I was called in to work with an existing team. This team was a highly-motivated team working in a manufacturing environment. The management structure wanted teams. Well, they wanted people to take accountability and manage the process. So, management supported the team effort. And the hourly employees were hired on with the expectation that they would be working in teams to manage their daily production [and related] activities. The problem was that…well, there was little observable productivity coming from these teams.

John Maxwell, in his book on the laws of leadership, talks about the law of The Big Mo – Momentum is a leader’s best friend. All leaders will face a challenge when they try to start [or change] a process. No matter how much everyone wants to change, there are natural drivers against change. We are plagued with inertia.

By, Mark McCatty

An important SCRUM principle is the principle of self-organizing team. As opposed to traditional command-and-control style of management, SCRUM utilizes teams more fully. SCRUM offers that today’s workers have much more to offer than just their technical expertise and that the team can deliver greater value when self-organized. By making these teams cross-functional they have the ability to handle all the work tasks within their areas of responsibility. By arranging the teams into self-organized units the teams have the ability to be flexible to respond to obstacles quickly.

There are very measurable team characteristics for determining effectively self-organized teams. These characteristics are: