Creating effective Agile teams is not easy. This article explores three models that can inspire you in the Scrum team creation process: the Lencioni Model, the 7T Model and the Tuckman’s Team Development Model.
Author: Dijana Milunovic, Insightful
An African proverb says “If you want to go quickly. go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” When you translate these words of wisdom into the business world you’ll understand why building strong effective teams is a precondition for taking your business to the next level.
Creating effective Agile teams requires effort and patience. You need to turn a group of random skilled professionals into a tight-knit team that collaborates and communicates seamlessly to reach set goals.
Reliable digital tools like project management platforms and employee tracking software can be helpful and offer you insight into the way your employees spend their time at work, letting you track their progress. But this is just one piece of the puzzle.
If you want to build tight-knit Scrum teams that are willing to work together toward common goals, keep reading. You’ll find out more about 3 team efficiency models devised to improve employee productivity, confidence, and satisfaction.
The Lencioni Model
Patrick Lencioni created this model focusing on pain points that may prevent teams from working effectively. The author of “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team” devised a pyramid model placing the lack of trust as the greatest obstacle to team efficiency at its base. Accordingly, the lack of attention to work is at the pyramid top as the least significant issue.
Here are the five dysfunctions listed :
- Lack of trust
- Fear of conflict
- Lack of commitment
- Avoidance of accountability
- Lack of attention
The top two issues that can ruin your cross-team collaboration and efficiency are serious red flags showing that your employees don’t feel comfortable speaking their minds at work. This may happen because they feel their opinions don’t matter or fear the consequences of speaking up. The rest of the disruptions stem from the lack of focus and poorly defined goals.
So if you want to improve your team efficiency, you need to create an atmosphere of trust in the workplace, foster open communication, and set clear well-defined goals.
The 7T Model
This team efficiency model focuses on internal and external factors that affect your team’s productivity and performance.
Internal factors that make teams effective are:
- Thrust – Team members are committed to reaching set goals
- Trust – You’ve created an atmosphere based on trust and built strong relationships within the team.
- Talent – Every employee has relevant experience and skills needed for team success.
- Team skills -Communication and collaboration between team members run smoothly.
- Task skills – All team members can complete their tasks efficiently and within set deadlines.
According to this model, external factors that affect team effectiveness are:
- Team lead – Employees need to trust and respect you as a leader, approving of your leadership style.
- Team support from the company – The company needs to support all teams by offering resources needed for their success.
You can use the T7 model to evaluate your team’s strong sides, identifying potential soft spots that need to be addressed and improved.
Tuckman’s Team Development Model
According to psychologist Bruce Tuckman, every effective team needs to go through 5 development stages:
- Forming stage – This is the initial stage where employees still don’t know each other and you can’t predict what the team dynamics will be.
- Storming stage – Team members get to know each other better and you can expect some conflicts and misunderstandings to arise due to a clash of opinions and characters.
- Norming stage – Your employees learn how to communicate and collaborate better within a team setting possible differences aside.
- Performing stage – Teammates have reached the point where they can work seamlessly together to deliver wanted outcomes, respecting and learning from each other.
If you want your teams to reach the final team development stage, offer them all tools and resources they need to succeed, encouraging tight interpersonal relationships and providing strategies for overcoming conflicts.
Now that you’ve found out how these widely popular team effectiveness models function, you only need to choose the one that can bring the best out of your teams and make your business stand out from the competition.
About the Author
Dijana Milunovic is a Content Writer at Insightful. She enjoys writing about employee productivity and engagement, company culture, and leadership.