Posted on 01.01.2017 by Brian Nordland

As I reflect on 2016, I think of the immense accomplishments of my team at work. At the beginning of January, our team was highly dysfunctional in most regards. That is not to say that we did not produce great work, but rather that the only reason we produced work was due to the highly talented individuals on the team. Much like in the photo below, we were each working on different tasks, generally in the same direction, but without coordination or knowledge of where we were going. If you would have asked others how the team was functioning, they saw it as a typical software team that did relatively well at getting things out the door.

The Transformation

In mid-January, primarily due to changing priorities, compounding deadlines, and significant management attention, our team had to take immediate corrective action. With a deadline in mid-February that nobody outside the team thought was possible, as a team we sat down to figure out how to accomplish the task.

The single biggest change within the team was that we had a common goal of the February deliverable as a team. We verbally committed to making the date as a team. The key distinction here is as a team. We switched from each having our own goal of working on our task as highest priority, to becoming much more collaborative in nature. If at any point someone was running into roadblocks or felt like they were not moving as fast as they had hoped, they would immediately consult another team member to help with the issue.

"This transformation was a major factor that lead to the successful completion of not only a February release, but also the deliveries in April, June, and October. All of which nobody dreamed would ever be possible back in January."

After the transformation, rather than being in individual boats towards a similar direction, we were now much more like a rowing team working in harmony at a speed much greater than we could have ever thought was possible.

Benefits and Takeaways

Increased Team Ownership

One of the most recognizable benefits of team commitment is that the team feels that they own the product rather than simply working on the product. This leads to the next two items.



Improved Team Member Satisfaction

Perhaps one of the largest personal gains from the matter was that every single member of the team is happier. We feel like we are building something we are not only proud of, but also that has a sense of direction and meaning. This improved satisfaction compounds itself into greater productivity.



Greatly Improved Business Results

It could go without saying, but from the viewpoint of the business, not only the quality, but the quantity of software produced has been greatly increased. In fact, in addition to having time to meet current deliverables, the team has additional time to continue to improve the product in small ways by taking on additional small requests, enhancements, or bug fixes that previously would have gone into the product backlog wish list graveyard.

"The benefits of stressing team commitment over individual tasks and accomplishments can lead to significant boosts in momentum and the delivery of valuable meaningful output at a greatly increased rate"

Bringing Team Commitment to Your Team

While being under pressure is one way to cause a transformation to grow, you do not have to wait until a team is at the point of needing to take immediate corrective action. There are some simple tools you can try.

Find the Common Goal

Sometimes this can be the easiest task, other times it requires thinking outside the box. If everyone is working towards a given product release, the easiest approach is to select common goals of milestones within the product release. When teams are more fragmented, creativity, or team reorganization may be required

Important : Remember it is a team commitment, not a management commitment. It is important for the team to agree and commit to the goal that they believe they can achieve together. None of this is possible without the true commitment of a team. While management can suggest commitments, it is the team that is ultimately responsible for buying into and committing to the work.



Use Go/No Go Polling

Going along with the idea of finding the common goal, it is important that everyone on the team agrees. This is where taking a page out of NASA's book can be a simple but beneficial tool. Asking each team member if they agree with a given commitment, as well as if they are ready to mark a major milestone complete is a simple way to both build shared team commitment, as well as to build shared understanding of the work required. It is very important that team members are free to express their true feelings and that a "No Go" is not a negative, but rather a discussion point that needs to be resolved. Not only does this serve to build shared commitment, but it also serves a dual purpose of improving quality and likelihood of success by bringing up risks and issues that may otherwise be kept quiet. Some of the Go/No Go decision points that have proven successful for our team have been: When committing to a deliverable or milestone date asking each team member to respond yes/no to if they commit to achieving the date.

Before starting a phase in development. For example, transitioning from code to functional testing. If someone does not yet feel things are ready to go into the testing phase, perhaps it is worth spending the time fixing the quality issues in order to ensure a quicker and smoother test phase.

Before releasing a product to customers.



The Fallacy of Individual Tasks Falling Behind

In an individual task oriented team, where tasks are assigned to the individual, it can seem counterintuitive to stop what you are working on to help others on the team at the risk of your own deliverables. However, in a team goal oriented approach, the opposite happens. Let's take a simple example. If our team consists of just two people: Ben and Devon. They are both working to get a new website launched. Ben has the task assigned to work on the search results page, while Devon has the task assigned to work on the login page which must integrate with the companies corporate security server. Let's take a look at this done in two different ways. Individual Accomplishment Oriented

Devon is working on the login page and everything is going just as planned and should be done just in time. Meanwhile, Ben is struggling with the search page. Communicating with a back-end server is proving to be more challenging than originally anticipated. Ben knows that they are under a tight schedule so he continues to work tirelessly at trying to track down what the problem is. After a week, almost no progress is made, and Ben indicates that the search result page may not be complete in time. This causes management to get involved, extra meetings to be scheduled, and headaches for everyone involved. In the end, the date is met, but it wasn't without struggles.





Devon is working on the login page and everything is going just as planned and should be done just in time. Meanwhile, Ben is struggling with the search page. Communicating with a back-end server is proving to be more challenging than originally anticipated. Ben knows that they are under a tight schedule so he continues to work tirelessly at trying to track down what the problem is. After a week, almost no progress is made, and Ben indicates that the search result page may not be complete in time. This causes management to get involved, extra meetings to be scheduled, and headaches for everyone involved. In the end, the date is met, but it wasn't without struggles. Team Commitment Oriented

In our team commitment oriented environment, the goal is to get the website ready for the final quality assurance testing by the end of the month. Devon is working on the login page and everything is going smoothly and should be done just in time. Ben on the other hand after spending a couple hours is having problems communicating with the back-end server. Knowing they have a shared commitment, Ben asks Devon for help. Devon sits down with Ben for the rest of the afternoon and together they are able to get the communication with the back-end server to a point where Ben is able to continue on his own the next day. The next day Devon returns to working on the login page while Ben continues to make progress on the search page.



Although helping Ben did slow down Devon for an afternoon, it enabled Ben to quickly get going to the point where when Devon runs into problems, Ben is able to do the same. This has a great potential to reduce the impact of difficulties and roadblocks. While it may seem counterintuitive, individuals are actually able to accomplish more in a team commitment oriented environment. This allows teams to think about taking on team commitment even if they are in an environment where management does not yet understand the benefits of team commitment over individual accomplishments.



Identify Distractions

There will undoubtedly be distractions that are unavoidable and even required. Perhaps a critical production or customer problem is discovered that requires immediate attention. However, if one team member is off stumbling on an issue, something to consider is that in order to keep the momentum going it may make sense to have the power of more than one individual working on the issue so that the team can get back to the goal at hand as soon as possible. This requires being able and willing to adapt as a team.



Reflect on Progress

Regardless of what sort of processes or methodology you are adhering to process wise, it is important that at some sort of interval to reflect on what has gone well and what has not gone as well. For example, were there distractions that, although the date was met, lead to things not going quite as smoothly as they could have?

There is no one recipe for improving team commitment, but rather tools that have been successful for others. A tool that may work well for one team, may not work as well for another. Feel free to comment on any additional techniques that you have found to be useful or perhaps even ones that have not been useful and why they failed to work. Some final parting words I leave you with are to be willing to try new things, and reflect on what is or is not working.