the team gets larger. Similarly, I’ve found that larger Agile teams struggle to coordinate and often fragment into subgroups.
Smaller teams are advantageous because they make decisions more quickly, communicate better, hold individual team members more accountable, and are just more flexible and adaptable.
However, smaller teams also have their challenges. They may lack a specific skill set and might be overloaded during peak times. Therefore, it’s critical to consider team composition.
When forming Agile teams, consider:
- The mix of skills needed to accomplish the project
- Different personality types and working styles
- Varying levels of experience (i.e., having a mix of more junior and more senior team members)
- The distribution of domain knowledge
A well-balanced team consists of members with a variety of technical skills, different personalities and working styles, and expertise in a variety of domains. This diversity in the team often spurs creativity and better problem solving. As a result, the team is frequently able to accomplish more complex projects with less difficulty.
Cross-functional vs. Specialized Teams
Cross-functional teams are a group of individuals with diverse skill sets working together toward a common objective. These teams can take a feature or user story from ideation to completion.
Advantages of cross-functional teams:
- Higher productivity (15-20%)
- Fewer handoffs and dependencies
- Faster problem solving and decision making
- More learning and skill transfer
Cross-functional teams are excellent at delivering entire product increments. They are less likely to be a bottleneck or fall victim to the “not my job” mentality. I’ve found that cross-functional teams consistently outperform specialized teams.
Specialized teams are a team of individuals with the same skill set, such as backend developers, UI designers, or testers. This is an effective way to develop deep expertise, but it often creates silos and miscommunications among team members.
There are certainly use cases for specialized teams. Some projects are incredibly complex and require a group of specialists to complete the work. However, the direction of Agile is to avoid specialized teams.
How to shift to cross-functional teams:
- Slowly add cross-skilling opportunities.
- Have specialists work with someone in a different discipline.
- Rotate team members through different roles and responsibilities.
- Invest in training or mentorship for skill development.
Shifting to cross-functional teams requires a lot of patience and persistence. You will likely face some pushback initially, but the long-term flexibility and higher productivity make the effort worthwhile.
Agile Team Organization Patterns
Agile teams can be structured in various ways depending on the project and the organization. Here are a few common patterns.
Feature teams are a great fit when the goal of the team is to deliver end-to-end functionality. Feature teams work across multiple components to deliver user-facing value. Component teams, however, work within a single component of the system. Feature teams are often the highest performing as they have a broad skill set, yet deliver more value to the user.
The Squad model, inspired by Spotify, organizes teams into small cross-functional teams called squads. Squads are then grouped into tribes, representing a collection of related products or features. This model optimizes for autonomy and alignment with business objectives.
The Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) takes a multi-level approach:
- Team level: An agile team (i.e., 5 to 9 people)
- Program level: Agile release train (i.e., 50 to 125 people)
- Portfolio level: Value Streams
SAFe is a powerful framework that provides structure for large organizations. However, it can be quite complicated to implement. SAFe has seen both success and failure based on whether the organization was ready for it.
Large-Scale Scrum (LeSS) simplifies the scaling of Scrum. It maintains a single product owner and a single product backlog, and is a fantastic framework for maintaining basic Scrum principles at scale without introducing a ton of overhead.
Each of these patterns has its strengths and weaknesses. Your choice should depend on the size of your organization, the culture, and the complexity of your project. I’ve found that starting with the simplest option and iterating as you go tends to yield the best results.
Communication Structures in Agile Teams
Agile teams rely on effective communication to coordinate, solve problems, and keep everyone on the same page.
Key Agile communication strategies:
- Face-to-face interactions (40% more effective than digital)
- Regular structured meetings (ceremonies)
- Open, transparent information
- Continuous feedback
Daily stand-up meetings are a core Agile communication strategy. These short meetings should last 15 minutes or less and are designed to help the team quickly sync on progress, roadblocks, and plans. I’ve seen stand-up meetings become less effective when they exceed this time limit.
Sprint planning and sprint review meetings mark the beginning and end of each sprint. The planning meeting sets up the work to come, and the review meeting showcases the completed work to stakeholders. Both meetings help the team achieve a shared understanding and alignment.
Retrospectives are an opportunity for the team to reflect on how they can improve. Teams that spend 15-20% of their time in meetings, including retrospectives, yield better results. Use this retrospective meeting to look back, adapt, and evolve together as a team.
When you manage remote Agile teams, communication requires more deliberate planning. Video conferencing, virtual whiteboards, and chat are technology-based tools to help Agile teams communicate. Personally, I’ve successfully managed remote teams by prioritizing clear written communication and regular video check-ins.
Effective Agile communication provides the right balance of structure and flexibility. Use these communication strategies to facilitate quick information exchange and allow deeper conversations when necessary. The more you invest in these communication strategies, the higher your team’s performance and morale will be.
Self-organizing Teams in Agile
Self-organization is one of the key principles of Agile methodologies. It allows teams to make decisions, self-manage their work, and continuously improve.
