Chapter 3
Build Teamwork with Interpersonal Practices

One VP of R&D asked me this question: Why didn’t his resources act like teams? He could see that they didn’t trust each other much. He knew he wasn’t getting the value he thought he paid for. He was confused.

Part of the problem was his thinking. He thought about people as “resources.” Yes, what you call people matters. He didn’t mind moving people off and onto projects at will. He also ranked people against each other. That made them want to collaborate less, not more.

The people on the team reflected his values. They treated each other as resources. They hated to ask for help. They knew they would be ranked against each other, so they competed, not collaborated.

Not surprisingly, they weren’t a team.

Humans comprise the product-development team. Not resources, although the people are resourceful. I have found that when people stop talking about resources and start talking about humans, people in the organization start to change their mindset and, therefore, the culture.

Because agile is a human-centric, collaborative approach to product development, your team needs to build its ability to work as a team using interpersonal skills. In addition, managers need to change their language and the team culture. See Chapter 16, ​How Managers Help Agile Teams​, for an introduction to thinking about humans instead of “resources.”

Many technical people didn’t decide to work in technology because they had terrific interpersonal skills. They started their jobs because they liked solving problems. In organizations, many people realize they need to learn to build their interpersonal skills so they can collaborate on building the product. They build a little, get some feedback to inform the next part of the work, build a little more, and get some feedback. Successful agile teams use their agile mindset—that build, feedback, learn loop—for their interpersonal skills, too.

People work as team members and take risks when they are capable of providing feedback and coaching to each other. And leaders need to create safe environments for people to work as a team.

Agile team members require at least two interpersonal skills: the ability to receive and provide feedback and coaching. When team members can provide each other feedback and coach each other, the team members can create a safe environment for the collaboration necessary for experimentation. Those abilities help the team members learn from their work, as individuals and as a team, and help the team learn to deliver small increments of value often.

First, let’s think about what is similar about many agile team members.