In the summer of 2019 I got in touch with O’Reilly Media about their ambition to expand their “97 Things” series with a book about Scrum. Drained as I was after an engagement as Scrum Enterprise Coach at a large organization it was a great way to re-energize and practice some writing again. As the title of the series suggests, the idea was to publish 97 essays about Scrum, to be provided by people (‘experts’) from around the world. Having no other plans for that time being, I could completely focus on my work as curator: contacting people, collecting ideas for essays, reviewing potential essays, suggesting potential edits, ordering and categorizing the articles, reviewing the manuscript and the cover.
Ultimately, 69 people delivered one or more essays that made it into the book and O’Reilly published the result in May 2020, when I could proudly announce the availability of “97 Things Every Scrum Practitioner Should Know”.
Uwe Schirmer was so kind to contribute two essays:
- Thing 5: “Start with the Why of Your Scrum” (Together with Peter Goetz), part of Part I (“Start. Adopt. Repeat.”).
- Thing 67: “Teams Are More Than Collections of Technical Skills”, part of Part VII (“People, All Too Human”).
Being on a mission of humanizing the workplace with Scrum, I find myself regularly referring to Thing 67 by Uwe, not in the least because the title is already sufficiently self-explanatory. The article rightfully counters the idea that teams can be ‘constructed’ by looking at the technical skills of the involved team members only, the skills matrix way so to speak. People, not resources, as you know. Uwe also confirms what the science says about some commonly used personality categorisation models for trying to compose perfect teams: they are wrong.
Note: Uwe’s article started with a quote from the Scrum Guide. At the time of creation of the article and the publication of the book, that was the 2017 edition. We have expanded the original article by adding a reference to the latest version of the Scrum Guide, of November 2020.
I am happy to share his complete article here:
Teams Are More Than Collections of Technical Skills
Uwe Schirmer
Cross-functional teams have all competencies needed to accomplish the work without depending on others not part of the team.
The preceding quote from the Scrum Guide (2017 edition) is often interpreted as meaning, “Have all the skills needed to technically accomplish the work.” This still applies, if not even more, to the way it is formulated in the latest version of the Scrum Guide that was published in 2020:
Scrum Teams are cross-functional, meaning the members have all the skills necessary to create value each Sprint.
As a consequence, staffing people for a project is often done by only focusing on availability and skills. The impact of the individuals’ personalities on the success of the team is easily ignored, as are other factors that affect how a team works and the outcomes they produce:
- Do they have a shared vision and purpose?
- Are they empowered to do what must be done?
- How is the quality of collaboration and interaction in the team?
The intensity and quality of interaction between team members is important for the interpersonal relationships that the team members develop. It reflects whether the team behaves as a whole, which is crucial for the overall performance of the team.
The intensity and quality of interaction between team members depends on the personalities of the individuals and on the mix and compatibility of the personalities within the team, more than on their collected technical skills.
People who are accountable for building teams often acknowledge this and subsequently aim for the perfect team composition. They categorize potential team members into personality types using assessment methods like Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), DISC, Life Orientation (LIFO), Hermann Brain Dominance Index (HBDI), or Insights Discovery.
One interesting fact about all these assessment methods is that they typically use four personality types. This can indeed be used to better understand the behavior of individuals in a team and what drives and motivates them. But you cannot use them to construct a high-performance team at the drawing board. There is simply no recipe for building teams like there is for cooking a meal. No single person perfectly matches one personality type, not to mention that the interdependence between personalities is too complex to be planned.
The personality of a person is not fixed either. People show slightly different personalities in different environments. Even within the same environment, personality may change over time as experience and specific insights grow.
Assessment methods may help to better understand the behavior and needs of the individuals in your teams. However, how effective a team is in a certain composition depends on the work the team has to perform, how much interaction is required for that work, and the intensity and quality of the interaction. What kind of interaction is needed might be different for planning activities, for creative work, or for decision making, and it takes a dif ferent mix of personalities in a team to achieve the best performance for each of these tasks. There is no way to optimize for each individual type of work a team needs to perform, and team composition cannot be changed for each and every task. Both approaches will undermine team cohesion and stability, negatively affecting overall team performance and team outcomes.
So, the next time you staff new teams or change an existing team, take more into account than just availability, technical skills, and rigid personality assessments. Try to understand what personalities best fit into your team depending on their context. And, above all, take it to the team. You will feel the difference.
About Uwe Schirmer
Agile Coach
Uwe is a coach and trainer for Scrum and for Agile Requirements Engineering. He has more than 20 years’ experience in different roles and domains of IT. He tries to convey a holistic view of the software development life cycle and helps his customers build up and repair teams and invent or rethink their processes and approaches from requirements to production and beyond.
Note: During the Corona times I already shared different ‘Things’ from the book “97 Things Every Scrum Practitioner Should Know” in online sessions with their respective authors. I made sure all recordings were made available through my website.