Principles of self-organization:
- Autonomy to make decisions
- Shared accountability for results
- Continuous adaption/learning
- Trust and transparency among the team
When teams self-organize, the results can be powerful. Research shows self-organizing teams deliver 25% faster than traditional command-and-control teams. This increased speed is a result of less bureaucracy and higher employee engagement.
Benefits of self-organizing teams:
- Higher motivation and job satisfaction
- Faster response to change or problems
- More innovative solutions
- Better utilization of each individual’s strengths
However, self-organization isn’t without its challenges. Teams may lack clear boundaries or experience with self-management, and personalities may clash. Leadership is critical to helping these teams succeed.
Leadership in self-organized environments:
- Set clear goals and constraints
- Eliminate organizational impediments
- Facilitate rather than command
- Trust the decisions made by the team
While implementing self-organization can be challenging, the long-term benefits of agility and innovation make the process worth it.
Agile Team Performance Metrics
Measuring Agile team performance allows you to identify areas to improve and demonstrate progress over time. However, it’s essential to use metrics judiciously to avoid unintended consequences.
Key performance indicators for Agile teams:
| Metric | Description | Benchmark |
|---|---|---|
| Velocity | Story points completed in a sprint | Consistency over time |
| Sprint Completion Rate | Percentage of committed work finished | 90%+ for high performing teams |
| Cycle Time | Time to complete work | Decrease over time |
| Defect Rate | Bugs per story point | Low and decreasing |
| Team Happiness | General team happiness | High and consistent |
Velocity is the most common metric, but it has limitations. It’s helpful for capacity planning, but don’t use it to compare teams. Mature teams keep velocity variances within 10% from one another.
Burndown chart and burnup charts illustrate work progress inside a sprint or a release. They help ensure a team stays on track and allows the team to see early if the work looks like it might be late. Cumulative flow diagrams provide insight into the aging of work items and can identify bottlenecks in the process.
Measuring team happiness and satisfaction is just as crucial. Happy teams are more productive and more innovative. You can measure general team happiness through regular surveys or asking team members to rate their mood on a scale from one to 10.
Again, remember that metrics should inform improvement, not drive behavior. Look for trends rather than an absolute number. A balanced set of metrics also helps ensure you have a more complete view into team performance.
Scaling Agile Team Structures
As businesses scale, scaling Agile is often necessary but tricky. Scaling Agile introduces unique challenges. Challenges with scaling Agile:
- More coordination challenges
- Ensuring Agile practices at scale
- Aligning many teams to the same goals
- Managing team dependencies
Organizations with five or more teams will experience 35% more coordination and communication challenges. Additionally, Agile at scale requires two to three times as many communication lines. These communication barriers slow down decision-making and decrease agility.
The Scrum of Scrums solution introduces a coordination layer by gathering representatives from each team to discuss cross-team topics central to larger businesses. This system becomes difficult to manage, however. Nexus introduces the Nexus Integration Team to manage dependencies and integration for 3-9 teams working on a single product.
This framework works well in larger small businesses. Agile scaling frameworks like SAFe offer an end-to-end solution for Agile at scale within enterprises. SAFe prescribes roles, structure, and practices at team, program, and portfolio levels. SAFe can be powerful, though implementing it requires significant organizational change.
When you set out to scale Agile, don’t try to boil the ocean. Keep it simple. Instead, start with a small group of teams and scale from there. Throughout the scaling process, continue to prioritize Agile practices and values. Ultimately, Agile at scale only succeeds if you’re willing to make some structural and cultural changes.
Common Challenges in Agile Team Organization
Agile transformations frequently face challenges, and the first step to overcoming them is recognizing you’ll encounter them.
Change resistance is a common challenge as many employees and managers are comfortable with traditional processes. Changing a culture takes time and persistence. One solution I’ve found effective is showing early wins and involving skeptics in the process.
Balancing specialization with cross-functionality is another challenge as teams need deep expertise as well as a variety of skills to deliver independently. To solve this, encourage teams to teach each other skills and invest in learning and development.
Team dependencies are a challenge as you scale. To manage this, visualize team-to-team dependencies and then break these down in your backlogs. Additionally, establish communication channels to break dependencies and hold regular coordination meetings.
If you have distributed or remote team members, this makes everything more challenging. The solution is investing in best-in-class collaboration tools and establishing communication norms.
Scaled ceremonies at a larger organization aren’t efficient, and general team meetings feel like a waste of time. There are a few solutions to this, such as running effective scrum of scrums and breaking meetings into smaller, more effective groups.
These challenges aren’t impossible to solve. You simply need patience, persistence, and be willing to change. Also, remember that Agile project management is all about continuous improvement, so apply that to your Agile process and you’ll make steady progress.
In Closing
Agile teams are the foundation of any successful project. I’ve witnessed the impact of defining clear roles, the right team size, and good communication. Cross-functional teams usually perform better than specialized teams. Self-organizing teams are more productive. As you grow Agile, don’t lose sight of the basic principles. Use performance metrics to continually improve. Use these takeaways to construct Agile teams who are most likely to perform and provide amazing value.
