Common Manifestations of the Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Agile Teams

I was re-reading (actually listening to) the book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni and it made me think of the many Agile teams that I have come across or helped in my career.  Here are the five dysfunctions he mentions.

• Absence of trust—unwilling to be vulnerable within the group
• Fear of conflict—seeking artificial harmony over constructive passionate debate
• Lack of commitment—feigning buy-in for group decisions creates ambiguity throughout the organization
• Avoidance of accountability—ducking the responsibility to call peers on counterproductive behavior which sets low standards
• Inattention to results—focusing on personal success, status and ego before team success

 

Here are some signs of an Agile team’s “Absence of Trust”:

• Product Owner constantly challenges the team’s sizing saying she thinks the sizes are smaller or the team is sandbagging
• Scrum Master drills team members about individual tasks and burn down charts
• Team members refuse to do pair work
• Team members write defects pertaining to stories within a Sprint

 

Here are some signs of an Agile team’s “Fear of conflict”:

• Team members do not challenge one another on getting work to done
• Dev team members do not negotiate with Product Owner on scope
• Team members do not challenge the norm

 

Here are some signs of an Agile team’s “Lack of commitment”:

• Sprint goals and story acceptance are not met
• Retrospectives aren’t attended or valued by all team members

 

Here are some signs of an Agile team’s “Avoidance of accountability”:

• Do not want to give any dates or estimates
• Use words like “that wasn’t in the acceptance criteria”
• Continually do not meet Sprint commitments
• Do not hold a Sprint Review showing working software

 

Here are some signs of an Agile team’s “Inattention to results”:

• Individual utilization is more important than valuable finished work
• Having the attitude of “I finished my work so I am not to blame”
• Blaming team members for not doing “their job”
• Not making any changes in the next Sprint after not meeting commitments from last Sprint

 

What are some of the issues that you are seeing in your team?  This book is a great book to read as a team and then use the scorecard at the end to see how your team is doing with the five dysfunctions.  The audio version of the book is also good if you find yourself with little time to read, but a lot of time to listen to something.