9.4 Develop Team

Help the team build the skills and trust they need to work well together.

Executing / Resource · ← PMBOK reference · See it on the map

Why it matters

A group of individually skilled people who do not work well together produces worse results than a less skilled team that collaborates well.

What done looks like

Team performance is improving and skill gaps identified earlier have been addressed.

First time tip

Invest in team-building early, before the pressure of a tight deadline makes it feel like time you cannot spare. It pays back most when the schedule gets hard.

What you need (Inputs)

• Resource Management Plan
  How Scrum/Kanban projects satisfy this — counted from: project roles (driftless/models/agile.py:ProjectRole) — naming who holds each agile role (product owner, Scrum Master, developer, stakeholder proxy) is how an agile team plans its resources, in place of the stored prose plan a predictive project writes
• Lessons Learned Register
  How Scrum/Kanban projects satisfy this — counted from: sprint retrospective evidence (driftless/models/delivery.py:Sprint) — a sprint closed with retrospective notes is a lesson captured, the way a predictive project files one as prose
• Project Schedule
  How Scrum/Kanban projects satisfy this — counted from: releases (driftless/models/agile.py:Release) — a release with a target date is the agile reading of a project schedule when there is no sprint or milestone to read one from
• Project Team Assignments
• Resource Calendars
• Team Charter

How you do it (Tools & Techniques)

• Colocation
• Virtual Teams
• Interpersonal and Team Skills
• Team Building
• Recognition and Rewards
• Training
• Individual and Team Assessments

What you get (Outputs)

• Team Performance Assessments
• Change Requests

Worked example

The contractor's crew and the library volunteers have never worked together, so the first morning is spent walking the building as one group and agreeing who to ask about what — an hour that saves a week of volunteers guessing.

Common pitfalls

• Putting team-building off until the schedule is too tight to allow it.
• Training the paid staff and leaving the volunteers to work it out.
• Assuming an experienced group needs no introduction to each other.

How driftless helps

• Colocation can be run here.
• Virtual Teams can be run here.
• Team Building can be run here.
• Recognition and Rewards can be run here.
• Training can be run here.
• Individual and Team Assessments can be run here.
• Team Performance Assessments can be created in the wizard.